Compare · managed wordpress
Leaving Flywheel
Flywheel was the designer-friendly managed-WP host before WP Engine acquired it. It's still designer-friendly, but it's still recurring monthly cost on content that often doesn't change.
10-year cost projection
What Flywheel actually is
Designer-focused managed WordPress, now part of the WP Engine family.
Pricing: Plans start at $13/mo (Tiny, one site). Most agency-built sites land at $25–35/mo.
Flywheel's strength is the workflow — easy staging, easy collaboration, designer-grade UX in the hosting console. After the project ships, none of that matters anymore. The site sits there, the bill keeps coming.
If you're a designer or agency that built a site for a client and the client no longer iterates on it, this is the moment we exist for. Static migration delivers the same site at a flat one-time cost; the client never pays a hosting bill again.
What they do well
- Designer-friendly UX
- Easy collaboration during active project work
- WordPress core handled cleanly
Why people leave
- The project is done; the bill isn't
- Hosting cost outpaces the site's relevance to the business
- Agency relationship ended; client wants stability without the agency markup
What you keep when leaving
- Every URL
- Every page
- Visual design — exactly
- SEO history
What you lose leaving
- wp-admin (intentionally — see WordPress for details)
- Flywheel's collaboration tooling
Our take
Flywheel is a great tool for the construction phase of a WordPress site. We're a great tool for the post-construction phase. Different jobs.
Questions
Our agency built the site on Flywheel. Can we leave without their involvement?
Yes. We work directly with the site owner. We need DNS access (which the owner controls) and the ability to crawl the live site — that's it.
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