Flywheel

Flywheel is a premium managed WordPress hosting platform designed specifically for designers, agencies, and creative professionals. Launched in 2012 and acquired by WP Engine in 2019, Flywheel has built a reputation for combining powerful hosting infrastructure with an intuitive, design-focused user experience that makes WordPress site management effortless.

With a philosophy that hosting should be simple yet sophisticated, Flywheel serves over 60,000 customers including top design agencies, freelancers, and creative studios. The platform eliminates the technical complexity of WordPress hosting while providing enterprise-grade performance, security, and support that scales from single-site portfolios to large agency operations managing hundreds of client websites.

Design-Centric Dashboard and Interface

Flywheel's dashboard represents a radical departure from traditional hosting control panels. Instead of overwhelming users with technical settings and server configurations, the interface focuses on the tasks that designers and agencies actually need to perform. The clean, visual layout lets you manage sites, view analytics, handle billing, and collaborate with clients without navigating complex menus or deciphering server terminology.

Every site displays with a thumbnail screenshot that updates automatically, making it easy to identify projects at a glance. The dashboard provides one-click access to essential functions like accessing WordPress admin, viewing your site, creating staging environments, and managing backups. This design-first approach means you spend less time managing hosting and more time on creative work.

Local Development Integration

Flywheel developed Local, a free local WordPress development application that revolutionizes how developers work. Local creates isolated WordPress environments on your computer with zero server configuration, allowing you to develop sites offline with full WordPress functionality. The integration between Local and Flywheel hosting is seamless—push sites from your local machine to production hosting with a single click.

Key features of the Local integration include:

• One-click local to production deployment without FTP or manual migration
• Automatic SSL setup for local sites using trusted certificates
• Email testing with MailHog for catching outgoing emails
• Live Links for sharing local sites with clients for review
• Blueprint templates for standardizing development environments
• Add-on ecosystem extending Local with custom functionality

This workflow transformation eliminates the friction between development and deployment, enabling rapid iteration and confident launches. Developers can work on multiple projects simultaneously, each in its own isolated environment, without conflicts or dependencies.

Performance and Speed Optimization

Flywheel's infrastructure is architected specifically for WordPress performance. Every site runs on Google Cloud Platform with enterprise NVMe SSD storage, PHP 8+ support, and multiple layers of caching that deliver consistently fast page loads. The platform implements server-level caching that captures and serves pages without touching WordPress or the database for most requests.

Performance features work automatically without plugins or configuration. Sites benefit from image optimization that compresses images without quality loss, HTTP/2 support for faster resource loading, and PHP worker management that prevents resource exhaustion during traffic spikes. The smart CDN caches static assets globally, ensuring fast loads regardless of visitor location. These optimizations combine to deliver page load times that typically fall under one second for well-optimized sites.

Staging and Development Workflows

Every Flywheel site includes unlimited staging environments accessible with a single click. Staging sites are pixel-perfect copies of production with their own URLs, allowing safe testing of updates, design changes, or new features without risking your live site. The staging environment includes all files, databases, and configurations, providing a true production mirror.

When you're ready to deploy changes, Flywheel provides smart deployment options. You can push all changes to production, selectively sync the database or files, or review what's changed before deploying. The platform handles database serialization automatically, updating URLs and file paths so everything works correctly after deployment. This professional workflow eliminates the anxiety of making changes to live sites.

Security and Malware Protection

Security is built into every layer of Flywheel's infrastructure. All sites receive free SSL certificates that install and renew automatically, ensuring encrypted connections without manual certificate management. The platform includes active malware scanning that monitors sites continuously for known vulnerabilities, suspicious files, and unauthorized changes.

If malware is detected, Flywheel's security team remediates the infection at no charge, cleaning your site and identifying how the breach occurred. Additional security features include:

• DDoS protection filtering malicious traffic before it reaches your site
• Brute force attack prevention blocking repeated login attempts
• Firewall rules protecting against common vulnerabilities
• Two-factor authentication securing dashboard access
• SFTP-only access requiring encrypted file transfers
• IP whitelisting restricting access to specific addresses

Automated Backups and Restoration

Flywheel creates nightly backups of every site automatically, storing complete snapshots of files and databases for 30 days. These backups happen without site downtime or performance impact, running during off-peak hours to minimize any resource usage. The backup system captures everything needed to restore your site to any point within the retention period.

Restoration is remarkably simple—select any backup from the past 30 days and restore with one click. You can restore the entire site or selectively restore just the database or files. The restoration process creates an automatic backup before proceeding, ensuring you can revert if needed. This safety net provides confidence to experiment and make changes knowing you can always roll back.

Agency and White Label Features

Flywheel is designed for agencies managing sites for multiple clients. The platform's agency tools streamline client management, billing, and collaboration without exposing technical complexity to clients. You can create sites under your brand, customize the dashboard appearance, and control exactly what clients can access.

White label capabilities let you present hosting as your own service. Remove Flywheel branding from client-facing elements, use your logo in the dashboard, and send billing invoices under your agency name. The collaboration features allow inviting clients to view their site's dashboard, see analytics, and manage content without accessing server settings or billing information. This professional presentation strengthens client relationships while maintaining clear boundaries.

Collaboration and Team Management

Team collaboration features facilitate working with developers, designers, and clients without compromising security or organization. You can invite team members with granular permission levels—some users get full access to all sites while others only access specific projects. Collaborators can be added to individual sites without exposing your entire portfolio or billing information.

The commenting system allows attaching notes to sites, creating a communication trail for project updates, issues, or requests. These comments are visible to all team members with site access, creating a centralized place for project communication rather than scattered across email threads. The activity log tracks all changes, showing who modified sites, deployed to production, or changed settings.

Billing and Client Management

Flywheel's billing system is built for agencies that manage multiple client sites. You can bill clients directly through the platform, with Flywheel handling payment collection and remitting your portion automatically. This pass-through billing eliminates the need to front hosting costs or chase client payments—Flywheel manages the transaction while you focus on client work.

Plans can be customized for different client needs, from small brochure sites to large e-commerce operations. The platform provides transparent resource usage metrics showing bandwidth, storage, and PHP worker consumption, helping you right-size plans for each client. Bulk billing capabilities allow managing subscriptions for dozens or hundreds of sites efficiently.

WordPress Management and Updates

Flywheel handles WordPress core updates automatically, ensuring sites stay current with the latest security patches and features. The platform tests updates in a staging environment before applying them to production, verifying compatibility and catching potential issues. You can configure update preferences per site, choosing between automatic immediate updates or manual control.

Plugin and theme updates remain under your control, though Flywheel provides visual indicators showing when updates are available. The staging environment integration makes testing updates safe—push to staging, test thoroughly, then deploy to production when confident. This approach balances security with stability, keeping sites updated without unexpected breakage.

Blueprint and Template System

Blueprints allow creating standardized WordPress configurations that serve as starting points for new projects. Define your preferred theme, plugins, settings, and content structure once, then launch new sites from that blueprint in minutes. This standardization ensures consistency across projects while dramatically accelerating site launches.

Agencies often create multiple blueprints for different project types—e-commerce sites with WooCommerce configured, portfolio sites with specific themes, or client projects with your agency branding pre-installed. Each blueprint includes all the custom code, configurations, and content structure you've defined, eliminating repetitive setup work.

CDN and Global Delivery

Every Flywheel site includes a global content delivery network at no additional cost. The CDN caches static assets like images, CSS, and JavaScript files across multiple edge locations worldwide, serving content from servers geographically close to each visitor. This global distribution dramatically improves load times for international audiences.

The CDN configuration is automatic—once enabled, Flywheel handles cache invalidation, HTTPS support, and optimization without requiring manual intervention. Advanced users can configure cache rules, browser caching headers, and purge specific files when needed, but the system works perfectly with default settings for most sites.

Support and Expert Assistance

Flywheel's support team consists of WordPress experts who understand both the technical and creative aspects of site development. Support is available 24/7 via live chat, with typical response times under five minutes. The team can help with everything from basic WordPress questions to complex troubleshooting, server optimization, and migration assistance.

The knowledge base provides detailed articles, video tutorials, and step-by-step guides covering common tasks and advanced configurations. Community forums connect you with other Flywheel users sharing experiences and solutions. For complex issues, the support team can access your sites (with permission) to diagnose problems directly rather than relying on back-and-forth descriptions.

Migration Services and Onboarding

Flywheel provides complimentary migration services for all new accounts, handling the technical complexity of moving sites from other hosts. The migration team transfers files, databases, and configurations, ensuring everything works correctly on Flywheel's infrastructure. They handle DNS updates, SSL configuration, and any compatibility adjustments needed.

The migration process is hands-off—provide access to your current host and Flywheel handles the rest. The team coordinates timing to minimize downtime and validates that sites function properly before updating DNS. For agencies moving multiple sites, bulk migrations can be coordinated to transition entire portfolios efficiently.

E-commerce and WooCommerce Optimization

Flywheel's infrastructure is optimized for WooCommerce and WordPress e-commerce sites. The platform handles the unique performance challenges of online stores, including dynamic content that can't be heavily cached, secure payment processing requirements, and traffic spikes during sales events. PHP workers automatically scale during high traffic periods, preventing checkout failures or slow response times.

Security features are particularly important for e-commerce, with PCI compliance measures protecting customer data and transaction security. The backup system captures orders and customer information, ensuring no data loss if restoration becomes necessary. Performance optimizations keep product pages, checkout flows, and customer account areas responsive even under load.

Analytics and Monitoring

Built-in analytics provide insights into site performance, traffic patterns, and resource usage without requiring external tools or plugins. The dashboard displays key metrics including unique visitors, page views, bandwidth consumption, and storage usage. Performance monitoring tracks page load times and identifies bottlenecks affecting speed.

Real-time monitoring alerts you to issues like downtime, SSL certificate problems, or resource constraints before they impact visitors. The notification system can send alerts via email or integrate with services like Slack, ensuring your team responds quickly to problems. Detailed logs help troubleshoot issues by showing exactly what happened and when.

Developer-Friendly Features

While Flywheel emphasizes simplicity, it doesn't sacrifice advanced capabilities that developers need. SFTP and SSH access provide command-line control for deployment scripts, server administration, and automation. Git integration allows version-controlled deployments, with hooks for automating tasks when code changes.

The platform supports modern PHP versions including PHP 8.1 and 8.2, allowing use of the latest language features and performance improvements. Custom PHP configurations can be adjusted per site, including memory limits, execution times, and error handling. Database access via phpMyAdmin or external MySQL clients enables direct database operations when needed. WP-CLI is pre-installed, allowing powerful command-line WordPress management for experienced developers.

Pricing and Plan Structure

Flywheel's pricing is straightforward and scales with your needs. Plans are based on the number of sites and monthly visit volumes rather than arbitrary resource limits. The Tiny plan starts at $13/month for a single WordPress site with 5,000 monthly visits, making it accessible for small projects and personal sites.

Higher tiers unlock additional sites, increased visit capacity, and premium features like multisite support and smart plugin updates. The Bulk plan serves agencies managing 10+ sites with volume pricing that makes per-site costs very competitive. All plans include the core features like staging, backups, CDN, and SSL—only visit limits and site quantities differ. There are no hidden fees for bandwidth, overage charges scale gradually, and you can upgrade or downgrade plans as needs change.

Platform Reliability and Infrastructure

Flywheel guarantees 99.99% uptime, backed by Google Cloud Platform's enterprise infrastructure. Sites run on redundant systems with automatic failover, ensuring continuous availability even if individual servers experience issues. The platform monitors infrastructure health constantly, proactively addressing problems before they affect customers.

Data center locations span multiple global regions, allowing you to choose hosting locations closest to your primary audience. This geographic distribution improves latency while providing disaster recovery capabilities. Regular infrastructure updates and security patches happen transparently without customer action, keeping the platform current with the latest security standards and performance optimizations.