Cloudways vs Flywheel Comparison in 2024
Securing the optimum web hosting service for a website has long been a mind-blogging task for most. After all, your web hosting service can either make or break your business, so, understandably, people take a long time to decide on the best one for their business. Prominent brands like Cloudways and Flywheel can make a choice even more difficult.
Cloud hosting has gained much momentum in recent years; this is not surprising given its scalability, flexibility, and reliability, which can help bring your business to the next level. However, some may find cloud hosting pricey and not easy to manage, especially for those not tech-savvy; this is where managed cloud hosting comes into play.
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CLOUDWAYS:
Cloudways is ideal for certain businesses – such as SaaS providers, start-ups, developers, or businesses that need more than just an informational website. The flexibility of scale in terms of both server power and data transfer is invaluable for elastic sites that demand agility.
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FLYWHEEL:
Flywheel makes it easy to build a website from the ground up through its free demo sites and one-click staging features, which could be highly valuable for beginners. Overall, they deliver the speed and other mechanics needed to keep WordPress sites running smoothly.
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FLYWHEEL AND CLOUDWAYS COMPARISON:
| CONTENT | CLOUDWAYS | FLYWHEEL |
| Company Background | Founded by Aaqib Gadit and Pere Hospital in 2012, cloudways is as new as Flywheel. Cloudways has stamped its mark in the cloud hosting hall-of-fame by working toward making the Cloud easily accessible to everyone. | Flywheel is relatively new and established in 2012 with its base in Omaha, Nebraska, the US. The founders, Dusty Davidson, Tony Noecker, and Rick Knudtson, believe in supporting many in their endeavor to build their websites on WordPress. |
| Notable Hosting Features | Unlike Flywheel, which supports only Google Cloud, Cloudways rides on five cloud hosting providers – Digital Ocean, Linode, Vultr, Google Cloud, and amazon web services. Hence, you have more choices. If you do not need high performance and are on a budget, the first three will do you good. However, if your website has high demands, Amazon Web Service or Google Cloud could fit you. | Flywheel focuses on managed wordpress hosting and is on google cloud. It is not surprising that WordPress has priority since it empowers 43% of the websites in the world. Flywheel’s servers and services are catered specifically for WordPress. |
| Speed | Speed is one of the criteria when measuring the quality of a web hosting provider. Cloudways still takes the lead. | Speed is one of the criteria when measuring the quality of a web hosting provider. Although Flywheels does have its share of speed-enhancing features |
Ease of Use | Cloudways dashboard is well-segregated and organized. Using it is easy, especially if you are used to such GUI interfaces. You can quickly locate all functions (server management, backup, package management, and others). Although the dashboard is powerful and packed with many features, you’d be surprised at how easy it is to maneuver through everything; a plus point indeed. | Their dashboard also facilitates easy collaboration with other team members. Billing can be done seamlessly for your clients, and you can easily invite collaborators. There are advanced search and filtering options to help speed up your searches. You can also tag your sites within the dashboard; this helps manage multiple sites at one go. |
| Customer Support | Like Flywheel, Cloudways support is 24/7/365 and supports live chat and a ticketing system. Their resource center is complete and well-organized. Cloudways offers three support add-ons – Standard, Advanced, and Premium with the Standard plan being free. The add-ons differ in the expertise level you get from the support team, and the SLA promised. | Flywheel support is 24/7/365 and comes in live chat, a ticketing system, and phone support that is operational only during office hours (available only for the top two paid plans). They have an in-depth and comprehensive resource center. |
| Plans and Pricing | Cloudways plans start from as low as $12/month with Digital Ocean. With Linode, the price remains the same, but if you opt for AWS or Google Cloud, the price increases to more than $30/month. So, if your website demands are not high, you can opt for the cheaper plans. | Flywheel’s pricing starts from $15/month. You can pay annually at $13/month with two free months. The plans differ in the number of supported sites, storage, bandwidth, and visits a month. I find that most of the core features are in all the plans; this is great, especially for the lowest tier. |