Flywheel Review

Flywheel is a managed WordPress hosting solution designed for freelancers, agencies, high traffic sites, and enterprise teams. The solution also includes workflow tools to help you quickly and easily build and manage your WordPress sites.

As your operations grow, the platform allows you to scale your web resources to meet the demands and expectations of your clientele. In case you are migrating from other hosts to Flywheel, the professionals here will help you deal with the details free of cost.

Overview of Flywheel

Looking for an appropriate host for your website is an important business decision that requires time, technical insight, and a good budget. There are many hosting companies out there promising you cutting-edge technology and state-of-the-art features to help you move your site to a whole new level. Some do not fulfill their promises but Flywheel does. They are consistent and follow through to ensure your experience is worthwhile.

Irrespective of your work environment, having a powerful WordPress platform can save you from the hassles of hosting on one hand and help you to streamline your processes on the other.

Flywheel have differentiated their managed WordPress hosting as follows:

• Tiny – This is a single-site starter option with a capacity to handle up to 5,000 monthly visits. It goes for $14 per month.
• Personal – This is a single-site plan billed at $28 per month with disk storage of up to 10 GB.
• Professional – As your business peaks up and your server demands go up, the professional plan has you covered. You get 20 GB disk storage and 1 TB bandwidth at $69 per month.
• Freelance – This is a plan that gives you up to 10 WordPress installs and 4TB bandwidth at $92 per month.
• Agency – This is the real deal to get your business to the next level. For $229 per month, you get up to 30 WordPress install and a capacity to handle 600,000 monthly visits.

If you are looking for a customized hosting solution for your enterprise sites, Flywheel have enterprise solutions experts in-house to discuss your needs in detail. Enterprise plans start at $1,500 per month.

Who is Flywheel Built For?

There are 4 categories of users Flywheel targets with their hosting solution.

Freelancers

The central pillar of freelancing is collaboration. Flywheel gives freelancers a robust WordPress platform that enables them to build WordPress sites, collaborate with their clients, and offload finished products without shifting platforms. Among the features freelancers enjoy on Flywheel are:

• A Free Demo Site – This is a zero-dollar investment one a demo server that gets you started on your projects as your site is being migrated or built from scratch.
• Create Website Templates Quickly – If you have favorite plugins and themes, Flywheel allow you to whip up a brand-new site faster without having to install everything one by one.
• Collaboration with Ease – Flywheel’s WordPress platform lets you add collaborators with separate logins to help you update your database, edit files, and manage your website.
• Transfer Billing to Clients – When you build a site for a client and it’s time to go live, you can transfer ownership to the client right away. The client will then get a billing email notification asking them to pay for the newly created site.

Agencies

If you are running an agency, you undoubtedly have a lot of moving parts. Flywheel offers a one-stop WordPress platform that makes it easy for you to manage your hosting, collaborate with your team, and bill your clients.

The features open to agencies on Flywheel’s managed WordPress platform allow you to scale your services, add new revenue streams, and collaborate with external stakeholders. You also get access to a staging environment that allows you to make site changes stress free before they go live.

High Traffic Sites

When your website is recording visitor stats in hundreds of thousands per month, you need superior performing web resources including reliable hosting solutions. Flywheel uses container technology to give your website space to ramp up instantly as traffic surges.

The uptime you get is enterprise-grade, powered by Google Cloud. This means every customer coming to your website doesn’t get stranded clicking through non-responsive pages.

You can also collaborate with your team and clients on a real-time basis. The WordPress platform has made site management simple.

Enterprise Teams

As the owner or manager of an enterprise, your priority is to push your production through to market. However, to succeed in this, you need hosting platform that enables your team to act fast and efficiently.

Flywheel has one of the most secure enterprise hosting solutions powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS). This assures you that your website is secure and served up reliably to handle every single request. You will also enjoy personalized support and a robust workflow tailored for every member of your team.

Pros of Flywheel Web Hosting

The fact that Flywheel have devoted their energies and expertise into offering only managed WordPress hosting means a lot to businesses. WordPress hosting is dynamic and when managed by a team of experts, it easily transforms into a gold standard for web hosting. Among the benefits Flywheel offer their customers are:

Hacker-Free Security

When looking for  hosting solution, security is a top priority. When your website is hacked, and your web resources tampered with, the cost to manage the disaster and bring it under control can be colossal. For this reason, Flywheel have concentrated their focus on security management through several processes and tools.

The following are some of the measures the company has put in place.

• Password Enforcement – Flywheel ensure you have strong passwords for all your logins.
• Limited Login Attempts – Multiple failed attempts to log in to your site or server immediately prompts a block. This prevents malicious logins.
• Intelligent IP Blocking – The Flywheel security system quickly detects intruders and blocks their IPs within seconds.
• WordPress Updates – The WordPress security team handles all core updates for you to ensure that you run the most secure and up to date version of WordPress.

Fast Speeds

Irrespective of your traffic numbers, the last thing you want is a slow loading website. Flywheel have a reputation for enhancing the performance of websites by clocking up their speeds. They do this through several mechanisms including content delivery network (CDN) and a robust caching technology.

They also help you in performance tuning to assess your setup and website code. In this way, your website can achieve top speeds in all dimensions.

Daily Backups

Even with the best security infrastructure in place, you can never tell a catastrophe that is days or hours away. In contemplation of this, Flywheel have in place a backup schedule that runs every night. All the backed-up resources are held securely for 30 days giving you ample time to restore if need be.

There is also an option to do manual backups when installing a plugin or updating a theme so that you can be on the safe side in case things go haywire. All backups are stored in Amazon S3 Cloud. This assures you of reliability and security.

Global Availability

Flywheel is determined to position you right at the center of your global audience. Part of their efforts in delivering this promise is in giving you up to 10 data centers to choose from when hosting your website. Four of the data centers are in the US; two in Asia (Singapore and Tokyo); one in Toronto, Canada, and three in Europe (Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and London).

Simplified SFTP Access

Instead of struggling to remember multiple login credentials, you can have only one Flywheel username and password that gets you SFTP access to all sites you collaborate and own. The SFTP server pools all your websites into one place where you can access them with a single set of credentials. You can also revoke or grant access to other people.

Custom-Built for WordPress

From server configuration to optimized caching technology, Flywheel hosting gives WordPress site owners an excellent 24/7 support infrastructure.

The Downside of Flywheel Hosting

Since Flywheel is managed hosting solution, it is impossible to access SSH to manage your files and folders as well as modify their permissions. However, with a team of experts and SFTP access, you hardly require SSH connection.

If you are a web developer, you may be slightly inconvenienced because Flywheel doesn’t offer built-in Git environment. You are therefore required to have an account with DeployHQ. On SSL certificates, Flywheel only allows you to install, but not to buy them.

Compared to other web hosts, Flywheel’s $14 per month for a single site is a bit steeper. However, if you consider the plenty of extra features you get in exchange, the price point may be justified.

Conclusion

Flywheel managed WordPress hosting has a beautiful and well-designed front-end and back-end interfaces. The dashboard is easy to navigate even for starters with little experience or new to hosting. This saves time and gets you to your destination quicker thus enhancing your productivity.

Their partnership with Sucuri ensures that you enjoy a secure hosting environment for your business. The support team is also impressive and proactive. Wherever you are in the world, you can access them 24/7. If you are a freelancer, agency, or enterprise looking for a reliable managed WordPress hosting solution, Flywheel is a good choice.