Kinsta WordPress Hosting Review: Benefits, Pricing, and Cons

Kinsta

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Kinsta WordPress Hosting is a premium hosting solution. Under the hood, it utilizes world-class Google Cloud Platform and CloudFlare to offer managed hosting services for businesses that want pure performance.

In this Kinsta Managed WordPress hosting review, I’ll cover Kinsta’s features, how it works, prices, alternatives, pros/cons, and benefits of WordPress hosting plans.

Features

• Utilizes edge caching that offers a 49% speed boost.
• 24/7/365 support in 5 languages by industry experts
• Cloudflare Enterprise with DDoS protection & free CDN.
• Open REST Kinsta API with built-in APM Tool.
• Cutting-edge Google Cloud infrastructure

Pros

• Free site migrations.
• Optimized for WordPress site performance.
• Dedicated staff for WordPress.

Cons

• No email or shared hosting.
• Beginners might find it expensive.

What is Kinsta WordPress Hosting?

Kinsta is a popular USA-based hosting provider (founded in 2013) that offers premium WordPress-managed hosting focusing on reliability, security, and speed.

According to Kinsta, over 120,000 users and 25K companies worldwide use its hosting services, ranging from high-traffic eCommerce stores to agencies and even Fortune 500 companies.

Kinsta runs on the Google Cloud Platform, with 37 data centers in Singapore, Belgium, the USA, the Netherlands, and other countries. This explains its high performance and ability to scale for high-traffic sites. It offers excellent uptime with low site load time.

During my research, I discovered that Kinsta offers secure hosting. It utilizes isolated container technology and Cloudflare integrations with Enterprise-level firewall and DDoS protection. It is SOC2 and ISO 27001 compliant, meaning customer data is protected against security incidents, unauthorized access, and other vulnerabilities.

Kinsta’s custom MyKinsta dashboard simplifies the user experience. It supports 10 languages, including English, Dutch, Danish, Italian, Japanese, German, Spanish, Swedish, and Portuguese, making it accessible worldwide.

To ensure smooth business operations, Kinsta offers 24/7/365 days of customer service through live chat is provided as well.

Apart from these, Kinsta has 6 advantages to offer:

1. SSL support is available via Cloudflare and is directly installable through the dashboard.
2. Ability to choose the CDN of your choice, in addition to Cloudflare.
3. Offers free migration for new users, making onboarding easy and welcoming.
4. Staging area to make site changes without disrupting the live site.
5. An excellent knowledge base that answers most basic queries.
6. Daily automated backups with no server overhead. Each backup is entirely isolated for single-click restoration.

Kinsta provides all these features at a premium price, which is suitable for heavy traffic and business websites.

Note: Kinsta’s managed service handles setup, administration, management, and support.

Benefits of Using Kinsta for WordPress Hosting

I like Kinsta because it offers a complete package that includes performance, ease of use, a backup system, 24/7 customer support, and access to all WordPress features that a business needs. The 5 benefits Kinsta WordPress Hosting offers include:

1. Incredible performance: Kinsta uses Google Cloud Platform’s Premium Tier Network, which offers top-tier performance out of the box.
2. WordPress-specific features: Kinsta comes loaded with WordPress features, including easy WordPress debugging, staging environment, and WooCommerce support.
3. MyKinsta dashboard: An easy-to-use dashboard that summarizes the site’s performance and provides access to many other features, including website migration requests, hosting activity logs for troubleshooting, and security checks. Additionally, it provides the Domain Name System(DNS) and the ability to manage multiple sites from dashboards.
4. Top-notch backup system: Kinsta creates complete isolated daily backups with one easy one-click restoration.
5. 24/7/365 customer support: Kinsta offers 24/7 customer support via chat and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Kinsta Features

In this section, I’ll go through the 13 advanced Kinsta features. These are as follows:

1. Free Migration: Kinsta’s dedicated migration team will handle the migration once you purchase a WordPress plan. They offer free migrations (with free malware cleanup) from hosting platforms such as WP Engine, SiteGround, Bluehost, Pagely, etc. You can raise a migration request from the MyKinsta dashboard.
2. Intuitive MyKinsta dashboard: I found the MyKinsta dashboard to be highly intuitive. It is a custom dashboard that is easy to use. From there, you can easily access features, such as migration requests, detailed site analytics, staging server deployment, etc.
3. Blazing Fast Performance: In my research, I found Kinsta to offer excellent performance. That’s because of its state-of-the-art hosting stack consisting of Nginx, PHP 8+, MariaDB, LXD Containers, and Server-side caching. They utilize Google Cloud Platform’s faster server with the option to choose from 36+ data center locations. So, you get top performance anywhere in the world. Furthermore, I found its edge caching feature worthy as it reduces the number of server requests, making web page loading speed 80% faster.
4. Useful Database Hosting: Kinsta offers complete freedom when choosing database hosting. It allows you to host Redis, PostgreSQL, SQL, and MariaDB databases.
5. Premium Staging Environment: When working with WordPress, I noticed that Kinsta offers a completely separate staging environment. It’s accessible from the MyKinsta dashboard. By using the staging environment, you can make changes to the site in production mode. This doesn’t affect the live site, which serves real-time users.
6. Excellent Security: Alongside performance, Kinsta also offers a highly secure environment. It uses an enterprise-level firewall to protect the site against third-party intruders. Furthermore, Kinsta uses Google Cloud’s premium tier network, free SSL, and complete isolation technology to ensure a secure site hosting environment.
7. Top-notch DDoS Protection: For maximum uptime, Kinsta utilizes state-of-the-art infrastructure to detect DDoS attacks actively. It provides DDoS protection through Cloudlfare’s strict rules filter, which blocks IPs associated with DDoS attacks.
8. Malware Security: I liked Kinsta’s free malware removal service. They take care of malware for the first time your hosting environment gets infected while using Kinsta. You also get free malware removal even during migration.
9. Free SSL with WildCard support: Cloudflare offers free SSL on all Kinsta plans. This also includes renewed SSL with 256-bit SHA256 encryption. Furthermore, Kinsta supports wildcard domains through Cloudflare, making it easy to manage multiple SSL certificates.
10. Free Kinsta CDN: Kinsta offers a high-performance content delivery network (CDN) free of cost (enabled by default on all new sites).
11. Daily Backups: Kinsta performs daily backups with intervals between hours and 6 hours. I found this very useful for critical sites as they can set their backup intervals themselves.
12. Uptime Checks: Businesses would never have to worry about uptime as Kinsta checks uptime every 3 minutes with New Relic technology. If something goes wrong, it notifies users of downtime and takes necessary steps to match their 99.9% uptime service-level agreement (SLA).
13. Excellent Support: During my testing period, I was able to connect with Kinsta experts easily, as they’re available 24/7/365. You can connect them via chat. They support real-time English, French, Portuguese, Italian, and Spanish updates.

Kinsta WordPress Hosting Pricing

Kinsta is a premium hosting provider, and this is reflected in their pricing. Its basic Single-site plan starts at $30 per month if you go with its annual plan ($35 for monthly).

They are currently running a 30-day free trial on Single-Site and Multi-Site plans, which is a great way to try out their service. Furthermore, Kinsta also offers a 30-day money-back guarantee on all their plans.

Kinsta offers multi-tier pricing divided into Single-site, Multiple-site, Agency, and Enterprise plans.

To summarize, I’ve listed Kinsta’s pricing plans in the table below.

Plans	Starting Price USD (monthly)	Key offerings
Single-site	$30 (1-year term)	Offers 1 install, 10GB storage and 125GB CDN, 35000 visits, free migration, 14 days backup retention.
Multiple-site	$70 (1-year term)	2 installs, 20GB storage, 250GB CDN, free migration
Agency	$284 (1-year term)	20+ installs, 500K visits, 50GB storage, 1000GB CDN
Enterprise	$563 (1-year term)	60+ installs, 1250K+ visits, 150+ GB storage, 2500+ GB CDN

If you need customized plans, you can contact their sales team. Furthermore, they offer add-ons such as external backup, Nginx, and Disk Space Add-ons at an extra price.

Overall, I think Kinsta plans offer value for money for the performance/features they have to offer.

However, small businesses with tight budgets might not find Kinsta a right fit. On the other hand, Kinsta is an ideal pick for fast-growing businesses or even established high-end eCommerce stores and enterprise projects.

How Kinsta Works

Kinsta is beginner-friendly and requires minimal steps to go live.

Once you sign up for any of Kinsta’s plans, follow the steps below.

1. Log in to your account.
2. Raise a migration request from the custom MyKinsta dashboard (if you already have a live site on a different host).
3. Wait for migration to complete.

That’s it! Your site should be live now.

Note: All migrations on Kinsta are free, and you can request expedited migrations (conducted within 8 hours of the request submission), which cost $49.

If you want to create a new site on Kinsta, you’ll need to follow the steps mentioned below:

1. To create a new WordPress site, click ‘Add’ a new site.
2. From there, you can choose to install WordPress, select your domain name (you can buy one from domain name providers such as Namecheap.com if you don’t have one), and finally, choose from the 36+ available data centers.
3. After the WordPress installation, connect the site’s domain name by pointing the DNS from your domain name provider to Kinsta-provided DNS.
4. Your site should go live after the DNS reflects (should take around 1 hour).

Depending on DNS migration status, this can take anywhere between half an hour to a few hours.

Under the hood, Kinsta relies on a complex setup of high-performance infrastructure and a state-of-the-art hosting stack.

For infrastructure, it relies on the Google Cloud Platform, which has the option to choose from 37 data centers.

As for stack, it uses Nginx, PHP 8+, MariaDB, LXD containers, and server-side caching—all offering performance features.

Furthermore, CDN relies on Cloudflare, which serves static assets from nearby Cloudflare servers, resulting in improved performance.

I also like its Edge caching feature, which allows access to the full pages on Cloudflare. Impressive, indeed!

Apart from these, Kinsta handles the automatic backups, security, performance, updates, and troubleshooting since it is a managed provider.

In comparison, a non-managed hosting provider doesn’t offer a seamless hosting experience as it requires you to carry out all the operations, such as manually installing WordPress, installing SSL, configuring the DNS, etc.,—which also requires much time and technical knowledge.

Kinsta Pros

Kinsta is perfect for WordPress hosting due to these 4 pros:

1. Performance: With Kinsta, WordPress sites load faster (with a lower average response time) than competitors due to using Google Cloud’s premium-tier servers. The sites are also easily scalable and handle spikes, making them ideal for WooCommerce sites.
2. Easy to use: You can launch your site in a few steps. If you already have an existing WordPress site, Kinsta will migrate it for free. Users do not have to worry about security, updates, backups, and configurations because Kinsta offers managed services. Its premium staging environments are helpful as they make changes to the site easy and intuitive.
3. Features: I like the MyKinsta custom hosting dashboard as it is user-friendly, making managing websites and team members easy. You get features such as an easy migration request option, the ability to change DNS settings, access to website performance analytics, add new users, and do better troubleshooting with activity log access.
4. Security: The isolated container technology and Cloudflare protect you from malware and DDoS attacks despite faster load times. The automated 14 to 30-day backup (depending on your package) gives you complete peace of mind, as you can revert to a stable state with one-click restores. Uptime is also strong, at 99.9%, thanks to rigorous uptime checks with a generous 30-day money-back guarantee.

Kinsta Cons

While Kinsta offers some excellent features, I did notice some issues during my testing of the service. I’ve listed these cons below.

1. Price: Its premium plans, which focus on performance, stability, and security, are costly, especially for sites with massive traffic, where you must pay additional costs for additional CDN, traffic, and storage usage. Not all backups are free, as based on the plan, users can opt for daily backups that are up to 14 to 30 days free. If you opt for 6-hour or hourly backups, you must pay anywhere from $20/site/mo to $100/site/mo.
2. No Free Trial: Kinsta does not provide a free trial, and to avail of the 30-day money-back guarantee, users would have to share their credit card information. Furthermore, there is no phone support, so users might feel a bit hesitant to share their details when they won’t be able to avail of instant phone support.
3. No Email Hosting:  I dislike the absence of email hosting even after paying premium pricing. This means businesses need to pay additional costs for third-party email hosting solutions such as Zoho Mail or Google Workspace. Additionally, Kinsta doesn’t allow every plugin and theme on their hosting.

Who Should Use Kinsta WordPress Hosting?

Kinsta is recommended for small to medium businesses with established websites or companies serious about the site’s performance and security.

I strongly recommend Kinsta for eCommerce websites that can’t afford to lose a customer due to a slow-loading webpage or spike in traffic.

Who Shouldn’t Use Kinsta WordPress Hosting?

I don’t recommend Kinsta WordPress hosting for businesses with tight budgets. It’s also not beginner-friendly and has no access to site builder features. So, if your business is new to hosting with simple requirements, it’s best to check out other shared hosting platforms such as SiteGround, Hostinger, etc.

Kinsta Ratings and Recognition

Kinsta receives high user ratings, and I am not surprised, considering their uptime, performance, security, and expert customer support.

• Geekflare – 4.5/5 stars (Editorial’s Choice Award)
• G2 – 4.8/5 stars
• Capterra – 4.8/5 stars

I found similar sentiments from Reddit users. Most users recommend Kinsta thanks to its stability, flexibility, and tech stack.

WPX, KINSTA, or….What’s your favorite managed wordpress host?
byu/IndependentElephant5 inProWordPress

What are the Managed WordPress Hosting Providers other than Kinsta?

If you find Kinsta not an ideal choice as your Managed WordPress Hosting provider, then check out the following alternatives:

WP Engine

WP Engine is an excellent Kinsta alternative that uses Amazon Web Services to host websites. Its managed WordPress plans offer similar features, including staging, server caching, fast performance, etc., at better value for money.

I recommend WP Engine because its pricing starts at $20/month, which is cheaper than Kinsta’s basic plan at $30/month (both offer basic plans with very similar features).

Get 4 Months FREE WP Engine

SiteGround

SiteGround is a perfect choice for users with a limited budget. Their hosting services provide cheap yet feature-rich WordPress-managed hosting, but in a shared virtual environment, which has disadvantages, including compromised security, speed, and accessibility.

In terms of pricing, SiteGround wins hands-down, with pricing starting at just $2.99/month. On the other hand, Kinsta’s Basic plan starts at $30/month—a substantial difference.

Get 83% OFF SiteGround

Cloudways

With Cloudways, you can choose between Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Linode, Vultr, and Digital Ocean. It offers a 3-day free trial with no credit card requirement.

Cloudways charges users only for the resources they use, making it an ideal choice for startups. However, this approach also means no 30-day money-back guarantee.

Overall, Cloudways is a better pick if you’re on a budget and want a more versatile approach to hosting. Cloudways pricing starts at $14 per month.

Try Cloudways

Comparison of Kinsta, WP Engine, SiteGround and Cloudways

Below is the comparison table between Kinsta and its alternatives, such as SiteGround, WP Engine, and Cloudways.

Kinsta Verdict

Kinsta is a strong contender in the WordPress-managed hosting space. It is fast, secure, and easy to use.

It provides users with additional features, like allowing them to delete personal data if they want to remove their accounts, which is a huge plus for businesses that deal with sensitive data.

I found that Kinsta’s pros outweigh its cons. So, if you’re a business looking for top WordPress-managed hosting that is not compromised, then Kinsta is the best choice. However, it’s not for every use case (mostly due to its pricing), such as sites starting to build their audience.

Kinsta receives the Geekflare Editorial’s Choice Award as it is a feature-rich hosting service with decent pricing options. It’s ideal for growing startups, businesses, and enterprises that want a no-compromise solution for their WordPress hosting needs and have the budget to invest in a premium service.

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