Why choose InfraWP instead of Flywheel?
Both Flywheel and InfraWP are 100% focused on WordPress hosting services, but each of us has fundamentally different business models and pricing. We are occasionally asked by potential customers what sets us apart. We will try to explain the main differences fairly and accurately.
If you are trying to understand the differences between InfraWP and Flywheel to decide who is the best choice for your business, you have come to the right place.
Business
Flywheel is a managed WordPress hosting provider that charges a premium for their hosting services. They have plans available starting at € 15 per month for 1 regular low traffic site. The rest of their prices are the same as WP Engines, it is not surprising that Flywheel is now a “division” of WP Engine. They are part of one of the largest providers in the industry and have been popular with both SMB and WordPress professionals. They primarily serve the lower-middle-range market of managed WordPress hosting space.
InfraWP gives you the chance to build your managed WordPress hosting service. Instead of renting strictly limited resources directly from a host, you can provision and manage your own enterprise-grade WordPress servers via our SaaS platform.
InfraWP is 100% customer funded and we primarily serve WordPress agencies and developers. We are not liable to any shareholder whose interests are ROI with respect to building our vision for the ultimate arsenal of WordPress hosting tools. This means we are free to invest in areas we know are important rather than clashing with investor priorities and generating quick ROI.
Service
Flywheel rents a small slice of one of its Google Cloud Compute servers, on which it rents and installs its LEMP stack.
All plans have strict restrictions on bandwidth, visits, and PHP workers. Their platform comes with a beautiful user interface with many options for managing your websites.
InfraWP allows you to provide servers from providers such as DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS, UpCloud and basically any quality VPS provider you want through our custom VPS option (including Google Cloud Compute, Hetzner and OVH). Choose and control your infrastructure using our software and control panel to manage your websites and servers.
Evaluation model
Flywheel, like most managed hosts, bases its pricing on arbitrary metrics, this can lead to overcharges if you exceed these set limits.
By limiting “visits” and server customization options such as PHP workers, many people are forced to upgrade to higher tier plans. This is one of the main reasons why many agencies are switching from Flywheel to InfraWP.
Model of price of InfraWP is simple.
We have 3 fixed plans designed to help you at different levels of your hosting company’s journey. As you add sites and servers to your account, the greater the benefits you will enjoy. There are no preset server or site limitations on any plan, and there are no arbitrary restrictions or limits on page views or bandwidth. Your servers can handle what they can handle, and the pricing is transparent.
Price Comparison
Flywheel’s pricing starts at € 15 / month for 1 regular site on their “Tiny” plan and € 115 / month for 10 sites that can include multisite networks (albeit at an additional cost).
They also offer a couple of things with their plans that we at InfraWP don’t include. These are the option to use Genesis Framework and any Studiopress child themes on your website, a CDN, and malware cleanup.
All of these are great features but with the money you will save using InfraWP you can easily afford to license Genesis. BunnyCDN is excellent and offers incredible value for money if you need a CDN.
Cloudflare is obviously free, but not as powerful.
InfraWP includes many features that Flywheel does not include, such as OpenLiteSpeed (beta), server customization options, hourly backups, offsite backup options, DNS integrations, multiple WAFs, and a WP Ultimo integration at no additional cost. Our Pro plan is € 50, the developer is € 200 and we have various options dedicated to agencies.
Plus, with the backup options at your disposal, malware recovery should be quick and painless as it simply takes your sites back in time.
The easiest and fastest way to recover from a hacker attack is to restore from a clean backup, and that’s probably what Flywheel will do for you.
- Save € 54 to € 204 per month on a 30-site plan
- Save a lot more as your business grows
The price comparison above compares the InfraWP + € 12 and € 24 VPS plans that
includes additional full server backups at your chosen IaaS provider.
Stack and performance
Flywheel runs on a well-optimized Nginx stack built specifically for WordPress. They run on excellent Google Cloud Computes infrastructure and include a CDN. They also have a tightly regulated service which can quickly require you to scale up your plan if you are hosting WooCommerce, learning management systems, or multisites, etc. Getting the performance you need for these types of sites can cost you $$$$.
InfraWP is the platform that offers the most stack options. Our developer accounts give you the ability to customize your server stack with Nginx or OpenLiteSpeed (beta) and MariaDB or Percona for MySQL 8.
Our default settings are ideal for most WordPress websites, but you can also customize them to meet your specific needs if needed. Do you need to modify your PHP workers for a WooCommerce or LMS website? No problem. There are no such options on Flywheel and you will likely have no choice but to increase your resources by purchasing a higher plan.
When it comes to performance, let’s just say we’ll happily pit all of our server stack options against ANY managed hosting company any day of the week, but both we and Flywheel have received “Top Tier” honors in the[più alto] business category for review sign.
Support
We both have 24/7 support, and because we are both dedicated to WordPress, we can offer a much higher level of WordPress specific support than businesses serving different markets.
The main difference is that as a business we have no incentive to ask you to increase the size of your servers as this is not how we make money. Being completely independent from the infrastructure provider it means that we can advise you on how to optimize your server with respect to the update. We allow you to customize your servers to meet your website requirements and the average VPS of € 10- € 20 can easily handle a ton of traffic.
Flywheels support is limited by platform restrictions, so if you need more PHP workers, more “visits” or anything that doesn’t fit the mold, your only option is to upgrade your plan.
InfraWP does not suffer from these restrictions.
Summary
These are the main differences between our services:
- Infra WP can help WordPress agencies and professionals create their own hosting service and save hundreds to several thousand euros per month as they grow their business.
- Infra WP is best suited to WordPress agencies / professionals. WP Engine is best suited for individual website owners or developers who are not interested in offering WordPress hosting for a recurring monthly income.
- InfraWP gives you the power to build your own capable business servers, Flywheel hires out a small slice of a server that comes with strict limitations for visitors, bandwidth and disk space.
- Infra WP is 100% customer funded, WP Engine receives significant external funding.
- Flywheel includes malware cleanup, the Genesis Framework, and a CDN. InfraWP includes server customization options OpenLiteSpeed (beta), Nginx, Percona, MariaDB, and PHP.
- Infra WP includes multiple Web Application Firewall (WAF) options at no additional cost.
- Infra WP includes hourly local backups and gives you the ability to create remote backups to Amazon S3, Dropbox, Backblaze B2, and Wasabi (currently in beta).
- InfraWP includes hourly local backups and gives you the ability to create remote backups.
Below is a price comparison with the plan which includes 30 Flyweels sites. Note though that InfraWP has no preset site / server limits, so an extra € 20 VPS can easily handle 20 extra regular WordPress sites.
 |
 |
|
|---|---|---|
| Number of sites | 30-50 | 30 |
| SSD Storage | 130GB | 50GB |
| Monthly bandwidth | 6000GB | 500GB |
| Monthly visitors | No limitations – Millions per month | 400,000 per month (excess charges if exceeded) |
| Local Backups | Hourly | Daily |
| Server cache | FastCGI or Redis Page Caching and Redis Object Caching | Page and Object Caching |
| Multisite | Available for free in 1 click, with 1 click WP Ultimate integration | Available for additional monthly fee , price not publicly available |
| Support | Live chat 24/7 | Live chat 24/7 |
| Web Application Firewall | 6G WAF, 7G WAF, and ModSecurity WAF | Global Edge Security WAF available at one additional monthly fee , price not publicly available |
| Floor | InfraWP Developer Plan = € 200 / month 1vCPU 2GB VPS = € 12 / month 2vCPU 4GB VPS = € 24 / month (including full server backups). |
WP Engine Growth Plan |
TOTAL |
= € 236 / month |
= € 290 / month |
