FlyWheel and SiteGround are two of the premium managed WordPress hosting providers that offer end-to-end features and fierce competition for one another. Choosing between these two pioneer web hosting providers can be intimidating.
WordPress officially recommends SiteGround, but it’s worth noting that FlyWheel is famous for its ultra-fast performance, speedy servers, and managed WordPress hosting.
Both hosts offer reliable and affordable managed WordPress hosting, and coming down to one is daunting.
To provide some clarity, we have made an honest comparison of FlyWheel vs SiteGround. We have taken many significant parameters into consideration, such as performance & speed, security, ease of use, pricing, customer service and support, and so on.
Read on to know which one is the best pick for you, Flywheel or SiteGround.
Here’s a quick index to help you navigate this article:
So let’s dive in.
FlyWheel Overview
FlyWheel is a dedicated WordPress hosting company, which means they only host WordPress websites on their servers.
This is a boon or bane situation for hundreds of users. Since their servers are highly dedicated to WordPress, they focus on offering one of the best WordPress hostings around.
FlyWheel offers a perfect blend of all the necessary parameters, such as security, performance, excellent customer support, and high uptime.
One of the essential aspects that distinguish them from other web hosting providers is their easy user-interface build, especially keeping beginners in mind.
If you have been in the world of WordPress for a while now, you would be surprised by how smooth FlyWheel has made things for their users.
SiteGround Overview
Unlike FlyWheel, SiteGround supports all types of websites, not just WordPress. SiteGround offers multiple web hosting plans, such as shared web hosting, dedicated web hosting, VPS, and WordPress hosting.
Their servers are highly speed optimized, making sure that your website runs extremely fast and gives the best performance. To get an insider’s view into SiteGround, check out our in-depth SiteGround Review.
SiteGround is one of the good options in terms of budget. They offer affordable web hosting plans with an excellent hosting experience. Their award-winning customer support is what they take pride in.
When it comes to user-interface, SiteGround does not leave any chance to offer a friendly dashboard and cPanel to the users. In short, SiteGround provides great web hosting on a budget.
FlyWheel vs SiteGround: Key Features & Benefits
Features enhance the performance of your website. Useful features help in shaping your website and point it in the right direction.
The features benefit users in a variety of ways. A feature that is profitable for our website may not be the same for you. However, we all love some additional freebies, don’t we?
Let us focus on the features that both of these web hosting providers offer.
FlyWheel
- FlyWheel lets you create a clone of your website and create changes and edit it before you make it live with a staging environment.
- FlyWheel offers multiple resources that help you in creating a professional-looking website. They also provide training to keep you updated with the latest trends.
- Since FlyWheel provides dedicated WordPress hosting, it is entirely WordPress optimized and lets you host your website hassle-free.
- It offers an intuitive dashboard. You can collaborate with workers right from your dashboard without any trouble to keep going the extra mile.
- When you are deploying the site, it lets you set up WordPress Blueprints to save you time and effort.
SiteGround
- SiteGround offers white-label clients and adds collaboration tools on the GoGeek plan.
- Like FlyWheel, SiteGround also lets you create a staging environment for your website.
- SiteGround does not limit you and becomes an obstacle to your success. Even with their cheapest plan, you get unmetered bandwidth, unlike FlyWheel, which has restricted bandwidth
- SiteGround offers unlimited website hosting on the top-tier plans at affordable pricing. Additionally, you can migrate for free, and if you do not want to indulge in the hassle of migration, their experts do it for you for free.
- You can create unlimited email accounts from your domain name with SiteGround hosting.
Winner: Deciding a winner in terms of features is not rocket science. SiteGround wins the battle by offering unlimited email account creation and access to host an unlimited number of websites.
FlyWheel vs SiteGround: Performance and Speed Comparison
When choosing a web hosting provider, you should never compromise with speed and performance. If you already own a website, you know very well the impact poor speed has on your website.
As a beginner, one of the most important things that you need to focus on is getting a web host that offers reliable and safe speed for your website.
Choosing the wrong host with slow servers can dramatically decrease your traffic and SEO rankings.
FlyWheel Speed & Performance
FlyWheel doesn’t hold back when it comes to speed. The wheel offers a crazy pace and a standard uptime of 100%. Through various tests, users have found that uptime offered by FlyWheel remains constant at 99.9%-100%.
FlyWheel offers free CDN on the higher-level plans, which delivers a quicker and faster performance. The load time increases dramatically with CDN.
If you are hosting on the lower level plans, you can still benefit from CDN by adding a $10 add-on of CDN to your plan.
Another important aspect is that FlyWheel has five data centers in Australia, the USA, and Europe, and it lets you choose the data center of your choice.
This feature allows you to select the location of your targeted audience to deliver the best speed and performance.
SiteGround Speed & Performance
SiteGround, on the other hand, offers one of the best performances as well. SiteGround also gives you the freedom to choose the data center of your choice for your website.
They have six data centers across the globe, and you can easily host your website with either of them and ensure maximum speed and increase in performance.
All the plans include SSD stories that perform better than the traditional discs. SiteGround promises 99.99% uptime. However, through multiple resources, SiteGround has given 100% uptime throughout.
If the uptime falls below 99.9% any time on an annual basis, you are eligible for one month of free hosting. This also brings a sense of relief and reliability for users. All the plans come with one-click installation of CDN.
Winner: To decide a winner is a tough decision here. Both FlyWheel & SiteGround offer excellent speed and uptime. Both of the web hosts are a speed booster for your website.
No matter what host you go with, you would not face any performance issues. This battle is a tie.
Related Reading: How to Speed Up WordPress Site
FlyWheel vs SiteGround: Which One is More Secure
Before you go and pick your host, you must have a look at the security options that both of the web hosting providers offer.
Threats and cyberattacks are increasing each day. Irrespective of the size, the risk of getting attacked is equal for all website owners. Therefore, you must study the security features thoroughly before choosing a web host.
Coming to FlyWheel & SiteGround, both of them offer plenty of security features. Let us look at each of them in-depth.
FlyWheel
FlyWheel takes the protection of websites very seriously. FlyWheel restricts the number of login attempts along with providing an SFTP login, which helps you to manage your multiple sites along with 2-factor authentication.
No matter what plan you go with, FlyWheel offers free SSL certification to increase your security without additional charges.
FlyWheel takes off the weight of updating your website regularly. FlyWheel performs automatic WordPress updates on your website with all the plans. It also promotes daily backups on all the plans to keep your data secure.
There are additional security features, such as DDoS protection, spam filtering, constant monitoring, detection of threats before they take place, and more.
However, the backups are downloadable, and they get deleted after 30 days by FlyWheel.
SiteGround
SiteGround offers free SSL certification on all its plans. You can issue unlimited certificates with SiteGround. SiteGround uses its unique Anti-Al bot system that blocks millions of threats and protects your websites.
Malware scanning and email spam are filtered to keep your site secure. As much as FlyWheel cares about your security, SiteGround does not hold back with its extraordinary security measures.
SiteGround offers daily backup on their GrowBig and GoGeek plans. You can restore your data within 30 days at just the single click of a button.
They use the latest PHP 7 version with all the plans. One of the additional security features that SiteGround offers are domain privacy, but at an additional cost of $12/year, which FlyWheel fails to provide.
SiteGround uses an SG scanner that scans your website thoroughly and keeps vulnerabilities at bay.
Winner: Both web hosts offer excellent security features. However, SiteGround is more conscious about security and offers domain privacy, which keeps it above FlyWheel for us.
Related Reading: The Ultimate WordPress Security
FlyWheel vs SiteGround: Ease of Use
Is your web host reliable and useful if it comes with a lot of stress and headache that leaves your head spinning?
As much as we focus on the other parameters, such as speed, customer support, and security, it is crucial to go for the web host that offers an easy to use interface and a quick managing and set up process.
Not everyone is a tech-genius, and as a beginner, you might switch hosts if it comes with a lot of hassles. To address this issue, we have made a comparison of FlyWheel & SiteGround’s user interfaces and other managing features.
FlyWheel Ease of Use
Signing up and creating an account
Creating a FlyWheel account and getting started is extremely easy. You will have to go through a few pages of the form to get started.
Once you pay the pricing of your subscription, you are redirected to your workstation and can get started with building and managing your website.
Website builder
Since FlyWheel only hosts WordPress sites, you can use any WordPress website builder to create your website.
Application integration and installation
A flywheel is a dedicated WordPress host. Therefore, WordPress is already installed as soon as you sign up, no matter what plan you choose.
FlyWheel does not support any other applications, such as Joomla or Drupal, as it does not offer any other hosting plans aside from WordPress hosting services.
User interface
FlyWheel offers a proprietary interface, unlike SiteGround, and it does not provide you direct access to cPanel. The proprietary interface is straightforward to use and intuitive. The design of the interface is clean and easy to understand.
As a beginner, you would be stunned to have a look at their interface. Additionally, you can quickly backup from the dashboard with the easy to find option visible.
SiteGround Ease Of Use
Now that you have seen FlyWheel’s features and ease of use, let us look at SiteGround’s interface and other aspects.
Signing up and creating an account
Like Flywheel, SiteGround’s sign up process is quick and easy. You can create your account quickly by selecting the plan you want to opt for. Once you have made the payment, you are all set to create your unique website with SiteGround.
Website builder
Since SiteGround offers other web hosting plans as well, it comes with a free Weebly site builder on all the plans.
Weebly page builder is recognized as one of the best website builders because it allows you to quickly set up your site without creating any hassle for you.
However, the features of Weebly are limited, as the version offered on all the plans is a free version. To get more features, you can upgrade to the pro version.
Application integration and installation
The shared web hosting plan by SiteGround offers one-click installation of WordPress and other essential applications, such as Joomla, Drupal, and more at just the click of a button.
You can also get access to the marketplace and trade themes, templates, and more.
User interface
SiteGound uses a standard cPanel, known as one of the best admin programs because it offers you a simple, clean, and easy to understand interface.
The design is traditional and does not include several options to confuse you. You also gain access to Softaculous and get to choose between 300 scripts.
Winner: Both FlyWheel & SiteGround offer a clean and easy to use interface. Therefore, it is a tie for both of them in this round.
FlyWheel vs SiteGround: The Pricing Battle
It is necessary to emphasize the pricing plans that both web hosting providers offer. Since the pricing plans influence most decisions, we must not neglect the features that the plans come with.
FlyWheel only offers WordPress hosting. Therefore, we will compare the managed web hosting pricing plans of FlyWheel & SiteGround.
FlyWheel
FlyWheel offers four plans. They are as follows.
- Tiny – $11.25/month: The plan is ideal for users who are just starting their site. You get 5GB space, 5,000 visits, and 20 GB bandwidth.
- Starter – $22.50/month: This plan is ideal for small business owners looking for more storage and bandwidth. The plan gives 10GB storage, 25,000 visits monthly, and 50Gb bandwidth. FlyWheel lets you host a single website with the Starter pack.
- Freelance – $86.25/month: the plan is ideal for large business owners who expect 100,000 traffic a month. You get 20GB storage and 200GB bandwidth. With the freelance plan, you can host up to 10 websites.
- Agency – $217.50/month: As the name suggests, the plan is ideal for large agencies. FlyWheel lets you host 30 websites with the Agency plan. The plan offers 400,000 visits monthly, 50 GB storage, 500GB bandwidth, and more.
Check out our Flywheel Coupon, to get an exclusive discount on Flywheel now.
SiteGround
SiteGround offers three various plans depending on the website and purpose. Let us have a look at what each plan has to offer.
- StartUp – $6.99/month: This is the basic plan to enter SiteGround’s managed WordPress hosting with. The plan lets you host one website, offers 10GB storage, 10,000 monthly visits, and other features such as Free migrator, free WP installation, and more. This plan is ideal for small website owners with less traffic.
- GrowBig – $9.99/month: This plan is the best deal amongst all the three plans. It lets you host unlimited websites, offers you 20GB web space, 25,000 visits monthly, free backups, and many other attractive features.
- GoGeek – $14.99/month: The GoGeek plan is perfect for large website owners that expect around 100,000 visits monthly. You get a 40 GB webspace, and you can host an unlimited number of websites. The plan uses higher-tier resources. You get all the features of the StartUp and GrowBig plans with this package as well.
Check out our SiteGround Coupon to get an exclusive discount on SiteGround now.
Both FlyWheel and SiteGround offer managed WordPress web hosting. However, the pricing of SiteGround is cheaper than that of FlyWheel.
The significant difference is that SiteGround offers unmetered traffic even with their most affordable plan, while FlyWheel offers restricted bandwidth.
Another key difference is that SiteGround lets you host unlimited websites with them on their GrowBig and GoGeek plans with the most expensive plan, while FlyWheel has restricted the number of sites.
Winner: SiteGround
FlyWheel vs SiteGround: Customer Support and Documentation
Even though web hosting service providers offer all the requirements, having excellent customer support is essential. Rather than making you wait in a long queue, it is better to have support that is quick to respond.
Moreover, your web host should not try to extract some additional coin from you to provide a response. Instead, it should be free of cost.
When choosing a web host, you must go for the one that offers superior customer support and enough documentation support that does not leave you confused.
Let us have a look at what support and documentation features FlyWheel and SiteGround offer.
FlyWheel
FlyWheel understands the need for support, and therefore, FlyWheel’s customer support is available 24/7 through multiple support channels, such as email and live chat.
The experts are extremely professional, and highly skilled WordPress experts are available on call from 9 am to 5 pm EST.
Waiting time rarely exceeds a minute or two. The support is quick and easy. FlyWheel has hundreds of articles in their knowledge base that offer documentation.
The articles contain multiple helpful resources and solutions to various problems. Moreover, these articles are pretty easy to navigate.
For someone who likes to handle things on their own, FlyWheel’s knowledgebase is enough to solve your issues.
SiteGround
SiteGround offers round-the-clock support for all users. No web host beats the ultra-fast responses by the SiteGround team and the professionalism that they offer.
Their experts are highly recognised for providing one of the best customer support experiences online.
The experts are highly friendly and always eager to help. You can contact the team even with minor issues 24/7 via phone, email, and chat.
The response time that SiteGround takes for the live chat is minimal. For email, the average response time is 10 minutes.
However, one of the attractive features of SiteGorund’s customer support is that whenever you are talking to an expert, you can see their profile to know who you are speaking to.
SiteGround maintains complete transparency with their users, which is what other web hosting providers often lack. If you are going with their high-tier plans, you receive additional priority support.
Winner: while both web hosts offer equal amounts of support and documentation features, SiteGround offers better and more transparent support to all users.
This battle calls SiteGround the best in terms of customer support and documentation.
FlyWheel vs SiteGround: The Final Verdict
Both FlyWheel and SiteGround offer distinctive features, both of them follow a different approach, and it is tough to say which one is categorically better than the other.
FlyWheel and SiteGround both offer some of the best-managed web hosting services out of hundreds of web hosting providers in the market.
However, SiteGround is the king in terms of customer support. Their various support channels have been a great aid to users across the globe.
Compared to FlyWheel, SiteGround offers cheaper web hosting plans. They have multiple scalable plans that FlyWheel lacks.
In our consideration, SiteGround is a cut above FlyWheel and comes out as the ultimate winner. FlyWheel can be an expensive choice for users with limited bandwidth and features.
If you are looking for the ultimate web hosting provider, SiteGround is the best choice for you.
In our final thoughts, both web hosts offer an excellent and reliable web hosting experience, and choosing one will be your final decision depending on your personal requirements.
We hope you found our FlyWheel vs SiteGround comparison helpful. Let us know in the comments section below which is your top pick between Flywheel and SiteGround.
Other Hosting Guides:
Leave a Reply