Flywheel vs SiteGround – Which Is Best for WordPress? 2024

Flywheel only offers managed WordPress hosting, while SiteGround has a broader package of hosting services. Although you may assume that a host focused entirely on managed WordPress is the best choice, that’s not necessarily the case, and I’ll tell you why in this review.

I’m a SiteGround user myself – and I’ve done tons of legwork when it comes to researching managed WordPress hosting, so I’ve been in the position you’re in now. These two hosts have very different approaches to security, staging, and collaboration that you need to know about before you make your choice.

I can tell you right now that you won’t necessarily need all of the extra add-ons that SiteGround has to offer, but sometimes, knowing that your host has everything covered can give you the confidence you need to sign up long-term.

Click here to see SiteGround’s best plans1, or read on to take a closer look at the differences between these two hosts.

Plans & Pricing

SiteGround’s Affordable Pricing Beats Flywheel’s Price Tag

SiteGround and Flywheel both have a few set pricing plans, with both also offering custom pricing for clients who need a bespoke solution.

At Flywheel, you’ll see packages aimed at entry-level businesses, freelancers, and agencies. At SiteGround, plans are labeled similarly: a starter plan, a ‘GrowBig’ plan more suited to multi-site deployment, and a ‘GoGeek’ plan that unlocks all features.

Pricing, though, is not aligned between the two; SiteGround’s hosting packages are considerably more affordable, which will make them attractive to WordPress enthusiasts on a budget.

Paying more for managed WordPress hosting at Flywheel gets you increased resources and a higher visitor limit at each plan level. You’ll also notice that Flywheel limits bandwidth, but SiteGround doesn’t. While that doesn’t mean that SiteGround will allow you to run a bandwidth-hogging download site, you’ll be limited by its acceptable use policy rather than a fixed cap on transfer. Bandwidth can be pretty difficult to estimate, particularly if you’re just starting out with WordPress, so the lack of a hard cap gives you a little bit of breathing space.

Flywheel’s offering is quite different once you start to look at features, but looking solely at pricing and plans, there’s a huge saving to be found with SiteGround.

And the winner is: SiteGround. While you don’t get as much disk space with some plans, you gain flexibility thanks to its less stringent bandwidth policy compared to Flywheel.

To learn more about what you’ll get, read our full SiteGround review.

Features

Flywheel Has a Custom Control Panel – SiteGround is Ditching cPanel

Managed WordPress hosting is designed to make WordPress as hassle-free as possible, and the features behind the scenes are key. Flywheel and SiteGround are quite different in the way they package their WordPress hosting.

Flywheel has developed its own control panel, and proudly states that it doesn’t rely on cPanel. Its control panel has some custom features, such as collaborative tools that are unique to its platform.

SiteGround does have collaborative tools as well, and it allows you to ship a site and recommend a SiteGround hosting package at the same time. It’s not quite the same as Flywheel’s feature for passing sites to clients because you don’t retain management of the account.

SiteGround does use cPanel as its base, but it is currently moving customers to a new control panel called SiteTools. Both approaches are valid, but bear in mind that you may miss cPanel if you’re used to it. SiteGround isn’t giving any customers the option to retain cPanel once SiteTools is fully rolled out.

There’s another important difference: the way Flywheel and SiteGround provide staging environments. A staging environment allows you to create a copy of your site before you make changes, so you can easily roll out the new version without impacting your live site.

SiteGround’s staging is more limited; for example, you need to have a certain amount of disk space free to use staging, and the number of operations per day is capped. Flywheel’s staging environment is more flexible, without caps or checks. If you have a lot of people pushing changes out to client sites in a working week, you’ll probably find Flywheel’s approach creates less friction.

Flywheel also allows you to develop wireframes, which it calls Blueprints, and you can clone sites when you need to make large changes. On the flip side, your developers might prefer to have access to cPanel and do things the way they’re used to.

Email hosting is another important consideration. Flywheel does not host email at all. So if you need business email tied to your domain, you’re going to have to use a separate provider. SiteGround allows you to create unlimited email accounts at your domain.

Finally, let’s look at backups. Flywheel takes automatic daily snapshots, and you can add your own when you need to. SiteGround takes daily snapshots too, with a rolling limit of 30 per site. Backups on demand are available at SiteGround, but if you’re on the cheapest managed WordPress plan, there’s an extra fee.

And the winner is: Flywheel. Flywheel just edges it over SiteGround by having fewer limits and better ways to divide tasks among a team. But just keep in mind that it won’t host your email, and that might be enough to swing you back to SiteGround.