Flywheel Reviews 65

This isn't hyperbole: Flywheel's business practices are the worst I have ever encountered.

If you are looking for a hosting company, I suggest KnownHost, which I just moved to, or Nexcess, which was my second choice. Both are less expensive and were upfront on how they charged.

I had Flywheel since 2016 and their technical support was great. I am very disappointed with the turn the company has taken.

I got emails from people at Flywheel telling me that I should upgrade from a $300/year plan to a $1,000/year plan. I asked why I should do that. They said I had too many visits and it can slow down my site. I told them my site wasn't slow so I'll stay with the plan I had. We had several emails back and forth on this. At one point they did say, "To keep your account in healthy standing with Flywheel, we need to look at right sizing the plan for the number of visits you are getting on a monthly basis." That didn't mean much to me, so I kept saying I was fine with the situation as it was and I would keep the plan I had.

Then I got a receipt--not a bill, but a receipt-- for about $200. That was an awful surprise. They charged me for overages (too many visits to my website) for the past six months. In all of those email conversations, they never mentioned that they charged for overages. If they had, I probably would have stayed with them and paid the overages.

A few emails later I finally got this explanation: "The current plan is $30/month and the next tier of single site plan is $100/month and allows for up to 100,000 visits. The biggest difference in the plans is the performance behind the scenes (essentially doubling the back end resources and adding a second site pod with a load balancer and failover system). So, if we aren’t having any issues with site performance, then the current plan + overage charges probably works out in your favor. It’s just riskier as the current set up is not really built to exceed that limit in most cases."

This was what I kept trying to find out! I asked why they didn't just tell me that in the first place. This is part of the response I got: "I appreciate the message. I know we had this same conversation a year ago as well. As mentioned on that call when I was more forward, sometimes Billing charges for overages and sometimes they don't."

I want to know what I am expected to pay. I don't want to be surprised.

All of this seemed so out of line for Flywheel that I said I would like to remain a customer and asked that they cancel the fee that I didn't know was coming. They declined and suggested I look at the terms of service, but didn't pinpoint where the paragraph that related to our discussion.

I had paid last September for a full year. I canceled July 3, but I didn't get any money back. Here's what Flywheel had to say:
"Thank you for submitting your cancellation request. Your subscription is scheduled to be cancelled on August 3, 2023. Please note your scheduled cancellation date may be up to 30-days per our Terms of Service, section 5bii. Please note that if you are on the last 60 days of an annual plan, we will no longer be able to offer any refund since the last 60 days of an annual plan is the Free period."

Very disappointed.
Been with Flywheel for more than 5 years. Technical support has been good until recently, after WP Engine bought over this company. My site had an error and for many crucial days their ‘happiness engineers’ either send me technical documents to figure my way out or merely ask me to find my own developer to troubleshoot the issue. This is despite me telling them I do not know any coding and similar issues had happened before and they must have known the resolution. The engineers just refused to help. Only after opening a few more tickets did someone new stepped up and assisted. Getting technical support is based on luck now.

I can't recommend Flywheel. In my experience with them, I found the support to be polite but a cumbersome process that was often drawn out via back and forth messaging and resulted in most enquiries taking a longer time to be resolved than with other hosts I've worked with.

When you go to cancel they also inform you that, as per their terms, they won't be cancelling your account when requested, but adding an extra 30 days. I believe them that they have this in their terms, but it feels like a sneaky and unnecessary business practice that appears to be designed to squeeze a little extra money out a customer that is leaving. I've not ever experienced another host that adds 30 extra days to your request. Read the other reviews for more people surprised by this tactic. In addition, if you are in the last 60 days of your plan (keeping in mind the extra 30 days you likely weren't aware of), they won't be refunding any of that either as the last 2 months of a yearly plan are considered the 'free months' of a 12 month plan, so they don't refund that. That's some high level excuse writing there. Select a host that is about service rather than finding ways to squeeze money out of you.

We move over in January 2023. The website has the poorest performance and tragic traffic conditions, with 50% rating from a 99% rating on Lighthouse and most pages not indexed. They brought on an enormous workload. I hate them!

I used to love Flywheel - despite the slightly higher price point they have always had awesome support and excellent uptime...

But since WP Engine took over, that's gone downhill.
- More downtime
- Slower support
- More salesy... I seem to have a new 'account manager' every month trying to push some upsell or add-on.

It still has a great dashboard and SendGrid email deliverability which is handy, but not enough to keep me as a customer.

I'll be moving all of my websites to a new host that has better performance and costs less.

While they claim support gets back to you in 3 min it is a bot that replies. It is very difficult to talk with a real person. We just signed up today at 10:15 am and are cancelling at 2:30pm. Go elsewhere support is not their stong suite.

I don't normally do the review thing but with Flywheel I'll make an exception.

Their customer service is second to none. In the few occasions I've needed to contact them (which means malware infections or my site not working for some reason), their response time, speedy resolution and cheery disposition have been exemplary.

And that's when you want support. You don't really think about hosting until something goes wrong.

Clearly a few folk appear to think the opposite but my own experience has been nothing but first class.

Kudos.

NOT production ready. The whole idea is to have 1-click deployments but should you need to, 9/10 when you upload your database with the push, it does not update the links so your live users get 'localhost' links. Flywheel's response: "it happens sometimes, you will have to use a plugin to replace them yourself". So much for 1-click deployments! I am in the process of moving away my 2 companies (20+ websites) away from this service. Its not worth the money when you get these issues. My account manager doesn't respond when I have an issue, only to 'keep in touch'. I bet if I was to upsale they would return my emails.

I took over my companies website and last person used Flywheel. They have no c-panel, the speed is slower then other hosting options, and to top it all off you get less for your money. Even trying to get refunded my money and cancel services was a hassle. You have to give a 30 day notice that you want a refund even though you cancel your services. I'm also having issues getting that refund, every time I write a ticket stating they aren't doing what I requested they just close the ticket and don't respond. They act like they are a recommended hosting for Wordpress.org but they aren't! Only Bluehost, Dreamhost & Siteground are and for good reason, flywheel sucks!

Be advised that Flywheel, per WP Engine's Terms of Service (WP Engine acquired Flywheel within the past few years), requires 30-days notice to cancel a monthly subscription. I've canceled many monthly subscriptions in my life. My consistent experience has been that you can cancel at any point in the billing cycle. No prorated refund, but no charges beyond what you've already paid either. That's a fair and reasonable way to operate. There are solid managed WordPress providers out there that do not require a 30-day notice should you decide to cancel. I never intend to do business with Flywheel again.

I run 4 medium to large websites with Flywheel. It has never gone down in 4 years to my experience. They keep daily backups, have phpmyadmin, give me useful security alerts and have support staff who actually know something about Wordpress. They are by far the best hosting company I know of.

Have a nearly identical experience to the previous review. We've been using Flywheel for almost 5 years now, and since the WP Engine acquisition, the company has changed dramatically.

Dealing with a frequent downtime for our website, constant issues, and limited support. Very disappointed and would never recommend Flywheel to other website owners again.

Being with flywheel for a number of years it was good and the support was amazing, helpful and they went the extra mile. Since WP Engine bought the company the support has become no existent for a 'MANAGED' wordpress hosting company.

I am in the process of moving my sites away due to the poor support and the fact that the websites I host have now slowed down to a crawl. If you ask for more resources they want to charge you more.

2 years ago I would of sang Flywheels praises but now I'd recommend you avoid. There are a ton of better companies out there.

Terrible customer support. Their payment gateway was not able to charge my card?paypal even though funds were available and cards were working with other website. I've been a customer for around 3 years and their customer support has declined significantly in that time. I will be moving my sites to another hosting provider ASAP....

A website host has exactly one job and Flywheel fails miserably at doing theirs. I'm a long-time blogger with over 10 years of experience creating blogs and blog content for other people's businesses and brands as well as my own and my recent experience with Flywheel hosting was the absolute worst experience I have ever had with a website host.

I used Flywheel in the past and found their dashboard to be fairly user friendly so I decided to go back to them for a personal project. First off, their "automatic connection" for DNS with GoDaddy didn't work, so I had to reach out to customer service for that.

Then, I was working on my site and all of a sudden it logged me out. I went to log in and the privacy mode password from Flywheel did not work. (This is a Flywheel setting, separate from the regular WP Admin dashboard.) So, I turned privacy mode/the password off in my Flywheel dashboard, but it still kept asking for the privacy password.

I created a support ticket. The support person was not helpful at all and claimed it was a cache issue since I could log in on my phone in incognito with cell data, but not my computer. First off, a "cache" issue will not keep you from logging into your own site. It may keep you from seeing updates, but not from logging in.

I had also already cleared my cache, but fine. I did so again, reset my home network, and even tried an entirely different computer. I waited several hours and kept trying.

I still could not log into my computer from a desktop or laptop EVEN ON A DIFFERENT WIFI. I then started getting a DIFFERENT error message going to Flywheel's "oops" page saying there was a website on their service that was not set up correctly.

So, I contacted support again. At this point it was after 1am. The "customer support person" blamed a cache issue, then Elementor, then the temporary domain, and so on even though I still could not log in through the cacheless link she sent me. She finally just disconnected the chat (essentially hung up on me) and did not care that I could not access my site for hours.

Even though I sent multiple screenshots, she said she "could not replicate the issue" and implied I was lying. Who in their right mind has time to play games with a website host at 1am when they are locked out of their site???

There was another ticket created and the "senior" support person continued to repeat the same robotic responses telling me to clear my cache. Flywheel clearly thinks their users are don't know how to do something as basic as clear a cache.

Perhaps it was because I was on the TINY plan or perhaps it was because my gravatar shows me as a black female or perhaps they don't care about clients at all regardless of race or gender, but the service I received was absolutely terrible and even after I wrote about my experience when I cancelled and requested a refund, my comments were NOT acknowledged and no one reached out to me about my concerns.

Flywheel is a HORRIBLE HOSTING COMPANY and I would never use or recommend them again. You will do better with GoDaddy which has 24 hours support by chat, email, or phone, or basically any other host that actually cares about you as the owner accessing your site.

I absolutely LOVE what flywheel is doing. Wordpress management has always been a nightmare, especially when you are hosting multiple Wordpress sites. Flywheel makes it so easy.

Wow, I've used many hosts, and my new jobs sites are hosted on flywheel and was excited to give it a go, but VERY disappointed!

Back forth with chat for an hour and got nowhere!
(update)
If you are willing to wait and keep trying you will get someone who will really help you. My problem is that this should not take so long and chat can be harder to convey and work with problems. I got my issues fixed finally.

Terrible customer support. Their payment gateway was not able to charge my card even though funds were available and when I reached out to customer support they "raised a ticket" but they did not bring my client's site back online. I've been a customer for around 18 months and their customer support has declined significantly in that time. I will be moving my sites to another hosting provider ASAP.... as soon as they action the ticket.

Absolutely not. Jfc, this company.

I am not a tech person. At all. But here's what I know.

I had a WP website.
Flywheel began hosting/managing it.
I canceled my Flywheel plan months later.
I no longer have a website. My domain now defaults to a Flywheel "Oops" page.

Huh?!

Chatting with their people resulted in me relaying this over and over and over to the chat agent. She was kind but offered little help.

How do you have a site one day - Flywheel manages it - you leave Flywheel - and it's gone?

RUN AWAY FROM THIS RIDICULOUS EXCUSE FOR A COMPANY.

I have had good experience with flywheel hosting. i use with divi and very fast (also with wp rocket). they don't use cpanel which is better. I hate cpanel. I love the autommatic backups and flywheel local.