Flywheel Review

hacking and excuses it’s was great for many years but now it’s absolutely useless I’m switching

I've written over 10 messages to them and no response. A month ago, I started writing. They don't care about people

My experience with getflywheel.com has been nothing short of frustrating. The site itself is a glaring example of inefficiency, taking an exasperating 8 seconds to load. What's more disheartening is the dismissive response from the support team, who nonchalantly claim that the issues are beyond the scope of their service.It's particularly aggravating when you consider the fact that Flywheel markets itself as the fastest hosting provider. The irony is hard to ignore, and I can't help but dub them "slowwheel" with their accompanying lackluster support. It's disappointing to see a company fail to live up to the very promises they boldly advertise.

Ever since the switch last June 2023, the website went downhill. Errors never stopped. I cannot provide the receipt as proof because I am not the owner, but I am the SEO specialist of that site and I can share the URL in private. Before Flywheel the SEO performance was great. After the switch to Flywheel, errors never stopped that I had to audit every week!

Using "Get Help" window: Invalid answer from an agent and somehow the system is writing messages by itself as if I was the one writing it. For example "Thank you very much sir" and "Have a nice day", etc. Those messages is something that the system somehow writes by itself without my consent. As if I were the one who wrote that. Check this image as an example: ibb[dot]co/n1pWMjG (Replace the [dot] by a real dot symbol) (The image from this URL will be automatically removed after 1 month)

I have nothing but praise for Flywheel and the work their support team does. They're fast, knowledgeable, and very helpful.

This isn't hyperbole: Flywheel's business practices are the worst I have ever encountered. If you are looking for a hosting company, I suggest KnownHost, which I just moved to, or Nexcess, which was my second choice. Both are less expensive and were upfront on how they charged.I had Flywheel since 2016 and their technical support was great. I am very disappointed with the turn the company has taken.I got emails from people at Flywheel telling me that I should upgrade from a $300/year plan to a $1,000/year plan. I asked why I should do that. They said I had too many visits and it can slow down my site. I told them my site wasn't slow so I'll stay with the plan I had. We had several emails back and forth on this. At one point they did say, "To keep your account in healthy standing with Flywheel, we need to look at right sizing the plan for the number of visits you are getting on a monthly basis." That didn't mean much to me, so I kept saying I was fine with the situation as it was and I would keep the plan I had. Then I got a receipt--not a bill, but a receipt-- for about $200. That was an awful surprise. They charged me for overages (too many visits to my website) for the past six months. In all of those email conversations, they never mentioned that they charged for overages. If they had, I probably would have stayed with them and paid the overages. A few emails later I finally got this explanation: "The current plan is $30/month and the next tier of single site plan is $100/month and allows for up to 100,000 visits. The biggest difference in the plans is the performance behind the scenes (essentially doubling the back end resources and adding a second site pod with a load balancer and failover system). So, if we aren’t having any issues with site performance, then the current plan + overage charges probably works out in your favor. It’s just riskier as the current set up is not really built to exceed that limit in most cases."This was what I kept trying to find out! I asked why they didn't just tell me that in the first place. This is part of the response I got: "I appreciate the message. I know we had this same conversation a year ago as well. As mentioned on that call when I was more forward, sometimes Billing charges for overages and sometimes they don't."I want to know what I am expected to pay. I don't want to be surprised. All of this seemed so out of line for Flywheel that I said I would like to remain a customer and asked that they cancel the fee that I didn't know was coming. They declined and suggested I look at the terms of service, but didn't pinpoint where the paragraph that related to our discussion. I had paid last September for a full year. I canceled July 3, but I didn't get any money back. Here's what Flywheel had to say: "Thank you for submitting your cancellation request. Your subscription is scheduled to be cancelled on August 3, 2023. Please note your scheduled cancellation date may be up to 30-days per our Terms of Service, section 5bii. Please note that if you are on the last 60 days of an annual plan, we will no longer be able to offer any refund since the last 60 days of an annual plan is the Free period."

Very disappointed. Been with Flywheel for more than 5 years. Technical support has been good until recently, after WP Engine bought over this company. My site had an error and for many crucial days their ‘happiness engineers’ either send me technical documents to figure my way out or merely ask me to find my own developer to troubleshoot the issue. This is despite me telling them I do not know any coding and similar issues had happened before and they must have known the resolution. The engineers just refused to help. Only after opening a few more tickets did someone new stepped up and assisted. Getting technical support is based on luck now.

I can't recommend Flywheel. In my experience with them, I found the support to be polite but a cumbersome process that was often drawn out via back and forth messaging and resulted in most enquiries taking a longer time to be resolved than with other hosts I've worked with. When you go to cancel they also inform you that, as per their terms, they won't be cancelling your account when requested, but adding an extra 30 days. I believe them that they have this in their terms, but it feels like a sneaky and unnecessary business practice that appears to be designed to squeeze a little extra money out a customer that is leaving. I've not ever experienced another host that adds 30 extra days to your request. Read the other reviews for more people surprised by this tactic. In addition, if you are in the last 60 days of your plan (keeping in mind the extra 30 days you likely weren't aware of), they won't be refunding any of that either as the last 2 months of a yearly plan are considered the 'free months' of a 12 month plan, so they don't refund that. That's some high level excuse writing there. Select a host that is about service rather than finding ways to squeeze money out of you.

We move over in January 2023. The website has the poorest performance and tragic traffic conditions, with 50% rating from a 99% rating on Lighthouse and most pages not indexed. They brought on an enormous workload. I hate them!