I decided to research its costs and options and look at the ease of use, performance, safety, and customer support to see what it’s all about. The regulator could be a managed WordPress hosting provider that operates its services on powerful Google Cloud servers. It guarantees that it will take the full burden of hosting management from you, so you can focus on the business. Let’s Dive into a Detailed Flywheel Review.
Tools like staging and caching can be had with a single click. The rest of the services are managed with just a few clicks. No advanced information is required as the provider completes the backend’s technical aspects. That’s what managed means.
But lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of horrible reviews from regulators. People claim that it limits them, is down all the time, or that the support is almost useless.
That was not my experience with the regulator just a few years ago. So what changed? I absolutely know that it was not inherited by another great WordPress provider, WP Engine… Is that what stops this cutting-edge company from being the best it can be?
Well, I made the decision to allow the regulator hosting a chance to redeem itself. That’s why I took your services for the test. I looked at the costs and simple usage, I tested the performance, I tested the security, the support, and every single option is offered.
Table of Contents
FlyWheel Overview & Detailed Review :
Rating: | 4.2★★★★☆ |
Price: | Prices start at $13.00/month |
Uptime: | 100% |
Hosting types: | Managed WordPress |
Server locations: | United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Belgium, Australia |
Support: | 24/7 live chat, email, and phone |
Current deal: | Plans start at just $13 a month, and we’ll move all your sites for free! |
Flywheel Pros & Cons
Pros | Cons |
99.95% term guarantee backed by SLA. Tools for workflow management. Modern and easy interface. | It seems that the domains are not provided. Restricted access to the backend. |
Flywheel Pricing
Flywheel has four hosting plans starting at $13.00/month and ranging up to $242/month with the annual Associate in Nursing subscription. For starters, the two most expensive plans will go with consumer management tools if you choose to travel with the Growth Suite. This will increase the value up to $275/month. However, if you’re not sure if the provider is what you’re looking for, you can opt for the regulator’s free trial or select a custom plan.
Type of hosting | Best for |
Managed Hosting ($13.00-242/mo) | Easy WordPress management. Provides a typical set of tools. Plans start at just $13 a month, and we’ll move all your sites for free! |
Growth Suite ($113-275/mo) | If you want more tools for consumer management, billing, and income information. |
Mind you; the plans are similar in terms of resources. However, the Growth Suite comes with more tools that can make managing business operations easier.
In that case, I specialize in quality packages these days.
Free SSL, nightly backups, staging, caching, and Fastly’s high-powered content delivery network are included in all four tires.
- The tiny arrangement ($13.00/month) offers 5 GB of storage space for one website and 20 GB of data metering for up to 5,000 monthly visits. It is the most effective compromise to host your services portfolio or landing page.
- The starter plan ($25/mo) comes with 0GB storage for 1 website and 50GB data metrics for up to 25,000 monthly visits. This offers enough disk space for a popular web registry or a small, cheap online store.
- The standalone service ($96/month) allows you to host up to ten websites with 20 GB of storage and 200 GB of data for up to 10,000 visits/month. As the name suggests, it is the best solution for freelancers who host their clients’ sites. Growth Suite is available, increasing the price of the arrangement to $113/month.
- The agency plan ($242/month) comes with 50GB of storage for thirty websites and 500GB of data for four hundred thousand visits/month. It’s the fix for growing businesses. Growth Suite is available, increasing the price to $275/month.
In my opinion, the included resources can be more generous, especially when it comes to storage space. However, knowing that an average WordPress website takes up no more than 5GB of space, the slider can be very logical.
However, not all plans are equally valuable. My personal favorites are:
- Starter: offers more than twice the resources for less than twice as little. However, it is only an honest decision if you really want and can use those resources. If you’re hosting a portfolio or want to show off your services, little is an inexpensive thank-you to go.
- The agency is good at hosting its clients’ websites. If you were hosting all thirty websites, it would cost $8 for each one. However, if you don’t have that many buyers, Freelance will also work.
From what I will currently see, the regulator is targeting a selected audience. Their costs may seem very expensive, except for a service like that, they are really average. Compare it to Kinsta, which starts at $30/month for similar services.
But that is not all. I’ve also tested the terms of service and other billing-related information to see if we’d like to understand anything.
Pricing Needs to Know
Advertised prices can be obtained with annual subscriptions. The monthly charge is in the market. However, it will increase prices by around two hundredths. Also, the regulator does not limit the number of resources you use. However, it may charge an additional Associate in Nursing fee.
Best Value
For the most affordable price with the regulator, choose Little with a 1-year charge option. Thus, the fix may cost the advertised $13.00/month; thus, the total is $150. The renewal value does not increase.
It is refreshing to understand that the regulator does not increase the costs of renewal. Regardless of where it is proposed, providers can test this.
Another smart factor is that you’re not limited by designated resources – you’ll transfer extra files or settle for extra guests without speeding up service. However, surpluses are charged. However, they are quite affordable:
- 1GB of additional storage costs $1.
- Additional 1,000 monthly guests are $1.
That’s a good note that doesn’t force you to update your settings if you’re a bit above what’s included in yours.
What if you don’t like Flywheel?
You can cancel 30 days after purchase if you purchase an annual plan. Meanwhile, monthly subscriptions are canceled within seventy-two hours to induce a full refund.
Good To Know
By the way, before you buy an idea, you will test the services for fourteen days free of charge. You don’t even need a master card. I am terribly proud of the regulator’s terms when it comes to charges. It is not as aggressive as most alternative companies.
In the end, the regulator’s hosting valuation is superior, more expensive, and does not provide too many server resources. Nonetheless, it is still quite cheap compared to alternative managed WordPress services.
Hosting management: is the controller easy to use?
All Flywheel services are focused on simple usage. It’s really the first goal of this company: you shouldn’t be forced to do anything yourself in terms of hosting management; focus on your business.
This approach seems to be very attractive to creatives like website designers. If the platform takes care of every technical detail, it’s terribly cheap. Therefore, during this part of the regulator review, I went through the configuration and administration processes to visualize how simple it really is.
The first thing you see when you create a Nursing Associate account with the regulator is this forwarding interface:
This is your main administration space within which all your created sites can appear. However, you would like to create a replacement website before you have access to additional tools.
Clicking produces a replacement website that takes you through a quick setup method. You can directly choose an idea or a favor to create a demo website there. That is what I selected.
All he had to do was enter the name of the placement, choose a short-term domain, and a knowledge center. Country locations are available in North America, Canada, the UK, Belgium, and Australia.
Flywheel prepared the installation in a very few minutes, and I could access my website through the temporary domain I selected.
But you wouldn’t use a short-lived domain for business, would you? That takes the American nation to the next step.
How to add a site to Flywheel?
Flywheel does not sell or offer free domains. You have to have one with another logger and send it to the server. It’s very easy to try and do, and you need to find your server processing data and paste it into the domain registrar wherever you have a site.
When we created a replacement website, its admin space was completely unlocked. Shows all management options. However, the most important problem for the North American nation is the right box with Domains.
This is where you will find your data processing address to report your domain to the regulator and click Add another domain to assign it to your website.
Doing that is as simple as entering the address of the computer.
Simply check the main box if the domain you entered will be the most suitable for your website.
Once you’ve done that, you’ll log in to your domain registrar and update your DNS. This may sound fancy, but you need to generate an A record for your domain and paste your server processing data. Regulator actually includes a tutorial that covers most of the popular domain registrars.
This procedure is very simple and very common for web hosting. You can’t expect the provider to log into your domain registrar and create the desired changes, even for managed ones. Well, actually, you’ll contact support and Kindle Facilitate.
The last step of the configuration is to activate SSL.
How to activate SSL with Flywheel?
The SSL activation method involves a couple of clicks: modify the SSL button in your website administration space in the Domains box and also the Complete SSL configuration button in the next window.
Once you’re doing that, it will take a few minutes (or up to an associate degree hour, according to Flywheel) for SSL to activate.
And that’s it; your website is ready for work.
Generally, initial squared controller hosting setups are pretty common, but it’s not a great managed experience, that’s for sure. So what else will the vendor have in store?
What will the regulator panel look like?
Flywheel doesn’t separate your mainboard from the panel; everything comes together in a cohesive computer program. However, you will manage each website one by one with the assigned tools.
The main website admin space for each website is somewhat minimalist. We already saw the summary section that lists server information and domains.
The main area of interest is the small menu slightly below your website name. This is often where you will manage plugins, performance, stats, backups, and advanced settings. Also, on the right, you will come to your WordPress admin panel.
- Plugins – This space shows all the plugins installed on your website and notifies you if any of them need to be updated.
- The performance section is reserved for a paid feature: Performance Insights ($2/month). Will analyze your website and provide feedback for improvement.
- The statistics show the number of visits your website had.
- The backups section lists the thirty most current backups that you will transfer or restore. It also allows you to request manual backups.
- The advanced space has settings for CDN throttle, caching, and staging. This is usually also where you will get SSH and access to information.
One problem that most of the negative reviews from regulators consider is that you can’t access your core WP files like wp-config.php. This can be a huge inconvenience for advanced users. However, it really works as live security. So before you fall for that jittery regulator sale, consider your needs. If you’ve never touched wp-config.php, there’s a good chance you don’t want it here, too.
So overall, the panel is terribly useful and easy to use. Most things are managed at the click of a button – how much will be easier? However, if you want to manage advanced things like core files, the slider will not be the best option for you: it focuses on simplicity and has these files saved for security features.
All in all, the regulator will come across a nice simplicity with its WordPress hosting management tools. Initial domain setup is a problem if you’ve never done it before. However, the provider will do very little about it. The rest of the processes are almost automatic: the definition of managed hosting.
Flywheel Workflow Tools
One of the distinguishing things of the regulator is that it has developed tools to facilitate the flow of administration of the website. Particularly if you have a lot of sites under your belt. Staging, cloning, and website blueprint tools are included for free. In the meantime, there is a temporary tag panel for your buyers with the Growth Suite packages.
Website staging
Staging can be a tool that makes a copy of your website to check for changes and experiments. While it is becoming very common even with shared hosting, the slider surely makes it convenient.
To create a one-click test website, click on the website options tab.
If the location is very large, it would take a few minutes, but a replacement computer address will be generated for your test copy to succeed. You will see it next to your domain names.
Once you’re happy with your changes, you can upload them to a similar staging tab by clicking Move staging changes to my live website. In real-time, you won’t create anything important – a popup will appear, so you’ll be sure you really want to create those changes.
This is good live security; a single click of a button will screw up your website.
Just keep in mind that the test copy uses similar server resources as your live website, minus the information measure. Therefore, close the staging once you are done trading with it to avoid slowdowns.
Blueprints
Blueprints produce a reproduction of all website settings, plugins, and theme settings. It is useful if you want many websites with a similar initial setup. It is a kind of pre-built base to give life to the construction method.
By creating a replacement website, you’ll be ready to choose that template as a place to start.
I think this is usually a good tool for designers. They will produce completely different templates for various types of websites and speed up progress.
Biological investigation of the site
Biological site research creates a homogeneous copy of the website that will either be hosted on your facility, assigned a replacement, or kept intact as a demo.
If you are a freelancer, this would be one of the easiest ways to transfer a website to a consumer. By selecting to do it as a demo, you will be ready to assign a replacement owner to it. The new owner can choose an inspiration (you will advocate for the simplest!) and buy it.
Flywheel Growth Suite Consumer Management
Growth Suite is very much a reseller service for you. You will sell the hosting or develop websites for buyers and host them on your account. The service allows you to make subscription request packages, add your own brand to the panel and send invoices.
Your buyers can get a similar dashboard that you only use, except it will be for your websites only and will have your branding instead of the slider.
This is a nice feature if you are building your agency or if your buyers need you to host their websites. However, it is paid and starts at $113/month with the Freelance package.
If you have a use for these tools, they create one of the best options for agencies and creatives. In addition, everything is easy to use, so neither you nor your clients will have problems with it.
Performance – is Flywheel fast?
In terms of performance, the regulator stays true to its name. The provider is fast and never stops spinning – the period of two weeks remained 100 percent proper. This, plus the capacity to handle comparatively massive waves of traffic, is what defines reasonable performance.
Let’s take a good look at the reliability, speed, and stability tests I’ve done.
Uptime and latency
I have even monitored it for two weeks. Throughout that point, the regulator had zero outages resulting in an extremely large 100% period. Honestly, I like to see this range. Believe me, once I say this, this will not be as frequent as I would love it to be. Furthermore, the typical latency was 371 ms. That’s what I decide really reliable!
Flywheel guarantees a superior quality period, 99.95%, backed by an SLA agreement. So while going 100 percent for a short time is nice, it’s sensible to know that you’ll stay terribly close to that in the long run.
As for latency, except for one jump, it remained between 300ms and 400ms. Well below the hosting market average of 600ms.
These results proved that the provider’s service area unit is reliable even on the other side of what it guarantees.
Now, let’s inspect the loading speed of the website.
Speed
In the next batch of tests, I used GTMetrix to see how quickly it regulates hundreds of websites. I compared the speed in America, Europe, and India on the initial run.
Since the controller has a mechanically organized CDN (content delivery network), it should load all three locations pretty quickly, even if my server is in America.
Not specifically. The supplier showed excellent results in the US (598ms paint with larger content) and consequently stopped looking for alternative locations. London was 822 ms, and the Republic of India was 2.2 seconds.
The painting with the highest content is the most important in vivo during this test. Show once the most important part of the content (for example, the image of the hero) hundreds. Visitors often take this as an indication that the website is running fast. The constant goes to Google, which considers LCP up to 25 seconds almost as good.
Unfortunately, FLywheel’s content delivery network didn’t quite match load times as I’d hoped. While all locations pass the speed test, the provider’s result is not much different from others that do not use CDN.
Good To Understand
An alternative server location is available to address the page load speed issue even better than any CDN. You’ll choose from five locations: America, Canada, Europe (London and Belgium), and Australia. Choose the one closest to your target market, and they will be the ones that require a fast speed advantage.
But that’s just a lab test. Next, I uploaded my website with demo content and a gorgeous theme. This greatly exaggerated the size of the page. And also, the heavier the dimensions, the longer it takes to load.
This did not cause any trouble for the regulator. It loaded LCP in 881ms which is just a small increase.
By the way, currently, we will also inspect the speed image. It shows all the steps within which the positioning is located.
The server reacted terribly fast to the request to open the page (TTFB), 68 ms fast if possible. But the visitor actually saw the positioning load only at 608ms; Until then, the page was blank. Total load time, meanwhile, is the same as LCP: once the most important piece of content is hundreds, that’s it; the website is 100 percent scrollable and clickable.
In general, the charging speed of Flywheel is fast. While the CDN didn’t efficiently reduce the load time of alternative locations, the servers still did a very sensible job loading each very small and fairly large page.
Stress testing
For the last and one of the most important tests, I have placed 50 virtual users (bots) on my website. This shows if the provider will handle the traffic in the event of a large surge.
The cheapest arrangement is supposed to handle around 5,000 visits per month; that’s not much. Fifty users on a constant schedule each day would mean a minimum of 20k or 30k visits/month.
And 50VU was too small an amount for the regulator. If you were to inspect the graph, you would see the line: it represents failures, and we don’t want it to be there.
Basically, the throttle couldn’t handle all the requests that were sent to the server. Of eleven 572 requests, more than ¼ (3628 requests) were unsuccessful.
Not good.
However, it’s not surprising when you consider the visitor limit of 5,000/month. So, by reducing the number by 5, I found that the damper can come up if there is a thirty VU area unit in the positioning.
There is no line to worry about. Therefore, we will now review alternative measures as well. The blue line is crucial here: it represents speed. It stayed comparatively flat because the range of bots (grey line) was exaggerated.
This is what I mean by stability. Usually, the traffic tends to impede the servers. In the case of Flywheel, we have a tendency not to see that. So even though it didn’t handle everything I asked for, it was terribly stable. Simply put, the most affordable fix is not for a high-traffic website. Although it exceeded the first promise of 5000 visits/month.
All in all, the Flywheel’s performance confirms what was for sure. The provider is reliable, fast, and stable. Unfortunately, it didn’t handle most of the load, but it did show that it can handle a ton in the most economical configuration.
Security – is Flywheel secure?
As predicted from a managed service, the regulator’s security measures area unit is top-notch. It includes basic options like free SSL plus additional advanced security measures. In fact, therefore, the regulator is sure about your security that it recommends avoiding third-party security plugins altogether.
- A free SSL Area Unit is attached for each domain you just connected. You need to activate it on the mainboard.
- Malware removal is free in case your website gets hacked. Support agents may monitor cleanliness.
- Traffic observation unit and obstruction zone 24/7. It scans and filters all incoming traffic and is ready to block attacks before they reach your website.
- Limiting login attempts is enabled right on your dashboard; no need to install any more plugins. Will defend the website from brute force attacks.
- The area unit’s automatic backups are performed every night and are kept on a separate server for thirty days. This means that you only have access to the most recent copy of your website in the event of a problem with the live version.
It is a comprehensive set of security features that will protect your website from the most common threats. All things being the same, a lot of things are completed on the backend – very little or no input is needed from you.
Will you provide me with Flywheel customer support?
In my experience, the regulator has one of the simplest customer support groups on the market. You can contact them via live chat 24/7 or by phone (from the Freelance plan). Its addition, there is really abundant and in-depth updated cognitive content.
I only needed assistance once in all the research and testing time for this Flywheel hosting. And that’s because I was impatient. And on this one occasion, I couldn’t even talk to a real human.
My SSL, for some reason, was not showing on the website. Therefore, I went for the live chat.
A very fast larva asked ME all about it and even correctly guessed most of my answers. Sometimes I hate when I have to justify my problems to bots, but this one is certainly good.
And what did I tell you? I used to be impatient. SSL was easily activated, so it required up to an hour to work properly. So I waited, and sure enough, the matter resolved itself.
But the bot, regardless of its usefulness, will not solve many technical problems. Therefore, I had to consider one thing. Fanciful or not. It’s hard to try to do that once everything works fine.
So I just decided to try to do some interviews and see if the agents were well informed.
Once I requested tech help, the agent joined for just a second. Also, he was happy to answer my queries, regardless of whether it was an inherent technical issue.
I asked if caching has many options and got a simple answer: You can get some control, but there are still a lot of additional options to be introduced.
Then I also asked about PHP8 and got a solution that was still being tested and was only available in native settings.
And the responses couldn’t be higher. This showed that the regulator is aware of the needs of its clients and is trying to promote them. I even have little doubt that contacting support regarding actual technical issues would be just as inexpensive.
At an equivalent time, you can jointly address the cognitive content. Since the slider uses a custom interface, square measurement explanations, and tutorials exist for each tool. Plus, you’ll get WordPress admin tips and much more.
Well-written, up-to-date square measure articles. Everything is illustrated and explained in a very simple way. Very good if you are not a technical person.
All in all, the regulator has my vote when it comes to customer support. Not only are the agents fast, helpful, and friendly, but they also have one of the best chatbots around! If that’s not spectacular, I don’t understand what is. Also, the database covers all the themes you can have to start and manage a WordPress website.
The Final Verdict
While some regulators criticize this provider for a variety of reasons, I won’t connect them. I found the host quite distinctive, and a market for this type of service exists. Not to mention, the regulator is fast, secure, and easy to use.
I’ve placed all my finds on this neat little table:
Feature | 4.2★★★★☆ | Cheapest & Fast Hosting Provider |
Pricing | ★★★☆☆ | It provides security measures such as associated SSL certificates, daily machine-controlled backups, malware removal, and traffic monitoring. It is a secure supplier, and most of the items are handled behind the scenes. |
Ease of Use | ★★★★☆ | The provider is incredibly reliable, with a 100% time period associated with a 99.95% guarantee. It also loaded websites quickly and handled a huge surge of traffic. |
Performance | ★★★★★ | Flywheel uses an easy-to-use associated native hosting management system, as most aspects are managed behind the scenes. |
Security | ★★★★☆ | Support will be contacted 24/7 via live chat and phone. The agents are terribly knowledgeable, helpful, and quick. Also you can use huge cognitive content as well. |
Support | ★★★★★ | Support will be contacted 24/7 via live chat and phone. The agents are terribly knowledgeable, helpful, and quick. Also, you can use huge cognitive content as well. |
Who do I recommend Flywheel to?
The Flywheel Review may well be a really good budget option for first-time users. It’s incredibly simple to use. The plans are powerful and well-equipped enough for virtually any affordable website. They are in no time. Therefore, you will have no problem hosting anything from blogs and portfolios to business websites or small online stores.
FAQs
What is Flywheel?
Flywheel is a managed WordPress hosting provider that is focusing its services on freelancers and agencies that provide styling services.
Where is the Flywheel housing located?
Flywheel is located in Omaha, Nebraska. However, WP Engine did not inherit it in 2019, which is based in the state capital, Texas. However, regulator hosting operates clearinghouses within the US, Canada, the UK, Belgium, and Australia.
Who Should Use Flywheel Hosting?
Flywheel hosting specializes in network designers and developers: these users and their agencies will be ready to take full advantage of the platform.
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