Flywheel vs Chemicloud: guide for 2024

Flywheel vs Chemicloud: Final verdict

Looking over Flywheel vs. ChemiCloud, it’s clear why both hosts are so popular. They have both hosted millions of
websites that run on WordPress for decades, building up a loyal customer base.

• 
  Flywheel (Overall grade: 8.4)
  
  is highly regarded for its tailored solutions for WordPress users, benefiting from robust performance features like managed caching, a Google Cloud Platform backend, and an impressive 99.9% uptime guarantee. It excels in providing custom plans and collaboration tools, making it particularly suitable for agencies and high-traffic websites. However, Flywheel does fall short in areas like offering no shared or VPS hosting options and lacking built-in email hosting, which might add to overall costs and management complexity for some users. Moreover, Flywheel’s pricing can be higher compared to competitors, though it justifies this with exceptional performance and security features such as auto-healing technology and extensive compliance certifications.
• 
  ChemiCloud (Overall grade: 8.5)
  
  shines through with its comprehensive hosting plans, including shared and VPS options, making it accessible to a wider variety of users. Its standout customer service, coupled with a notable 99.99% uptime guarantee and strong security measures like DDoS protection, makes it a reliable choice. Users also benefit from features like unlimited bandwidth, free domain registration, and email hosting included in the plans, providing an all-in-one solution. While ChemiCloud’s infrastructure ensures speed and reliability, it’s particularly advantageous for multimedia websites due to its enterprise-grade NVMe storage and advanced firewall protection. Furthermore, the competitive pricing and extensive free migration services mark it as a cost-effective and versatile option for both individuals and small businesses seeking hassle-free web hosting.

Hosting types offered

Both platforms provide a variety of hosting types, each designed to meet the different needs of users.

Although both offer a variety of hosting plans tailored to different needs, in
certain cases, one platform may prove to be more suitable.

Detailed comparison

🏆 Winner Flywheel:  Exceptional uptime and swift response times make Flywheel the leading hosting provider.

Flywheel offers a standout uptime guarantee of over 99.9%, achieving an impressive 100% during a monitored test. Their response time averages 371ms, significantly faster than the industry standard. Using Google Cloud servers and an automatic CDN configuration, Flywheel ensures consistent performance. With a 60-day money-back guarantee and 24/7/365 support, they provide reliability and customer satisfaction.

ChemiCloud promises 99.99% uptime and backs it with compensation for any downtime, offering up to a free month of hosting for outages under their threshold. They provide extensive server and service monitoring, along with strong DDoS protection to maintain network security. With server locations across multiple continents, daily offsite backups, and a free domain with long-term plans, ChemiCloud remains a solid, dependable choice.

🏆 Winner ChemiCloud: ChemiCloud outshines Flywheel in general performance, largely due to its LiteSpeed Web Server, which has the edge over Flywheel’s super fast servers.

Both offer free CDN services; however, ChemiCloud leverages Cloudflare, which is widely trusted and known for its efficiency. Flywheel’s CDN, powered by Fastly, is no slouch either but ChemiCloud’s use of multiple caching layers adds to its speed. ChemiCloud’s extensive server locations globally ensure better load times for a worldwide audience, whereas Flywheel’s server locations are not specified. Both offer impressive uptime guarantees, but ChemiCloud offers 99.99% compared to Flywheel’s 99.9%.

Flywheel’s managed caching and performance features, complemented by a dedicated cloud platform, make it fast, particularly for WordPress sites. In contrast, ChemiCloud’s cache via LiteSpeed Web Server and object caching with Redis and OPCache enhances PHP performance and minimizes load times more effectively. Flywheel’s auto-healing technology and visual regression AI support site stability, but ChemiCloud’s NVMe storage and advanced compression techniques promise even quicker load times and enhance user experience.

Website Speed

Flywheel’s managed caching and performance features, complemented by a dedicated cloud platform, make it fast, particularly for WordPress sites. In contrast, ChemiCloud’s cache via LiteSpeed Web Server and object caching with Redis and OPCache enhances PHP performance and minimizes load times more effectively. Flywheel’s auto-healing technology and visual regression AI support site stability, but ChemiCloud’s NVMe storage and advanced compression techniques promise even quicker load times and enhance user experience.

Scalability

Flywheel offers custom plans and compute-optimized dedicated servers, especially beneficial for high-traffic WooCommerce sites, with optimization that can increase speed by up to 40%. It’s unclear whether Flywheel provides automatic scaling, but overages are transparent at $1 per 1,000 extra visitors. ChemiCloud’s scalability options aren’t fully detailed, but the LiteSpeed infrastructure suggests automated scaling across varied loads. Both providers include options to upgrade plans, but details on specific costs and elastic scaling for ChemiCloud are not disclosed.

🏆 Winner
Flywheel: offers a broad range of security features and compliance measures, making it a robust hosting solution.

Both Flywheel and ChemiCloud, have notable differences in their approaches to technical and operational
security, as well as in their compliance with regulations.

Technical security measures:

Flywheel and ChemiCloud both offer free SSL certificates and support multiple PHP versions. Flywheel includes auto-healing technology, plugin security alerts, and malware removal services, focusing specifically on WordPress-specific issues. ChemiCloud, on the other hand, provides advanced firewall protection, Imunify360 proactive defense, and account isolation through CloudLinux OS and CageFS. ChemiCloud also supports numerous PHP versions ranging from 5.6 to 8.2, while Flywheel is PHP 8.1 ready.

Operational security measures:

Flywheel’s Fastly WAF, intelligent IP blocking, and regular nightly backups ensure a secure operational environment. Its role-based permission model and federated identity service add extra layers of access control and data security. ChemiCloud offers 24/7 network monitoring, DDoS protection, and real-time network protection, enhancing its operational integrity. Both providers include two-factor authentication and proactive server monitoring, but Flywheel has auto-healing technology unique to its platform.

Compliance and certifications:

Flywheel supports multiple compliance frameworks including HIPAA, GDPR, 21 CFR Part 11, GCP, and SOC 2 audit certification. ChemiCloud is GDPR compliant and offers a Data Processing Addendum (DPA) for GDPR compliance. Flywheel’s broader compliance makes it suitable for various regulated industries, whereas ChemiCloud focuses mainly on GDPR compliance.

🏆 Winner
ChemiCloud: Reliable and feature-rich hosting at competitive prices.

Flywheel and ChemiCloud both offer robust hosting solutions, but they cater to different types of users. Flywheel excels in providing managed WordPress hosting with a focus on performance, security, and easy site management. Features like FlyCache, a CDN powered by Fastly, and Genesis Framework support make it an appealing choice for WordPress developers looking for pre-optimized themes and worry-free site performance. The availability of 24/7/365 chat support and a dedicated account manager for higher tiers ensures that help is always accessible. Flywheel’s plans include automated backups, auto-healing technology, and plugin security alerts, which streamline site management and increase reliability.

ChemiCloud, on the other hand, offers flexible hosting plans, including Drupal and shared hosting, at very competitive prices starting as low as $2.95/month. ChemiCloud caters to a wider variety of users by offering unlimited websites and bandwidth, free domain registration, free SSL, and robust email hosting with 2 GB per email account. It also includes pro and turbo features like HTTP/3 support, Turbo Cache, and a free malware scanner, which provide enhanced speed and security. The availability of multiple PHP versions and free website migrations makes it a versatile choice for developers and businesses looking for an all-in-one hosting package.

Both providers support a range of users from beginners to experts with user-friendly website builders and WordPress staging areas. However, in terms of developer tools, both Flywheel and ChemiCloud offer robust options including SSH access, support for multiple programming languages, and Git for version control, thus appealing to developers looking for advanced capabilities.

Email services:

Flywheel does not provide email hosting services but recommends using third-party providers like Google Apps. This means that users must set up their email hosting separately, potentially increasing costs and effort. ChemiCloud, however, includes email hosting in its plans, offering features such as email accounts, webmail, email filters, and spam protection. ChemiCloud also supports MailChannel for reliable email delivery, making it a strong choice for users who need comprehensive email hosting without additional fees.

🏆 Winner ChemiCloud: With competitive pricing and comprehensive features, ChemiCloud stands out.

Evaluating the pricing of plans among various hosting providers can be complex due to their differing pricing and renewal strategies. Additionally, certain plans require annual commitments, which adds to the difficulty of making comparisons. The prices listed are based on monthly commitments; plans requiring annual commitments are indicated. Although some providers offer identical plans for WordPress and shared hosting, we have created separate tables for each to enhance clarity.

Flywheel offers various plans starting with the Tiny Plan priced at $13/month with limited resources and a 60-day money-back guarantee, while ChemiCloud’s Starter shared plan starts at $2.95/month, offering more storage and unlimited bandwidth. For users requiring mid-tier plans, Flywheel’s Starter Plan costs $25/month, whereas ChemiCloud’s Pro plan at $3.95/month boasts unlimited websites. Flywheel’s freelance and agency plans provide better multi-site handling capabilities, but ChemiCloud’s VPS Cloud plans such as Cloud 3 at $89.95/month deliver higher CPU and RAM specifications alongside unlimited websites.

Enterprise plans

Flywheel’s Agency Plan at $242/month supports up to 30 sites and comes with 50GB storage and 500GB bandwidth. For larger enterprises, the Custom Plan offers scalable resources tailored to specific needs. ChemiCloud’s Cloud plans, like Cloud 3 at $89.95/month, feature high storage capacities with generous bandwidth limits and enhanced CPU and RAM, catering to enterprises with substantial resource requirements. Both providers offer high-level support and migration services, though ChemiCloud’s value-for-price ratios are competitive.

🏆 Winner Flywheel: stands out with its user-friendly setup and excellent customer support.

Flywheel offers a custom admin panel designed to cater specifically to WordPress users. The interface is intuitive, providing easy access to features like site cloning, staging environments, and blueprints for site configurations. This makes it highly accessible for both technical and non-technical users. The 14-day demo sites allow potential users to explore the platform without immediate commitment, making it easier for newcomers to get accustomed. Flywheel’s admin panel includes a migration dashboard, which provides a seamless way to monitor and prioritize site migrations.

ChemiCloud, on the other hand, provides a standard cPanel along with a custom client area that integrates features like disk usage stats, email account creation, and a one-click app installer. The cPanel is a well-known interface that offers a high level of functionality, suitable for users of all technical backgrounds. The user-friendly client area enhances accessibility, enabling users to manage their accounts efficiently. Additionally, the quick start tour helps users understand the various functionalities of the platform, ensuring a smoother onboarding process.

Both Flywheel and ChemiCloud offer free migration services, but the approach differs. Flywheel provides free migrations with a user-friendly migration dashboard to track progress, making it streamlined and simple. ChemiCloud also offers free migration services managed by their support team, ensuring zero downtime. While both services are effective, Flywheel’s dedicated dashboard gives it a slight edge in terms of user control and monitoring capabilities.

Flywheel’s help center is comprehensive, offering 24/7/365 chat support, extensive documentation, and performance insights. Users can also benefit from dedicated account managers for personalized support. ChemiCloud, similarly, provides 24/7 support with real-time chat and detailed knowledge base articles covering a wide range of topics. Both platforms offer valuable resources, but Flywheel’s range of additional features like managed plugin updates and performance insights add more value.

🏆 Winner ChemiCloud: Offers user-friendly cPanel user management and multiple roles.

Flywheel and ChemiCloud both provide robust user management features, but their approaches differ significantly. Flywheel allows very comprehensive control for collaborators, who can manage nearly everything about a site except for billing, site deletion, resetting, and renaming. Collaborators even have the ability to add or remove other collaborators, providing a high degree of flexibility. ChemiCloud, on the other hand, uses cPanel’s User Manager and Team Manager, allowing for the creation of subaccounts with defined services such as Email and FTP. ChemiCloud also offers specific roles such as Administrator, Database, Email, and Web roles, making it easier to set clear boundaries and permissions.

Flywheel’s user interface centers around its dashboard, where almost everything can be controlled or modified. The interface is clean, intuitive, and easy to use, with the added benefit of SFTP and database management directly from the dashboard. ChemiCloud leverages cPanel’s User Manager and Team Manager to offer a straightforward and highly functional interface. Adding, editing, and managing users is quite direct, with clear fields for input and dedicated sections for each management task. The interface is well-organized, making it easy to navigate and perform user-related tasks efficiently.

When it comes to access control measures, Flywheel provides a solid set of features for managing user access but with specific limitations, such as no billing changes or site deletions by collaborators. This keeps critical management tasks restricted to the site owner. ChemiCloud’s approach through cPanel allows for very granular control over user permissions, partly due to the different roles that can be assigned. This makes it particularly effective for managing a larger number of users or more complex site structures, as permissions can be tailored to specific needs and responsibilities.

Flywheel user roles table:

ChemiCloud user roles table:

🏆 Winner Flywheel: Provides comprehensive 24/7 live chat and extensive resources for WordPress users.

Flywheel and ChemiCloud both offer strong customer support features, but Flywheel takes the edge with its richer options. Flywheel provides 24/7 chat support, phone support during business hours, email/ticket support, and even a dedicated account manager for enterprise level support. Their support is especially noted for being readily available, even beyond regular business hours, and for handling complex WordPress issues competently.

ChemiCloud offers live chat and email/ticket support with impressive response times, making it a good choice for customers seeking quick resolutions. However, it lacks phone support and enterprise-specific options such as a dedicated account manager. Despite these limitations, ChemiCloud maintains high customer satisfaction, supported by its proactive server monitoring and fast response times.

Flywheel vs Chemicloud: User feedback

Flywheel is highly regarded for its user-friendly interface, efficient website management tools, and overall performance, particularly for WordPress sites. Users appreciate the inclusive features such as SSL, backups, and support for local site developments. However, there are concerns regarding the recent changes in pricing plans and occasional slow customer service responses. Additionally, while the platform excels in handling multiple client websites, it might not be the best fit for smaller-scale operations or sites requiring extensive custom server configurations.

ChemiCloud is highly praised for its exceptional customer service, largely attributed to its knowledgeable and responsive support team that is available 24/7. Users appreciate the reliable server performance, user-friendly control panel, and valuable features such as automatic backups and easy setup. Although there are some mentions of limited customization options and storage, the overall sentiment is overwhelmingly positive, highlighting ChemiCloud as a standout hosting provider that delivers on its promises. It is recommended for both small businesses and individuals seeking a dependable and efficient hosting solution.

Flywheel vs Chemicloud: FAQ