Flywheel hosting: overview
An overview of Flywheel managed WordPress hosting — what it offers, who it's for, and why we recommend it for many of our clients.
- Difficulty
- Beginner
Flywheel is a managed WordPress hosting platform built with agencies and creative businesses in mind. It's one of our most-recommended platforms for small to mid-size WordPress sites, and it's known for its clean, easy-to-use interface.
Quick summary
Flywheel is a managed WordPress host. It takes nightly backups, keeps WordPress itself updated, handles caching, and includes free SSL certificates and staging sites. It's fast, reliable, and has excellent support. It's now owned by WP Engine, but runs as its own separate platform.
What Flywheel includes
Every current Flywheel plan includes:
- Free SSL certificate — Flywheel calls it Simple SSL, and renews it for you automatically.
- Nightly backups — Flywheel stores each one for 30 days, and you can restore one from the site's Backups tab.
- Staging environment — a private copy of your site for testing changes.
- Built-in caching — pages served fast from Flywheel's caching layer (FlyCache).
- CDN (Content Delivery Network) — files served from locations near your visitors, powered by Fastly.
- Plugin security alerts — free email alerts when Flywheel's nightly scan finds a plugin on your site with a known vulnerability. If a site does get infected, Flywheel's support team can scan it and help with the cleanup, once plugins, themes and administrator passwords have been updated.
- 24/7 expert support — chat support from a team that knows WordPress.
- Free site migrations — Flywheel's team will move existing sites for free.
Who Flywheel is for
Flywheel is a great fit for:
- Small to medium business websites
- Portfolio and marketing sites
- WordPress blogs and content sites
- Service businesses, consultants, and creatives
- Clients who want an easy, clean hosting dashboard
If you need enterprise-level capacity or advanced multi-environment workflows, WP Engine or Kinsta may be a better fit.
How Flywheel is organized
When you log in to Flywheel, your account contains Sites — one for each WordPress installation. Each site has its own:
- Dashboard, including a Stats tab for visits, storage and bandwidth
- Staging environment (once it's switched on)
- Backup history
- SSL settings
- Collaborator access controls
Flywheel also offers Local (formerly called Local by Flywheel) — a free desktop app for local WordPress development. You likely won't need this yourself, but our developers use it.
Flywheel and WP Engine
WP Engine acquired Flywheel in 2019. The two remain separate products, with their own dashboards, pricing, and features. If you're on Flywheel, you use the Flywheel dashboard — not the WP Engine User Portal.
Plans and pricing
Flywheel offers several plans based on the number of sites, monthly visits, storage, and bandwidth. Pricing changes over time — check Flywheel's pricing page for current plans.
We'll recommend the appropriate plan for your site based on your expected traffic and content volume.
Common questions
How do I log in to Flywheel?
See logging in to Flywheel for a full walkthrough.
Can I manage my own Flywheel account?
Yes. We can set you up as a collaborator on your site, or you can own the account directly. We'll work with whatever arrangement suits you.
Does Flywheel work with all WordPress plugins?
Most do. Flywheel discourages some backup, caching and security plugins because they duplicate or get in the way of its built-in features, and plugins that edit .htaccess files won't work there. We manage this for you.
What email does Chykalophia use for access?
When we need access to your Flywheel account, we use support@chykalophia.com unless your project lead gives you a different address.
Related guides
- Logging in to Flywheel
- The Flywheel dashboard explained
- Staging sites on Flywheel
- Backups on Flywheel
- Flywheel billing & plans
- Give us access to your Flywheel hosting
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