Kinsta

WordPress makes up a large chunk of the internet (over 30%).

It’s only natural that WordPress-specific hosting solutions are ample and competitive.

While some WordPress hosts compete on price, others choose to provide superior quality.

However, Kinsta is a WordPress hosting service that aims to provide exceptional service at a competitive price.

Let’s dive deep into Kinsta, its features, pricing, and user impressions.

What Is Kinsta?

Kinsta is a managed WordPress hosting provider powered by the Google Cloud Platform.

The hosting provider offers scalable hosting with lightning-fast load times and impeccable 24/7 support.

Kinsta is a global hosting provider, serving 128 countries and all continents except Antarctica.

The company currently has 34 data centers across the globe and has a diverse range of hosting clients, including small blogging sites and Fortune 500 companies.

What Is Kinsta Used For?

Kinsta is used for hosting WordPress websites so that the website is available to any device connected to the internet.

There are various types of website hosting with their own benefits and drawbacks.

In a sense, Kinsta is a hybrid website hosting provider, as it combines Cloud Hosting and Managed WordPress hosting, allowing its customers to reap both benefits.

Cloud Hosting is when website files are stored in a network of servers, rather than just one.

Meanwhile, Managed WordPress Hosting offers website hosting optimized for WordPress websites.

By combining the two, Kinsta’s clients receive affordable, reliable, and scalable hosting optimized for WordPress and have access to WordPress-specific features without needing a Cloud professional or WordPress developer on hand.

How Kinsta Works

As mentioned above, Kinsta combines Cloud and WordPress hosting to deliver benefits to their clients.

Kinsta’s infrastructure is built entirely on the Google Cloud Platform, which has servers and data centers worldwide.

Each site runs separately and securely on its platform with the help of Linux containers.

This system allows websites to easily scale and grow as well.

Kinsta uses a firewall by Cloudflare to continuously monitor and stop cyber attacks and malicious malware, thus eliminating the need for third-party WordPress security plugins.

The MyKinsta Dashboard offers WordPress-specific tools and features such as detailed analytics, WordPress-specific security rules, staging environments with the ability to push to live or restore backups, and creation and migration wizards.

Notable Features of Kinsta

Kinsta’s premium hosting infrastructure includes several incredible features to enhance website safety, performance, and growth.

Let’s look at a few of the most popular Kinsta features.

1. Speed

Kinsta is built on Google Cloud’s premium tier network and its ultra-high performance virtual machine, the C2.

As a result, Kinsta clients enjoy fast and secure data transfer, a 200% performance increase, 30% improved latency, and 50% improved bandwidth.

Kinsta’s HTTP/3-enabled high-performance unlimited CDN results in faster content delivery.

Plugins are made obsolete thanks to Kinsta’s speedy server-level caching system.

Kinsta further boosts performance by performing weekly automatic database optimization.

2. Security

Kinsta’s 24/7 monitoring and security has an SLA-backed 99.9% uptime guarantee and a hack-free guarantee.

Security features in Kinsta include automatic backups, Cloudflare DDoS protection, free SSL, two-factor authentication, and SFTP/SSH protocols.

3. Support

Kinsta offers a single tier 24/7/365 human chat support available to clients on their MyKinsta dashboard.

Chat support for Kinsta is available in 5 languages, while documentation and resources are available in 10 languages.

Kinsta also performs status checks on websites every 2 minutes, so their engineers often begin investigating the system before you even discover the issue.

In over five years of business, 97% of all support requests have been resolved with positive customer satisfaction.

4. Scalability

Kinsta has made scaling your WordPress site effortless, thanks to their advanced hosting configurations.

Kinsta’s isolated software container technology keeps your website and software resources secret.

It can run independently on Kinsta’s virtual machine.

Through the MyKinsta Dashboard, users can scale their visits, disk space, and CDN to match their needs.

Additionally, users can also increase their storage with a simple click.

5. Site Management

The MyKinsta dashboard prioritizes performance and security while helping you cut down on repetitive site management tasks.

The dashboard allows for unlimited role assignments to the live and staging sites.

Through the MyKinsta dashboard, users can also gain granular control of multiple environments like production, non-production, additional, or template.

Users can add sites, update themes and plugins, or transfer a place to another website, all with a couple of clicks.

The MyKinsta dashboard also allows for easy white-labeling and PHP-version changes.

6. Developer Tools

Kinsta makes it easy for you to have full control of your website.

Developer features on Kinsta include WP-CLI, SSH, Git, ionCube Loader, and one-click cloning.

Through Kinsta’s dashboard, developers can access multiple staging environments with granular controls set up to protect your site.

Developers can easily redirect 404 errors and SEO issues with Kinsta.

Add-on developer tools on Kinsta include Nginx reverse proxy, Redis, and more.

Are There Any Minimum Requirements Necessary to Use Kinsta?

There are no minimum technical or knowledge requirements to use Kinsta for hosting a WordPress website on Kinsta.

In fact, users don’t even need the technical knowledge to migrate their website to Kinsta because Kinsta offers unlimited free basic migration.

However, Kinsta’s development environment, DevKinsta, does require 5GB of disk space and 2GB memory on a 64-bit computer and operating system requirements for macOS, Windows, and Linux.

How Much Does Kinsta Cost?

Kinsta has various plans and allows users to easily upgrade or downgrade plans to match their website hosting needs.

All plans with Kinsta include free migrations, SSL, CDN, and staging.

• The Starter plan costs $35/mo or $350/year and includes 1 WordPress install, 25 000 monthly visits, and 10GB disk space.
• The Pro plan costs $70/mo or $700/year and includes 2 WordPress install, 50 000 monthly visits, and 20GB of disk space.
• The Business 1 plan costs $115/mo or $1150/year and includes 5 WordPress install, 100 000 monthly visits, and 30GB of disk space.
• The Business 2 plan costs $225/mo or $2250/year and includes 10 WordPress install, 250 000 monthly visits, and 40GB disk space.
• The Business 3 plan costs $340/mo or $3400/year and includes 20 WordPress install, 400 000 monthly visits, and 50GB disk space.
• The Business 4 plan costs $450/mo or $4500/year and includes 40 WordPress install, 600 000 monthly visits, and 60GB disk space.

Kinsta’s plans are flexible and contain no fixed contracts or hidden fees.

On the other hand, Kinsta offers instant prorated refunds and two months of free hosting for plans that are purchased yearly.

Does Kinsta Have an Enterprise Version Available?

Kinsta has many Enterprise plans, with free migrations, SSL, CDN, and staging.

• The Enterprise 1 plan costs $675/mo or $6750/year and includes 60 WordPress install, 1,000,000 monthly visits, and 100GB of disk space.
• The Enterprise 2 plan costs $1000/mo or $10 000/year and includes 80 WordPress install, 1,500,000 monthly visits, and 150GB of disk space.
• The Enterprise 3 plan costs $1350/mo or $13 500/year and includes 120 WordPress install, 2,000,000 monthly visits, and 200GB of disk space.
• The Enterprise 4 plan costs $1650/mo or $16 500/year and includes 150 WordPress install, 2,500,000 monthly visits, and 250GB of disk space.

You can also contact the sales department for higher enterprise plans, and dedicated virtual machines are available through Kinsta’s website.

Who Are Kinsta’s Main Alternatives?

As the hosting web market is quite saturated, Kinsta naturally has a lot of competition.

Let’s take a look at the three of the best managed WordPress hosts currently on the market.

1. Pressable

Pressable is a managed website hosting service provider exclusively for WordPress websites.

According to G2’s Summer 2022 report, Pressable was awarded for having the best results overall, being best for small businesses, and being a high performer for the mid-market.

Like Kinsta, Pressable offers free SSL and CDN, site migration, and 24/7 support.

In addition, Pressable also has a 100% uptime guarantee.

However, Pressable does not offer any auto-scaling during surges in traffic and does not offer phone support.

2. WP Engine

WP Engine is another managed WordPress hosting service provider with over 12 years of experience, 40 000 customers, and supports over 1.5 million websites.

Like Kinsta, WP Engine offers WordPress-optimized security, fast load times, and automatic backups and updates.

WP Engine uses Google Cloud Platform for its infrastructure.

Still, it only provides premium and dedicated custom plans access to C2 virtual machines and premium tier networks.

3. Flywheel

Flywheel is an all-in-one managed WordPress hosting platform acquired by WP Engine in 2019.

While Flywheel uses Google Cloud Platform’s C2 compute-optimized virtual machines and premium tier network for their premium plans, Kinsta uses both for all their hosting plans.

Additionally, Flywheel only has five hosting locations, with 0 locations in Asia.

On the other hand, Flywheel is a bit more affordable, with plans starting from $15/mo.

How Does Kinsta Differentiate Itself From Competitors?

Kinsta’s main value point is its use of Google Cloud Platform’s premium tier networks and C2 virtual machine for all plans.

The technology boost allowed Kinsta to be the fastest WordPress host for the last five years.

Kinsta allows your website to be hosted on its 34 supported Google Cloud data centers.

It will enable you to assign different websites to different data centers.

Aside from its infrastructure, Kinsta also provides excellent development and site maintenance features.

Kinsta lets users use different versions of PHP in different staging environments and allows users to switch PHP versions with a few clicks.

All Kinsta plans have access to Kinsta APM, a built-in application performance monitoring tool.

Who Is Kinsta Best For?

Kinsta is an incredibly high-performance WordPress hosting website.

It’s best suited for websites or agencies with websites that reach web traffic of at least 25000 visits.

Kinsta has an excellent infrastructure and a wonderful set of tools and features to help you optimize your website’s performance.

However, suppose your website doesn’t have high traffic.

In that case, many of the top-tier technology specs that Kinsta uses will go to waste.

Why Is Kinsta Best for Developers or Agencies with Premium Clients?

Kinsta is reliable and has top-tier technology, fantastic management tools, and a no-nonsense pricing structure.

These attributes make Kinsta ideal for web development agencies whose clients require high-quality websites with ongoing maintenance.

Is Kinsta Easy To Use?

Absolutely!

Kinsta makes every aspect of website hosting and maintenance a seamless experience.

Not only does Kinsta offer free migration with all of its plans, but they also have built-in APM tools to help users manage and monitor their website performance.

What Features Do Some Users Love?

Users love it for its lightning-fast speed, powerful CDN, 99.9% uptime, and amazing customer support.

They also love Kinsta’s free migrations and its team management capabilities.

What Features Do Some Users Find Frustrating?

Many users have complained about Kinsta’s resource limits as a point of frustration.

Kinsta does not currently offer unlimited storage, CDN, or monthly visits but does offer add-ons to remedy the situation.

However, many users are also frustrated by Kinsta’s high price point.

Frequently Asked Questions

Let’s take a look at some common questions regarding Kinsta:

Kinsta, in a Nutshell

Kinsta is a reliable managed WordPress hosting software for high-performance websites and agencies with higher-end clients and sophisticated website needs.

Kinsta has an excellent infrastructure and is dedicated to providing top-tier service to its clients.

Unfortunately, newer or low-traffic websites can’t benefit as much from Kinsta’s state-of-the-art service, especially due to the high price point.