Flywheel is a managed WordPress hosting provider built on the Google Cloud Platform, which provides great performance and reliability.
Flywheel's dashboard is very easy to use, however this closed proprietary platform comes with plenty of limitations. For example, many WordPress plugins are blacklisted on Flywheel, PHP sessions are disabled, PHP modules are not allowed, some very basic PHP functions are disabled without the ability to enable them.
Sail is a great alternative to Flywheel at a fraction of the cost. It is completely open source and transparent, giving you the flexibility and freedom to host WordPress on your own terms. Visit Sail on GitHub to learn more.
|
Flywheel |
Sail CLI |
+ Premium |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Easy-to-use dashboard | |||
| Free SSL/HTTPS | |||
| Git push-to-deploy | |||
| Integrated page caching | |||
| Unlimited installs/domains | |||
| Unlimited visits/pageviews | |||
| Full root access to server | |||
| Custom configs for PHP, Nginx, MariaDB | |||
| Custom PHP modules support | |||
| Built-in performance profiling | |||
| Health & uptime monitoring | |||
| Image compression, WebP | |||
| Managed backups | |||
| Multisite support | Paid addon |
Flywheel pricing starts at $15/mo for 1 WordPress site, 5 GB of storage, 20 GB of bandwidth and up to 5,000 visits per month.
For $15/mo, with Sail on DigitalOcean you could run a server with a dual-core CPU, 2 GB of RAM, 60 GB of storage and 3 TB of pooled bandwidth. Unlimited number of visits and sites/domains.
Sail Premium pricing starts at $9/mo per server (unlimited sites/domains).
|
Flywheel |
Sail + DigitalOcean |
|
|---|---|---|
| 1 site, 5,000 visits, 5 GB storage, 20 GB bandwidth | $15 | $5 |
| 3 sites, 100,000 visits, 20 GB storage, 200 GB bandwidth | $115 | $5 |
| 5 sites, 400,000 visits, 50 GB storage, 500 GB bandwidth | $290 | $10 |
| Additional storage, per GB | $1.00 | $0.10 |
DigitalOcean allows bandwidth pooling, which means if you provisioned two servers with 1TB of bandwidth each, your total allowed monthly bandwidth is 2TB, regardless of which server is actually consuming it. Excess data transfer is billed at $0.01 per GB.
With Flywheel you will incurr additional charges of $1 per 1,000 extra monthly visitors.
Flywheel provides a 60 day money-back guarantee.
Sail Premium offers a 60-day money back guarantee. DigitalOcean provides a 60-day trial with up to $100 in credits. This is the equivalent of running a 4-core premium AMD/Intel CPUs with 8GB of RAM, 160 GB NVMe SSD and 5 TB of bandwidth for two months.
Flywheel provides chat and ticket support. Phone support is available to customers paying $250 or more per month.
Sail provides product support via our Slack community. Paid WordPress support options are available through vetted Sail partners starting from $49/mo.
Getting Started with Sail