When it comes to premium managed WordPress hosting, Kinsta and Flywheel are among the providers that come out on top. They have similar hosting features and price points, and both take care of your WordPress website’s backups, security, and updates for you. To help you choose between Kinsta and Flywheel, we compare their WordPress hosting features, performance, pricing and plans below.
Kinsta vs Flywheel Web Hosting Comparison Chart
| Name | Kinsta | Flywheel |
 |  | |
| Pricing | Check Pricing at Kinsta.com | Check Pricing at GetFlywheel.com |
| Traffic Tiers | Starter: 25,000/mo Pro: 50,000/mo Business: 100k to 600k/mo Enterprise: 1m to 3m/mo | Tiny: 5,000 Starter: 25,000 Freelance: 100,000 Agency: 400,000 |
| Storage Tiers | Starter: 10 GB Pro: 20 GB Business: 30-60 GB Enterprise: 100-250 GB | Tiny: 5GB Starter: 10GB Freelance: 20GB Agency: 50GB |
| Monthly Bandwidth | Starter: 50 GB Pro: 100 GB Business: 200-500 GB Enterprise: 500-1000 GB | Tiny: 20GB Starter: 50GB Freelance: 200GB Agency: 500GB |
| Websites | Starter: 1 Pro: 2 Business: 5-40 Enterprise: 60-150 | Tiny: 1 Starter: 1 Freelance: Up to 10 Agency: Up to 30 |
| Hosting Interface | MyKinsta | Custom Flywheel interface |
| Server Locations | 24 | 7 |
| Content Delivery Network | KeyCDN | Fastly |
| Free SSL Certificates | Yes | Yes |
| Staging Area | Yes | Yes |
| Free Site Backup | Yes | Yes |
| Free Site Restore | Yes | Yes |
| Backup Retention | 14-30 days | 30 days |
| Site Transfer | Yes | Yes |
| Multisite Support | Pro and up | Freelance and up |
| Reseller Hosting | No | Yes |
| Customer Support | 24/7 chat and ticket | 24/7 chat, phone, ticket |
| Money Back Guarantee | 30 days | Free trial for 14 days |
Hosting Features
Both Kinsta and Flywheel offer daily backups, CDN, and an intuitive dashboard
The hosting features available to Kinsta and Flywheel are similar in most of their managed WordPress hosting plans:
- custom dashboards
- free SSL
- WP migration
- CDN (content delivery network)
- daily backups
- staging site
- website analytics
- malware cleanup
- WordPress updates
- auto-healing technology
- 24/7 customer support
Neither Kinsta nor Flywheel use cPanel. Instead, you get an intuitive, custom user interface that makes it easy to navigate the backend of your WordPress website. Their dashboard will also show the disk usage for every site you own, so you know whether you’re getting close to the maximum bandwidth or storage for your plan. Both hosting providers also take care of the daily backups for you and their plans include CDN to help load your media files faster. Kinsta uses KeyCDN while Flywheel’s CDN is powered by Fastly.
Staging and malware removal is also supported on Kinsta and Flywheel plans. WordPress may be one of the most popular CMS (content management system), but its popularity makes it a target for hackers and malware. With Kinsta or Flywheel, you can rest easy knowing that you don’t need to deal with a hacked or compromised site on your own. If you need multi-site support, their higher-tier plans provide this feature as well.
Pricing and Plans
Flywheel has slightly more affordable managed WordPress hosting plans
Kinsta and Flywheel have similar pricing tiers, but Flywheel’s base plan is more affordable than Kinsta’s at a glance. With Flywheel’s Tiny plan, you only pay $15/month, but you also get lower bandwidth, storage, and traffic tier. The Tiny plan only includes up to 5,000 visits, 5GB of storage, and up to 20GB of bandwidth, which may be enough for newer sites with low traffic. With Kinsta’s entry-level plan, which costs $30/month, you get up to 10GB of storage, 25,000 monthly visits, and up to 50GB of bandwidth.
If you want to resell hosting, Flywheel’s Freelance Plan lets you install up to 10 WordPress websites for as low as $96/month. The Agency Plan, meanwhile, allows up to 30 website installs, up to 400,000 monthly visits, and up to 50GB disk space.
Meanwhile, Kinsta’s plans range from $30/month to as high as $1,500/month for their Enterprise plans. Kinsta’s Starter and Pro Plans are good options for small to growing websites. These plans let you install one and two WordPress websites, respectively, and a generous 10 to 20GB of disk space.
The Business Plans, which start at $100, let you install 5 to 40 WordPress websites and offer 100,00 to 600,000 monthly visits. Larger websites with around a million visits or more will benefit from the Enterprise Plans, which range from $600 to $1,500 and allow 1 to 3 million monthly visits and up to 250GB of disk space.
If you plan to resell hosting, then Flywheel is the better choice for you as Kinsta doesn’t offer this service yet. What they do offer is an affiliate link that you can send to your client.
Reliability & Performance
Both Kinsta and Flywheel deliver fast loading speeds
When it comes to loading speeds and uptime, Kinsta and Flywheel’s performance is comparable, although Kinsta has an overall better peak response time than Flywheel. Kinsta also has 27 data centers, much more than Flywheel’s 7 server locations.
Both have excellent 24/7 customer service as well, something important when you’re paying premium for managed WordPress hosting. Kinsta and Flywheel both offer live chat and ticket support, but if phone support is a major deciding factor for you, go for Flywheel as Kinsta doesn’t offer this.
Reddit Reviews
Kinsta is more highly-recommended on Reddit
Among managed WordPress hosting providers, Kinsta remains the most highly-recommended among Reddit users. Whenever a Redditor asks for recommendations on reliable hosting platforms, Kinsta always comes up for its performance and customer support. As Reddit user LWDavid reviews, “I speak with multiple clients daily who use Kinsta and have nothing but good things to say about them overall. They are a solid, stable, reliable service.”
Verdict
Kinsta is great for websites with larger traffic volume while Flywheel is a good option for for smaller websites or web developers who want to resell hosting
If your website’s traffic is below 5,000, it makes sense to start with Flywheel’s Tiny Plan as it costs a lot less than Kinsta’s. With that said, if you expect to drive higher traffic to your site, considering the pricing between Kinsta and Flywheel becomes moot as they cost almost the same. If you want to resell hosting to your clients, it’s another reason to opt for Flywheel.
Kinsta, meanwhile, is the better option for larger websites, especially if you’re getting hundreds of thousands of visits each month. In addition, with Kinsta’s 24 data centers, you can choose a server that’s closer to your target audience. If you have the budget, Kinsta is definitely worth the investment.
FAQs
Kinsta is overall better, but Flywheel is a good managed WordPress hosting option for smaller websites and hosting resellers.
No, Flywheel doesn’t offer email hosting. You’ll need third-party email providers like G Suit or Office 365 for your professional email address.
Kinsta has 10 pricing tiers that range from $30 to $1,500 a month.
Flywheel has four pricing tiers that range from $13 to $290 a month.
