Kinsta Vs Flywheel 2022 Compared
It is always a tough job to choose between two good hosting companies, isn’t it? Kinsta Vs Flywheel is an excellent example of this. I received a lot of requests from my subscribers to help them break out of the Kinsta vs. Flywheel dilemma.
That’s the reason that I finally thought of coming up with this topic. If you were looking for it, this is the right post for you.
Before writing this review, I carefully looked into all the important aspects of Kinsta and Flywheel services to create a clear picture. By the end of this post, you will surely be able to choose between these two services with the greatest ease.
Kinsta Vs Flywheel Overview
Starting in 2013, Kinsta has emerged as a reliable managed WordPress hosting company. Over the years, Kinsta has largely proved itself in performance, stability, and security.
Further, the WordPress hosting provider has a dedicated customer support service and has the advantage of running on the Google Cloud Platform. The Kinsta dashboard is one of the best in the industry with great ease of use.
Flywheel was started back in 2012 and has an equally brilliant track record so far. The Company has been pretty consistent in delivering to various categories of users with its right solutions.
This includes solutions for high-traffic sites, agencies, freelancers, and in-house teams.
Kinsta Vs Flywheel Features
1. Performance
Uptime and speed are the two most important aspects to measure the performance of hosting service, and it can never be estimated without testing it in real-time. That’s the reason that I bought a hosting account from Kinsta and Flywheel.
I then hosted a demo site on each platform for over 6 months and reached some interesting conclusions. My Kinsta site reflected an uptime of 99.99%, and my Flywheel site recorded an uptime of 99.97%.
As far as the speed goes, my Kinsta site recorded a loading time of 281ms, and my Flywheel site recorded a rate of 735ms. There is clearly a huge difference in loading time with the Kinsta, the clear winner.
2. Site Migration
For a user that has a site or sites up and running with any other hosting service and that wants to transfer it to a new hosting platform, a Free professional Site Migration service can be a handy feature as that way, one does not have to deal with the technicalities and also, there is no possibility of any downtime.
However, while some hosting providers offer the service for free, others charge for it. Fortunately, both Kinsta and Flywheel offer it for free. Kinsta provides users with up to 5 Free Site Migrations, but the number differs from plan to plan.
While the starter plan comes with just 1 Free site migration, the Enterprise plans include 5 Free site migrations with professional assistance. Once you use up your Free site migration or migrations, you will have to pay an additional charge for every extra professional site migration service.
However, for the time being, Kinsta also unlimited free migrations from selected hosts. You can check for the latest list here.
Flywheel has a different approach towards Site Migration. Unlike other hosting companies, the hosting provider provides you with a free professional site migration service for as many websites as you have to transfer to the Flywheel platform.
This gives Flywheel a leading edge over Kinsta.
3. Support
Kinsta provides customers with proactive customer support through 24×7 expert assistance via Live Chat and Tickets. However, Kinsta does not have phone support.
The Flywheel support team is ranked among the best customer support teams in the industry and offers brilliant assistance through Email, Live Chat, and Phone.
4. Security
It is never wise to choose a hosting service until we are entirely sure it offers a highly secure hosting environment. Kinsta hosting offers rock-solid security backed by DDoS Protection, Hardware firewalls, SSL, and Proactive Monitoring. Besides, Kinsta also has the advantage of Google Security since it runs on the Google Cloud Platform.
As I looked into the security features of Flywheel, I found them to be pretty good as well. Flywheel security is characterized by FREE Malware Removal, Intelligent IP Blocking, Two Factor Authentication, Managed WordPress hosting Updates, Limited Login Attempts, and Nightly Backups.
5. Developer-friendly features
When it comes to features for developers, Kinsta offers a whole of developer-friendly features such as WP-CLI, SSH, Git, Change PHP versions, and Staging environment.
Flywheel offers staging sites, site templates, collaboration on all stages, and more for developers and teams. However, Kinsta has more developer-friendly features than Flywheel.
Kinsta Vs Flywheel Pricing
Kinsta offers as many as 10 different plans to choose from. The lowest tier starts at $30 and includes 1 WordPress install, 20,000 visits, 10GB Disk space, Free SSL & CDN. The highest tier plan for $1500 consists of 150 WordPress installs, 3,000,000 visits, 250GB Disk Space, Free SSL & CDN.
Apart from this, you can always contact the sales team and have a customized plan created for your project.
Flywheel provides customers 4 different plans to select from. The lowest tier plan, Tiny for $13/mo, includes 1 WordPress site support, 5000 monthly visits, 5GB Disk Space, and 20GB bandwidth.
The highest-tier plan, Agency for $242/mo, consists of 30 site support, 400,000 monthly visits, 50GB Disk Space, and 500GB bandwidth. Just like Kinsta, Flywheel offers you to have custom plans too.
Coming to discount, Kinsta doesn't offer any deal, including Black Friday. However, Flywheel Black Friday comes with a 40% OFF discount, even on their starter plans. So, you can get started for around $10 while it costs $30 with Kinsta.
Summary: Kinsta gives you the utmost freedom to choose any of their 24 data centers, while Flywheel got some restrictions here. However, you can get started with Flywheel for $15 per month, while at Kinsta, the plan starts from $30 per month; thus, Flywheel is affordable for beginners.
Conclusion
With this, we come to the end of the Kinsta vs. Flywheel review. However, I am sure you have a clear picture of how these services work, and it should no longer be any difficult for you to find exemplary service.
Even though I found both the services equally reliable, some places where one had the upper hand over the other.
As per my test and observation, Kinsta offers better performance than Flywheel. Kinsta is also suitable for those looking for more developer-friendly features, which gives Kinsta an advantage over Flywheel.
