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Security

How we handle your data and respect your infrastructure.
An image of St. John's bridge in Multnomah county, in Portland, OR.

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Trusted partnerships. Deep integrations. Real expertise.
A polaroid picture of Mt. Hood.

About

Built in the Pacific Northwest. Trusted by operations globally.

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Back

MCP Connector

Router

MCP Connector

Frappe

MCP Connector

Wordpress

MCP Connector

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Twilio SMS

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Twilio SMS

Zoho Books

Twilio SMS

Zoho Projects

Twilio SMS

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Twilio SMS

Zoho Recruit

Twilio SMS

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Email Delivery for Cloudflare
Plugin

Services

Back

Agencies
Affiliates
Resellers

White-Label

Operations

DNS

Domains
Email

Accounts

Cold
Marketing

Transactional

AI
Business Process Automation
Automation Maintenance
Frappe MCP Setup
WordPress MCP Setup
Zoho MCP Setup
Marketing
Content

GEO

Reputation

SEO

WordPress

Development

Hosting

Maintenance

Performance

Security

Frappe

Apps

Automations

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ERPNext

Zoho

Apps

Automations

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One

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Back

Writing a blog post on a laptop.

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Thinking out loud about operations, AI, and what actually works.

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On Page Navigation

The Flywheel Alternative Built on Cloudflare Enterprise

Your site runs on enterprise NVMe servers behind Cloudflare Enterprise. Full pages are cached across 300+ edge locations, and the firewall filters injection attempts and common WordPress exploits at the network layer before they reach any of your code. Backups run every day and are kept for 14 days. Billing follows the storage and bandwidth you actually use, migrations are free, and the host-level work stays with our team.

View Comparisons

Get Managed Hosting
Who this comparison fits
Is Flywheel still the right fit for your sites?
Hardly anyone leaves Flywheel because the platform is bad. They leave because what they need from a host changed. Flywheel is built around design and agency workflows. What tends to change is the size of the site and the stakes attached to it, and then it matters a great deal what is included, how the bill gets calculated, and who owns the problem when something breaks at the server level. Three situations bring that up more than any others.
Globe and monitor icon marking the point about Flywheel security protection that costs extra.

Security you assumed was included costs extra

You assumed the firewall and the DDoS protection came with the plan, then found the advanced protection sitting in a paid add-on or a higher tier. Once that happens the monthly price is no longer the number worth comparing. What each platform ships with is.
Clock and shield icon marking the point about Flywheel plan billing that ignores actual usage.

Bills that don't match your usage

Plan-based hosting charges by site count or visit tier. A quiet month costs the same as a busy one, and a single unusual traffic day can trigger an overage or a forced upgrade. Metered billing works the other way round, following the storage and bandwidth your site actually consumes.
Clipboard and checkmark icon marking the point about consolidating five WordPress vendors into one.

One vendor, or five

A host runs the server. Maintenance, security hardening, performance tuning and development are usually somebody else's line item. Once the gaps are being covered by add-ons, plugins and a second or third vendor, the appeal of one managed roof is mostly that there is a single place to call.
Included vs. add-on
What's built in with Cascadia versus billed as extra
Both Cascadia and Flywheel are managed WordPress hosts, so nobody here is arguing for do-it-yourself. What matters is what each one includes before you add anything. Cascadia builds enterprise security, edge performance, and recovery into the base plan. On Flywheel and its parent platform, several of those capabilities sit in higher tiers or paid add-ons. This is where that line falls.

Cascadia

Every site runs behind Cloudflare Enterprise from day one, the tier normally reserved for large corporations. The firewall, DDoS protection, and 300+ location edge caching are in the base plan rather than an upsell, and bot management turns away content scrapers, vulnerability scanners, and spam bots before they can drain your resources. Metered pricing, free unlimited migrations, one-click staging, and daily backups kept for 14 days are switched on before you configure anything.

Without Cascadia

Run the same site on a host built primarily for design and agency workflows and the picture shifts: enterprise-grade edge security and some advanced controls tend to live in add-ons or higher tiers, and pricing follows site and visit tiers. For a team that wants those workflow tools first and does not need enterprise protection on every site, that is a reasonable trade.

Comparison

Cascadia vs Flywheel
Here's how the two platforms line up on what's included at the edge and how you're billed. Flywheel brings genuine strengths, and free migrations, staging and nightly backups are all there. The rows below look at something narrower than the whole product: what Cascadia puts in the base plan around security, edge performance and how the bill gets calculated. Every row maps to a capability we actually run.

Cloudflare Enterprise included free

Enterprise firewall included by default

DDoS protection at the network edge

Edge bot management included

Edge rate limiting included

Sub-100ms global TTFB target

Usage-based, pay-as-you-use pricing

WordPress Multisite included

Bundled maintenance and security services

Dual-layer edge and origin caching

Generic logo representing a comparable provider.
Flywheel

Where Flywheel fits

Flywheel is a well-established managed host built for designers, freelancers, and agencies who manage lots of client sites. It suits teams who want a clean dashboard, client-friendly workflow tools, and a host that does nothing but WordPress, particularly now that it sits inside the WP Engine ecosystem.
Cascadia Web Services logo

Cascadia Web Services

Where Cascadia goes further

Cascadia is built for teams who would rather not do tier math to work out how well protected their site is. Cloudflare Enterprise, edge caching, and recovery come in the base plan, billing follows real usage, and hosting, maintenance, security and performance all come from the same place.

Where Flywheel is strong

Built for handing sites to clients
Flywheel ships client billing transfer, collaboration features, and a purpose-built dashboard that make it easy to hand sites to clients and work alongside teammates. An agency running a lot of small client sites will feel that every week.
Local, its offline development app
Flywheel pairs with Local, its free local WordPress development app, so developers can build offline and push changes up. It is polished, widely used, and a real reason site builders pick Flywheel in the first place.
The StudioPress theme library
Flywheel and WP Engine customers get premium StudioPress themes at no extra cost. If you build client sites on the Genesis framework, that is a head start and one less license to buy.
24/7 live chat with WordPress specialists
Flywheel staffs live chat 24/7 with WordPress specialists and backs new accounts with a 60-day money-back guarantee. For a design-led team, support that only ever has to know WordPress is a real strength.
None of that stops being true because you are shopping around. If your team leans on those agency workflow tools and the design-first experience, Flywheel is the better fit and you should stay put. The trade is that advanced protection and edge performance often arrive as add-ons, and the bill follows site and visit tiers rather than what you actually use.

Where our service is stronger

The firewall is not an add-on
Cloudflare Enterprise puts a web application firewall in front of every site at no extra cost, filtering injection attempts and common WordPress exploits at the network layer before they reach any of your code. Rate limiting slows aggressive crawlers and abusive bursts before they can overload the origin server. Most hosts keep that behind a premium add-on or a higher tier.
You pay for what you used
There are no visit caps and no tier upgrades. Cascadia meters the storage and bandwidth your site actually uses: $5 per GB of storage and $0.15 per GB of bandwidth per month, with a $25 monthly minimum. A quiet month costs less than a busy one.
We do the move
We move your existing WordPress sites off Flywheel for free, with no cap on how many, and set up Cloudflare Enterprise, caching, and staging before anything goes live. Changing hosts never lands on your staff.
Hosting is one layer of several
Add our managed WordPress maintenance, performance, and security and the whole stack lives in one place. Agencies can resell it under their own brand through the white-label option.
If your site is doing real work and you would rather not price out every layer of protection separately, Cascadia is the more complete fit. Enterprise security and edge performance come standard, migrations are free and unlimited, and real people handle the host-level work.

Onboarding process

Switching from Flywheel to Cascadia in four steps

Moving off Flywheel sounds like a project. The migration is ours to run, not yours. Your current site stays live until the new one is confirmed, and the sequence below runs from first assessment through everyday operation.

1

First, a look at what you have

We start by going through how your site runs on Flywheel today. Traffic patterns and storage matter, so do the plugins, and so does anything sitting on the invoice as a paid add-on. That is what tells us how to tune caching and routing on the new platform. It is also where the surprises usually turn up, which is a much better time to find them than halfway through a move.

2

The move, and the setup around it

The team moves your files and database onto the platform with a free migration, sets up Cloudflare Enterprise, and tunes caching for how your site is built. You also get one-click staging, so updates, plugins and design changes get tested on a copy instead of on the live site. Nobody hands you a self-service migration wizard or leaves you guessing at DNS.

3

Going live without downtime

Once staging checks out we cut the site over and confirm pages, forms, checkout, and integrations before any traffic is pointed at it. Your Flywheel site stays live the whole time, so visitors never see an interruption during the move.

4

Then it just runs

Day to day, traffic routes to the nearest healthy edge location, so one regional problem does not take you offline. The firewall and bot management screen what arrives, and your site backs up automatically every day with 14 days of copies kept. When you need a hand, real people who know your site handle host-level issues and recovery through live chat and tickets.

Testimonials

Don't Take Our Word For It

I can't say enough about how grateful I am to [Cascadia] for helping me resolve my tech problems. I was in a real bind, and [they] calmly and cooly fixed the problem--something two other tech support folks could not do. [They are] gonna be my go-to from now on.

Sandy S.

[Cascadia] is amazing! They are so patient and explains things in such a clear way. I'm very grateful to them for making me feel more confident in my work with the CRM. Can't recommend them enough!!

Aventurina K.

I've been on Upwork for 5+ years hiring various contractors for my service based business and there is no doubt that [Cascadia] is one of the top 5 I've ever hired for ANYTHING. For domain related questions, a selfless work-ethic, and a deep & reliable source of knowledge, [Cascadia] is the right choice.

Andrew K.

I've worked with Cascadia for nearly three years, and the service is fantastic. The benefits are reasonably priced, and the turnaround time is better than any titan within the industry. I love this company, and we look forward to growing with them.

Carl B.

What changes when you move from Flywheel to Cascadia
Weighing this up, the monthly price is the least interesting number on the page. Flywheel is a capable, design-focused host, and an agency living inside its workflow tools does perfectly well there. What you are buying, though, is less the tuned server than everything wrapped around it: the security, the caching, the backups, and how quickly you get back on your feet when something goes wrong. Cascadia runs every site behind Cloudflare Enterprise, the top tier and one normally reserved for large corporations, so the protection that filters attacks sits in the base plan instead of being sold back to you a layer at a time. Underneath the caching sit enterprise NVMe servers. Reads and writes finish far quicker than they would on standard drives, so each WordPress request takes less time to complete, and the platform targets a time to first byte under 100 milliseconds worldwide. A second cache layer at the origin means even a miss skips PHP. Images convert to modern formats, fonts load faster, and CSS and JavaScript are compressed and minified at the edge rather than by a plugin you have to install and keep updated. Pricing is metered. You pay for the storage and bandwidth the site actually used, not a visit tier you had to predict months ahead, and that difference shows up most clearly in a month when traffic runs hot. Agencies get a little more. Multisite runs on plans above the entry tier, staging is free, migrations are ours to carry out at no charge, and there is a white-label option if you would rather resell under your own name. Outgrowing a plan-based host should not cost you a project.
A man at a laptop working out how long something has been going wrong

How this plays out

The site was delivered and never actually handed over

A designer builds a site, launches it, and moves on. The client keeps calling. Not about design, but about a contact form that stopped sending, an SSL warning, a plugin asking for a licence key nobody has. None of it is work the designer sells. All of it lands in their inbox anyway. Six sites in, that is a part-time job with no invoice attached to it. White label hosting ends the arrangement without ending the relationship. The site runs on our platform under the designer's brand, we answer the technical questions, and the designer stops being on call for work they were never paid for. Migrations are free and uncapped, so moving the existing six is not a budget conversation.
A technician at a terminal beside a rack of network equipment

The other version of this

Two parties handle updates, so neither one owns them

The host applies some updates. The agency applies others. The client was told they could install plugins themselves, and every so often they do. Everyone is acting in good faith. The result is a site where nobody can say what changed last week. When something breaks, the first hour goes to reconstructing history rather than fixing anything, and that hour is the expensive part. We take the whole layer, so the question of who did that has one answer. Core, theme and plugin updates run on a schedule against a staging copy first. Every change is ours, every backup is ours, and the restore point you need is one of the 14 days we keep.
100%

Overage charges eliminated

No visit caps, so a spike in readers stops being something the invoice punishes you for.
300

Edge locations serving cache

Full pages sit in cache across 300+ edge locations, so most visitors are answered by a nearby data center.
24hr

Automated backup cadence

One automatic backup a day, each one kept for 14 days, and you can trigger a full backup yourself before any risky change so a clean snapshot is one click away.

Questions people ask before they move

Flywheel comparison FAQ

What is a Flywheel alternative?
It is simply another managed WordPress host you would use instead of Flywheel. People usually start looking when they want enterprise-grade security and edge performance in the base plan, or a bill based on usage rather than visit tiers. Cascadia is one of them. Every site runs behind Cloudflare Enterprise, with 300+ location edge caching, a firewall that filters exploits at the network layer, and daily backups kept for 14 days, all in the base plan rather than sold as add-ons.
What is managed WordPress hosting?
Managed WordPress hosting is a plan where the provider handles the server-level work for you: a stack tuned for WordPress, caching, security like a firewall and DDoS protection, backups, and recovery. You focus on your site and content while the platform and the team behind it keep the infrastructure running.
How does managed WordPress hosting work?
Your site's files and database live on a server that serves pages to visitors. Managed hosting adds layers on top: requests route to the nearest edge location, cached content serves fast, a firewall screens malicious traffic, and your data is backed up on a schedule. The difference from regular hosting is how much the host configures and maintains versus leaving to you.
What's included with Cascadia's managed WordPress hosting?
Cloudflare Enterprise sits in front of every site, with full-page caching across 300+ locations, a sub-100ms global TTFB target, and enterprise NVMe servers underneath. Security covers the firewall, DDoS protection, edge bot management, and a free SSL certificate that issues and renews itself once your domain is verified. On the practical side there is one-click staging, daily backups kept for 14 days plus on-demand backups before risky changes, free unlimited migrations, WordPress Multisite support, and a support team that handles platform issues through live chat and tickets.
How is Cascadia different from Flywheel?
Both are managed WordPress hosts, but the default line falls in different places. Flywheel is built around design and agency workflow tools, with some advanced security and edge features offered as add-ons or higher tiers. Cascadia includes Cloudflare Enterprise security, 300+ location edge caching, and a sub-100ms TTFB target in the base plan, and bills by actual usage rather than visit tiers.
Is Cascadia a good Flywheel alternative for agencies?
It can be. You get WordPress Multisite support, free staging, free unlimited migrations, and a white-label option for reselling under your own brand. Flywheel's strength is its client workflow tools, so the honest answer depends on which of the two you would miss more.
Does Cascadia have the workflow tools Flywheel is known for?
Flywheel's client billing transfer, collaboration features, and its Local development app are genuine strengths, and they're a big reason design agencies choose it. Cascadia puts its effort into included enterprise infrastructure, bundled managed services, and direct FTP and staging access. If those workflow tools are your priority, that is a real point in Flywheel's favor.
How much does Cascadia's managed WordPress hosting cost?
Standalone hosting is usage-based: $5 per GB of storage and $0.15 per GB of bandwidth per month, with a 2 GB storage minimum and a 100 GB bandwidth minimum, so the minimum bill is $25 per month per site. If you'd rather bundle hosting with maintenance, performance, and security, the Extended plan is $150 per website per month.
Can you migrate my sites off Flywheel?
We can, and there is no cap on how many. Our team moves your files and database off Flywheel, configures Cloudflare Enterprise, caching and security, sets up staging, and confirms everything works before your site is switched live. You don't run a risky self-service migration or take on downtime; for most sites the move is straightforward and you land on a faster, better-protected platform.
Is Cascadia's pricing really usage-based?
It is. Rather than paying for a visit tier whether or not you use it, you pay for the storage and bandwidth your site actually consumes each month, with a $25 monthly minimum. Quiet months cost less than busy ones. A brief surge gets absorbed across the edge network instead of pushing you into a forced upgrade or an overage.
Does Cascadia support WooCommerce stores?
It's a strong fit. Stores live on uptime, checkout reliability, and data safety, and the platform covers all three: high traffic capacity for sale-day rushes, an enterprise firewall and DDoS protection guarding payment flows, automated daily backups plus on-demand backups before risky changes, and redundant infrastructure built for high uptime so an outage doesn't take your store offline.
Does Cascadia support WordPress Multisite?
It is, on plans above the entry tier. Agencies and multi-brand teams run several sites, or a whole network, from one WordPress install, and manage the portfolio from a single place. Free staging and free unlimited migrations are there to get the existing sites across.
Can I keep my plugins and get FTP access?
Yes. Built-in FTP access and a file manager give you and your developers direct access to your site's files, so routine changes don't wait on a support ticket. Developers get the command line as well, not just the file tree. The stack is tuned for WordPress, and free staging gives you a copy of the site to try plugin and theme changes on before any of it reaches production.
Will my site be faster on Cascadia than on Flywheel?
Speed comes from the whole stack. Cascadia combines enterprise NVMe servers with full-page edge caching across 300+ Cloudflare Enterprise locations, and a second cache layer sits at the origin so a miss skips PHP rather than waiting on it. Images convert to modern formats and CSS and JavaScript are minified at the edge, which cuts page weight before any plugin is involved. Results vary by site, so the honest claim is that the architecture is built for your busiest day, not that a number is guaranteed.
Is switching to a Flywheel alternative worth it?
For many teams, yes. The value is not really speed. It is enterprise security included instead of billed as an add-on, usage-based pricing instead of visit tiers, and fewer vendors to manage. If downtime, a slow page, or a security incident would cost you real money or internal time, moving to a fully managed platform usually pays for itself.
Is there a contract, or is it month-to-month?
Cascadia's hosting bills monthly and renews on the first of each month, so you're not locked into a long annual prepayment to get started. Because pricing is usage-based, you can scale up or down as your traffic changes, and migrating in is free, so trying the platform does not mean committing to a year up front.
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+1.800.610.3575

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