Flywheel vs WP Engine (2026): Flywheel Hosting Review and Verdict

Flywheel is the better fit for many designers and small agencies, with lower matching-plan prices and tools for handing sites to clients. WP Engine offers more development environments and higher-end options. Both belong to the same company, so this is a choice between products rather than owners.

Is Flywheel still a separate host in 2026?

Yes, you can still buy Flywheel hosting on its own site, with its own plans, dashboard and support team. But it is now clearly a WP Engine product:

• Flywheel’s own help docs say WP Engine “announced its acquisition of Flywheel in June 2019”. Every Flywheel page now carries a WP Engine copyright footer.
• getflywheel.com itself returned an “x-powered-by: WP Engine” header when we checked it on October 4, 2026.
• Flywheel Growth Suite, its client billing and reporting tool for agencies, is now opened from the WP Engine User Portal, according to WP Engine’s support docs.
• Local, the free desktop app once called Local by Flywheel, is now branded “Local by WP Engine” (version 10.1.2, August 24, 2026). It still pushes and pulls sites to both hosts. We did not install it.

There are signs the two platforms are slowly merging. In 2026, some Flywheel customers in Australia said on Reddit that WP Engine had asked them to move to WP Engine hosting. We found no announcement about this on either company’s site, so treat it as a report, not a policy. Of the agency websites in Flywheel’s case studies that we checked, only Red Branch Media’s still returned Flywheel server headers; SeaMonster Studios’ returned WP Engine headers and two others returned Kinsta headers. Those are the agencies’ own sites, not necessarily where their clients live.

The legal fight between WP Engine and Automattic applies to both brands. WP Engine says a court granted it a preliminary injunction on December 10, 2024, and that a September 24, 2026 ruling lets most of its claims go ahead. The case is still open.

Plans and prices compared

WP Engine’s plan builder on annual billing. These are first-year prices with a 20% new-customer coupon applied automatically.

Flywheel sells three fixed plans plus a custom plan. Annual billing gives two months free. WP Engine sells one shared plan, Essential, in four sizes, plus Core (isolated resources, from $400 a month) and custom Enterprise plans.

The WP Engine annual prices on its plan builder include a coupon called WPE20YEARONE. The page’s fine print says first-year pricing is for new customers on Essential only and that “renewal pricing subject to change”. The plan builder’s own data lists the regular annual price as 12 monthly payments, which is what we use for year two.

For one site with 25,000 visits and 10 GB storage, Flywheel costs $30 monthly or $300 annually; WP Engine costs $35 monthly, $336 in the discounted first year and $420 annually thereafter.

WP Engine’s three-site option includes 75,000 visits and 15 GB for $65 monthly, $624 in year one or $780 at the regular annual rate. Flywheel has no equivalent: Starter with two extra sites costs $70 monthly or $700 annually but still allows only 25,000 visits.

At ten sites, 100,000 visits and 20 GB, Flywheel Freelance costs $115 monthly or $1,150 annually; WP Engine costs $130 monthly, $1,248 initially or $1,560 at renewal. At 30 sites, 400,000 visits and 50 GB, Flywheel Agency costs $290 monthly or $2,900 annually, versus WP Engine’s $330 monthly, $3,168 initially or $3,960 at renewal.

Both hosts charge $20 a month for each extra site. Flywheel also sells extra sites at $200 a year.

What the numbers mean:

• One site: Flywheel is $36 cheaper in year one and $120 a year cheaper after that.
• Three sites: WP Engine has the only real plan for this size, with three times the visits of Flywheel’s Starter.
• Ten or thirty sites: Flywheel costs roughly a quarter less per year than WP Engine’s regular rate, with the same visit and storage limits.

Neither host includes email accounts or domain registration. Flywheel’s pricing FAQ says it does not offer email and suggests a separate email provider.

Add-ons that change the bill

Flywheel’s Managed Plugin Updates costs $8 per site monthly, while Performance Insights costs $25 monthly plus $2 per additional site. WP Engine’s Smart Plugin Manager costs $120 per license annually, and application performance monitoring is unavailable on Essential.

WP Engine also lists Global Edge Security at $420 annually, NitroPack at $240 per license, Site Monitoring at $60 per license and its ecommerce Performance Pack at $1,188 per site. Comparable Flywheel add-ons were not listed, so do not assume the base plans include those services.

Prices from each vendor’s pricing page and plan builder, October 2026.

Visit, storage and bandwidth limits

The “Compare plans” table on Flywheel’s pricing page. Multisite is not included on Starter.

At the entry level the two hosts allow the same 25,000 visits and 10GB of storage. Both count a visit the same way: one unique IP address in a 24-hour period, with known bots filtered out.

Bandwidth is where they differ. Flywheel’s plans include 50GB, 200GB and 500GB of bandwidth. WP Engine’s comparison table lists 75GB for Essential and shows no bigger figure for the larger sizes, so as listed, a 30-site plan gets the same 75GB as a one-site plan.

The “Compare all features” table in WP Engine’s plan builder. Essential is listed at 75GB of bandwidth.

Overage charges

Neither host shuts a site off for a traffic spike. Both bill overages monthly, even on annual plans.

• Visits: WP Engine’s overage page says $2 per 1,000 extra visits. Flywheel’s help doc on overage pricing (updated June 30, 2025) also says $2 per 1,000. Flywheel’s pricing page FAQ still says $1 per 1,000, so plan on $2 and ask sales if it matters.
• Storage: Flywheel charges $1 per GB over your limit. WP Engine asks you to buy more storage or upgrade.
• Bandwidth: WP Engine says shared plans are not charged bandwidth overages; it will contact you instead. Flywheel says you “may get charged” if you are consistently over.

For comparison, Kinsta charges $0.50 per 1,000 extra visits on its plans, a quarter of the rate at either of these hosts. Our Kinsta review has the details.

Refunds, renewals and cancelling

The overage and refund answers in Flywheel’s pricing FAQ. Note the $1 visit overage here; Flywheel’s newer help doc says $2.

Refund terms have changed more than anything else since 2020, and they now favor Flywheel.

Flywheel offers a 60-day money-back guarantee on new Starter plans and on Freelance plans without custom onboarding. Agency and Custom plans are excluded, and it does not cover upgrades or renewals. Its annual price is simply 10 months of the monthly price, so there is no renewal jump.

WP Engine used to advertise a 60-day money-back guarantee. In October 2026 its plans page does not mention one. Its terms of service (updated January 1, 2026) say fees “are not refundable except as expressly stated herein”. The same terms say plans renew automatically unless you give notice at least 30 days before the term ends, and that ending a plan early makes the remaining fees due. On an annual plan, you are committed for the year, and year two costs 25% more than year one.

Features compared

Flywheel emphasizes client handoff: it offers password-protected 14-day demo sites, billing transfer while retaining collaborator access and one-click staging with optional database publishing. WP Engine offers sandbox and transferable sites plus separate production, staging and development environments.

Both provide daily backups and on-demand restore points. Flywheel keeps 30 days of nightly backups, uses FlyCache and Fastly full-page caching, and includes malware scanning, cleanup and plugin alerts. WP Engine uses EverCache and Cloudflare CDN, offers full or partial backup downloads and includes patching, plugin-risk scans and layer 3/4 DDoS protection; its managed firewall costs extra.

Flywheel includes ten StudioPress themes and Genesis Framework, with SFTP and SSH access; multisite starts on Freelance. WP Engine includes ten premium themes and Genesis Blocks, supports multisite and adds Git push alongside SFTP and SSH. Flywheel lists locations in North America, Australia, the UK and Belgium; WP Engine’s plans page did not list its locations.

Both hosts include free SSL certificates and automated WordPress and PHP updates. Both bundle StudioPress themes, since WP Engine also owns StudioPress. Our Genesis theme review covers whether those themes are still worth using.

The practical differences come down to workflow. WP Engine’s three environments per site suit teams who build in development, test in staging, then push live. Flywheel’s single staging site is simpler and enough for most small sites. If you only need a test copy now and then, a free plugin can also do the job; see our roundup of the best WordPress staging plugins.

Dashboards

Vendor image: the Flywheel dashboard as shown on Flywheel’s pricing page.

Both hosts use their own dashboards, not cPanel. Flywheel’s dashboard is built around a site list with tabs for overview, plugins, performance, stats, backups, staging and advanced settings, according to its dashboard tour help doc. Flywheel markets it as a simpler alternative to cPanel, and its site list, tags and collaborator avatars are clearly aimed at people juggling client sites.

WP Engine’s User Portal shows usage against your plan limits, the three environments for each site, backups and add-ons in one place. It has more options, which also makes it busier. We could not log in to either dashboard, so this section is based on the vendors’ own pages and help docs.

Speed: what we could measure from public pages

Without accounts we cannot benchmark either host’s servers. What we can do is measure public pages. On October 4, 2026, from one location in the US (Redmond, Washington), we timed each host’s own home page and home pages of customers named on the hosts’ case-study pages that still returned that host’s server headers.

The public sites varied too much to establish a host winner. Across ten requests, getflywheel.com showed a WP Engine header and a median 397 ms server response, with Lighthouse medians of 85 desktop and 40 mobile. Red Branch Media showed Flywheel, responded in 176 ms and scored 99 on both devices.

WP Engine’s own Headless Platform homepage responded in 366 ms and scored 81 desktop and 33 mobile. Two sites showing WP Engine headers also differed: Fat Beehive responded in 380 ms and scored 87/70, while Aspire Digital Solutions responded in 268 ms and scored 47/54. Lighthouse figures are medians of three runs on these different sites, not matched hosting benchmarks.

Read this for what it is: five home pages, on one day, from one place, using curl and Lighthouse 13.5. It is not a hosting benchmark, and it cannot tell you which host is faster. Median time to first byte stayed between about 180 and 400 ms on all five. The best scores came from Red Branch Media, the one site still on Flywheel’s servers, at 99 on both desktop and mobile. The WP Engine-hosted pages scored 33 to 70 on mobile. That gap comes from how each page is built, not from the host: wpengine.com and getflywheel.com are heavy marketing pages, while Red Branch’s home page is light. Flywheel’s and WP Engine’s speed claims are their own marketing.

Support

Flywheel offers 24/7 live chat on every plan. Flywheel says 90% of support chats are solved in a single session. Agency plans add a dedicated account manager and a migration dashboard, and Custom plans add quarterly business reviews.

WP Engine also offers 24/7 support through chat once you log in. Core plans can add priority support and a 30-day onboarding manager as paid options, and Enterprise lists a one-minute target response time.

Both hosts migrate sites. Flywheel moves sites for free in one to three days, or aims to finish within eight US business hours for $49 (with a refund if it misses). WP Engine gives Essential customers a free automated migration plugin; hands-on migration help is part of Core.

Uptime and the SLA fine print

WP Engine’s plan comparison. Essential runs on shared resources and does not include the 99.99% SLA.

WP Engine’s service level agreement (last updated May 12, 2021) promises 99.95% availability, not counting scheduled maintenance. If it misses, you get a credit of 5% of that month’s fee for each full hour of extra downtime, and you must ask within 30 days. The “Enhanced SLA” raises the target to 99.99%, and the plans page lists it only for Core and Enterprise.

Flywheel publishes no SLA that we could find. Its home page FAQ simply says “99.9% uptime” as a selling point, with no credits attached. The same FAQ still says plans start at $13 and that you get “dedicated resources”, which does not match the current pricing page, so treat that text as out of date.

We did not monitor either host’s uptime.