Flywheel vs. WP Engine

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Flywheel
Score 9.9 out of 10
N/A
Flywheel is a managed Wordpress hosting specialist headquartered in Omaha, boasting creative and design agency tools, plugins, and white label services for designers who choose Flywheel as their hosting provider.
$15
per month
WP Engine
Score 9.7 out of 10
N/A
WP Engine is a website hosting service built to host WordPress for companies of any size, with features such as daily backups, firewall,SSL, and proprietary caching technology.
$29
per month
Pricing
FlywheelWP Engine
Editions & Modules
Tiny
$15.00
per month
Starter
$30.00
per month
Freelance
$115.00
per month
Agency
$290.00
per month
Custom
Contact sales team
Startup
$25.00
*Per Month
Growth
$95.00
*Per Month
Scale
$241.00
*Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
FlywheelWP Engine
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details*Pricing for annual contract.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
FlywheelWP Engine
Considered Both Products
Flywheel
Chose Flywheel
Compared to WP Engine and Pantheon, Flywheel offers the most affordable and easy-to-use managed hosting platform for WordPress websites. I actually prefer Flywheel's UI a bit more to WP Engine's. Media Temple simply doesn't offer an affordable hosting option that particularly …
WP Engine
Chose WP Engine
If DIY hosting is your thing, you are 100% better off on Linode or Google Cloud. Pantheon ultimately won our business and respect with 100% uptime.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
FlywheelWP Engine
Small Businesses
Cloudways
Cloudways
Score 9.5 out of 10
Flywheel
Flywheel
Score 9.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
WP Engine
WP Engine
Score 9.7 out of 10
Pantheon
Pantheon
Score 8.4 out of 10
Enterprises
Pantheon
Pantheon
Score 8.4 out of 10
Pantheon
Pantheon
Score 8.4 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
FlywheelWP Engine
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(3 ratings)
9.7
(29 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
3.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
7.7
(6 ratings)
User Testimonials
FlywheelWP Engine
Likelihood to Recommend
Flywheel
Flywheel is particularly well-suited for hands-on WordPress managed hosting. It's also perfect for developers who build site's locally on Local and then want an effortless way to import them into their managed hosting environment. Flywheel particularly excels in scenarios where a customer needs managed. WordPress hosting that handles daily backups and offers test and live environments for a reasonable price.
Read full review
WP Engine
I am an enterprise user of WordPress and host over 7000 sites with WPEngine. Areas that I think they are well suited for include customers that need enterprise-level support and uptime and have more complex needs than a simple blog. They also manage scale well with a variety of isolated install options that you can scale up or down depending on your contract needs. They also provide premier support for enterprises and have highly knowledgable Technical Account Managers that provide a significant value add. If I were to look at where it isn't as appropriate for usage I would focus on the low-end needs and say while they do support small sites, there are options out there for cheaper hosting that lack the support a WPEngine gives you.
Read full review
Pros
Flywheel
  • Customer Service
  • User Interface
  • User Experience
  • Creative Support
Read full review
WP Engine
  • I love the database backups and how quickly & easy it is to restore from an old backup point. This gives me & my clients confidence that any change can be rolled back.
  • The built in caching & CDN mean that I have to spend less time worrying about the speed of the server & site. The caching has some side-effects that take getting used to (on-page dynamic PHP code sometimes needs to be moved to API endpoints), but this is true for most caching systems.
  • They have really good support for multiple environments. It's very easy to have separate production & staging environments. It's also very simple to deploy from staging to production, making product launches and large scale website copy changes much easier to coordinate.
Read full review
Cons
Flywheel
  • Flywheel is more expensive than many hosting companies
Read full review
WP Engine
  • I'd like to see WP Engine offer their own monitoring solution. When I say monitoring, I mean specific use cases that may end up being something you could script. This would keep customers from having to pay for additional services like Pingdom, New Relic, etc.
  • I would like to see some proactive analysis done by WP Engine on their customer sites - at least on their home pages, and offer up suggestions. This kind of goes along with the other example.
  • Finally, it would be nice to see a "lighter" offering, perhaps a plan that costs $49 for those who want to host only a few sites, or even 1 site.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Flywheel
No answers on this topic
WP Engine
I was in a situation where I had to bolt Wordpress on to an existing infrastructure that could not support it. If I ever end up in that situation again, please kill me. Other than that reasonably common use case, I don't think it offers a lot of value over robust shared hosting, virtual private server (VPS) or dedicated servers.
Read full review
Usability
Flywheel
No answers on this topic
WP Engine
It took very little time to learn their dashboard for managing WordPress sites. Their built-in tools are really well done, and the addition of security and CDN tools is great.
Read full review
Support Rating
Flywheel
No answers on this topic
WP Engine
Support is generally great. Enterprise support is fantastic, with little to no wait times. I find that chat support can almost always take care of the problem without escalating to a ticket for a higher level of troubleshooting. The chat support for many other hosting providers can only handle basic issues. This is a big bonus for us to get quick and helpful answers.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Flywheel
Compared to WP Engine and Pantheon, Flywheel offers the most affordable and easy-to-use managed hosting platform for WordPress websites. I actually prefer Flywheel's UI a bit more to WP Engine's. Media Temple simply doesn't offer an affordable hosting option that particularly caters to WordPress websites. Flywheel has become my favorite among managed hosting platforms that are targeted on servicing WordPress developers.
Read full review
WP Engine
While we still use GoDaddy for some services, WP Engine definitely has been a major upgrade for our WordPress hosting. In addition to faster load speeds, WP Engine has been more adept at allowing us to manage a high number of websites without straining the system. We have never used Network Solutions for our own hosting needs, but when we do interact with them on behalf of our clients, their systems always seem to be clunky and hard to use, and they often overcharge customers by selling them products they do not need.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Flywheel
  • Fast/easy to create new sites with blueprints
  • Easy to work locally with Local
Read full review
WP Engine
  • WP Engine reduces our time investment and upkeep costs which increases our margins.
  • WP Engine simplifies site management with a built-in development server, which saves us headaches.
  • WP Engine itself is positioned as a premium service, which allows us to use their branding as a tool to close sales.
Read full review
ScreenShots