FlyWP is a cloud server control panel tailored specifically for WordPress, offering a unique approach to managing WordPress sites across multiple cloud providers. It stands out with its focus on developer-friendly features and optimized WordPress environments.
In this FlyWP review, I want to investigate whether FlyWP is a great platform!
TL;DR; (What?)
- FlyWP is a great newcomer in the realm of WordPress control panels, it has great usability, okay performance and support, and some good features, with new features being developed.
- FlyWP requires you to bring your servers (which you can buy from any provider such as Vultr) but is very inexpensive, especially if you manage a lot of sites.
- There are still some features I miss such as easy backup restore or more advanced caching integration and exceptions for dynamic sites.
Get FlyWP, with 2 months off if you pay yearly. FlyWP works excellent with a superfast server from Vultr, or a very affordable server from Hetzner, my favorite two server providers.
FlyWP for WordPress: Your FAQs
For whom is FlyWP?
FlyWP is aimed at tech enthusiasts and WordPress professionals who want an easy tool to manage their (or clients) WordPress sites on their servers and don’t want the restrictions on usage that usual providers have.
Can I try FlyWP before trying?
Yes, FlyWP has a free trial program, which includes one website on one server. Also, many server providers provide trial credits as well, such as Hetzner ($20 of credits). And yes, you need a server provider alongside FlyWP.
Is using a panel such as FlyWP secure?
Hosting WordPress on FlyWP is secure, as FlyWP implements a host of safety precautions although some other panels have better measures in place. That being said, you’re using it to manage your server so it’s always possible to make it insecure if you’re just messing around :).
What is not possible with FlyWP?
With FlyWP, you can’t set up e-mail addresses, or register domains. You can run backups, but you need to link a storage provider. You need to provide your servers since FlyWP is a control panel.
How I reviewed FlyWP
I started my blog because I was searching for the best hosting and found a lack of in-depth reviews—just countless sites pushing providers with the highest affiliate payouts. That’s why every provider, including FlyWP, is evaluated using the same set of criteria and tests.
- Features: what features are offered by FlyWP?
- Performance: is FlyWP fast?
- Usability: is it easy to install and manage WordPress on FlyWP?
- Support: is it easy to get good support?
- Pricing: is a good value offered for what you pay?
Curious how others do? Find the best WordPress hosting providers, or compare all hosting reviews.
FlyWP’s Features: Great
FlyWP offers countless features that help you to host multiple WordPress sites easily, on do this on servers where the only restriction is the size of the server.
Host WordPress on Any Cloud
FlyWP stands out with its compatibility across major cloud providers, including Amazon EC2, Google Cloud, Vultr, DigitalOcean, Hetzner, and custom servers. This flexibility allows you to choose your preferred hosting environment while benefiting from FlyWP’s management tools.
Use NGINX or OpenLiteSpeed Optimized for WordPress
FlyWP offers a choice between Nginx and OpenLiteSpeed stacks, both optimized for WordPress performance and security. This optimization results in improved loading times and potential SEO ranking boosts.
Besides the standard functionalities, there are a lot of other features included such as:
- An easy installer for WordPress
- A free SSL certificate
- A file manager
- Easy editor for WP-Config
- An interface to manage WordPress Themes and Plugins updates
Developer and Performance Features
FlyWP caters to developers with features such as:
- Staging sites
- Cron jobs
- Server usage monitoring
- Server services management
- Full SSH access
- WP-CLI support
- Viewing application logs
These tools streamline the development workflow and make site management more efficient for technical users. To enhance WordPress site performance, FlyWP also provides some great performance tools:
- Server-side page caching using OLS or NGINX
- Integration with popular caching plugins
- Redis caching support to cache common queries
One great thing is that you can adjust your PHP memory settings and PHP-FPM settings, and thus allow bigger sites to run very well, providing your server has enough resources. Many providers, even managed providers, have quite tight limits on memory usage, or require a fee for additional memory.
What I also really love is that you can integrate transactional email providers from the control panel, something that many other control panel providers lack. You need transactional email to be able to send emails from your site, such as form submissions, and usually, a third party is a good idea for that.
Some Good Security Features
Security is a priority for FlyWP, as they offer various security features.
- Cloudflare integration, for which a CloudFlare account is required
- Automatic firewall with customizable rules, which is standard on Linux
- Docker-based site isolation, each site runs in its isolated container
In addition, FlyWP provides some security optimizations by tweaking some WordPress settings, and this can be done straight from the control panel.
However, they could improve their security offering by providing a better firewall on the application level, and also integrating malware scanning.
Great Integration with WordPress
FlyWP, since it focuses on WordPress only, has great integration with WordPress. The major perks are having a dedicated interface for managing and updating themes and plugins within the control panel itself and having a FlyWP plugin with some neat features.
The FlyWP plugin allows you to clear caches (a performance measure), and test the email integration for emails sent from your website and a host of WordPress-specific optimizations.
FlyWP’s Performance: Okay
The performance of FlyWP is greatly dependent on the server provider you bring, as some have faster servers than others, but the platform itself also has an influence.
Having said that, FlyWP is fast and doing a proper job, but some other control panels perform better.
Testing FlyWPs Performance
In this FlywP review, I employ a consistent performance testing methodology across all hosting providers. The evaluation focuses on three crucial aspects:
- Visitor Capacity and Optimization:
I conduct load tests on a demo setup to determine the maximum number of concurrent visitors it can handle efficiently. This process also assesses the effectiveness of FlywP’s performance optimization measures. The goal is to maintain an average response time below 2 seconds, which we consider the critical threshold for user experience. - Server Performance Metrics:
To gauge the speed of the server and, by extension, the potential backend performance, I run a series of server benchmarks. These tests provide insights into how quickly FlywP’s infrastructure can process requests and execute server-side operations. - Network Responsiveness:
This test evaluates two key factors: the time taken for the initial page load and the server’s response speed. It helps in understanding the overall network efficiency and how quickly users can expect to interact with websites hosted on FlywP.
By examining these three areas, we can form a comprehensive picture of FlywP’s performance capabilities and how they compare to other hosting solutions in the market.
By default, I am testing control panels with Vultrs high-performance AMD servers. In this case, Hetzner was also added to the mix as a provider. The results shown here are from Hetzner, since it surprisingly had the best results.
Load Testing FlyWP: Cached & Uncached Performance
During load testing, I’m testing how many visitors the provider can handle before errors start popping up. In this case, an error is either a load time higher than 2 seconds or any other error. For this, I used loader.io and h2load.
| Requests / Second (Cached) | Requests / Second (Uncached) | |
|---|---|---|
| Loader.io load test | 1092 | 22 |
| h2load load test | 2002.31 | 57.97 |
Maximum Visitors / Second with Caching: 1092
In the below figures, we’re slowly raising the number of connected clients (visitors) to investigate when errors start appearing – that’s the moment we count the number of visitors. In the blue line, you can see the average response time.
FlyWP (with my test setup) can handle up to 1092 requests per second before errors start to appear. That is a good score, but some panels perform better.
Maximum Visitors / Second without Caching: 22
When we turn off caching, the server can handle up to 22 requests per second before errors start to appear. That’s a good score, being on par with some other providers.
And now it’s time for Server Benchmarks
One primary aspect that influences the speed of your site, and especially the speed of your back-end, is how well your server is performing and how it is optimized.
In short: FlyWP is doing well here, but some other control panels that have better performance with the same underlying server provider.
WordPress Server Benchmark: 7.2
FlyWP scores a solid 7.2 in the WordPress Server Benchmark, which is okay, but some faster parties score even above 9.
WordPress Performance Tester
FlyWP scored a server score of 16.047 and can run 402.9 queries per second, which is not very fast.
WordPress Post Benchmark
In the Post benchmark, 10.000 posts are inserted, queried, and deleted. For Hetzner, scores were okay, but for Vultr the score was pretty slow. And the query scores were really abysmal. This may indicate poor backend or WP-admin performance.
| Provider | Insert 10.000 posts | Query 10.000 posts | Delete 10.000 posts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hetzner CPX21 | 58.652 seconds | 1.181 seconds | 55.469 seconds |
| Vultr AMD HP 2C/4GB | 72.07 seconds | 1.73 seconds | 65 seconds |
Time to the First Byte for FlyWP
With latency, we’re testing how fast the servers are responding to initial requests, and how fast pages are loading. The figures are very good here for FlyWP.
Time to First Byte: 135ms, 536ms average worldwide
Other Performance Results for FlyWP
Pingdom Loading Times: 0.70 (cached), 1.01 (uncached)
Pingdom is an optimization tool that tests the overall load time of your site. FlyWP scores okay here, being on par with other control panels.
Is FlyWP Fast? Comparing FlyWP to Others
In the charts below, you can compare FlyWP to other providers in the same category.
In general, FlyWP is doing average to poor compared to other providers.
If you want to compare FlyWP to any provider, please check our reviews page for WordPress Hosting Reviews.
FlyWP’s Usability: Excellent
FlyWP is easy to use and has a beautiful control panel to manage servers.
Custom-Made Control Panel
FlyWP uses a custom-made control panel which is beautiful and easy to use.
WordPress Tailored Functionalities
As explained under features, some functionalities tailored to WordPress make FlyWP easy to use. Some of these functionalities include caching, security settings for WordPress and adjusted WP Config easily.
For example, changing some common wp-config.php settings can be easily done in the interface.
Also, a file manager is included in the control panel, which makes it very easy to edit some files on the fly.
FlyWP’s Support: Poor
Another important aspect is assessing the support for a given provider. In my experience, the support for FlyWP was not great. It was helpful and friendly, but they took 2 days to respond and my ticket was answered partly.
Ticket Based Support
Support is based on tickets, and takes up to 48 hours to get a response. I asked a couple of technical questions, some related to caching, and those answered okay-ishly. Especially on caching for WooCommerce, I had some concerns, but the details were very slim on the response for this.
Other Support Resources
FlyWP has a very clear documentation page and additional blogs and tips. That is great!
FlyWP’s Pricing: Excellent
If you manage multiple sites or servers, FlyWP is not expensive.
FlyWP’s Pricing Plans
At the time of writing, these are the pricing plans from FlyWP:
| Monthly Price | |
|---|---|
| Basic (1 server and site) | $0 |
| Hobby (1 server) | $9 |
| Growth (10 servers) | $19 |
| Business (Unlimited servers) | $39 |
Value for Money
The value for money delivered is excellent, but you are responsible for managing your servers.
FlyWP Review Conclusion: Very Promising
FlyWP is a very easy-to-use control panel for hosting WordPress on your servers. There are some challenges in some features missing, performance could be a bit improved and my support experience was a bit poor. Still, it is very feature-rich and makes it very easy to manage one or many WordPress websites.
In short: FlyWP is a very interesting Control Panel. Sign up here. Combine it with a high-performance server from Vultr or Hetzner ($20 of credits) and you are good to go!
FlyWP is also actively developed, so I look forward to what is coming in the future.