In todays web, site speed is everything. I mean think about it. How many times have you gone to a website only to leave because the load times were too slow? EVERY-SINGLE-TIME!
Now imagine how visitors experience yours? If it’s slow they’d leave just as fast to one of your competitors websites, which means lost traffic, readers and definitely lost sales.
I think we can agree that having a super fast site is very important. This is why hosts like Kinsta exist. They provide insanely fast load times, excellent customer service and hosting plans that make sense whether you’re an amateur or an expert.
By the end of this Kinsta review you’re going to know whether or not Kinsta WordPress hosting is the right choice for you. We’ll cover the pros and cons, features, and then the pricing and plans before getting to the final thoughts.
If you’re on desktop and want to navigate this article quicker, use the table of contents navigation on the left hand side.
Want to skip to the prices? Check out their plans here.
What Is Kinsta?
Founded in 2013 by Mark Gavalda, Kinsta is a managed WordPress hosting company based out of Los Angeles, California. They currently offer hosting plans that are great for beginners all the way up to enterprise users.
High quality hosting services is something Kinsta does not lack. They currently employ over 160+ tech savvy Kinstonians (I just made that up), most of which work remotely around the globe. And by the looks on their faces, they look to be taking good care of their people.
Kinsta currently offers managed WordPress hosting, WooCommerce hosting and enterprise WordPress hosting.
Is Kinsta Any Good?
Their primary goal is to create the worlds best WordPress hosting platform — and from the numbers, they’re doing a pretty great job.
While they hasn’t disclosed the exact number of customers they have, their customer base stretches across 128 countries around the world. That’s a lot of people with a WordPress website!
There’s even 371+ real user reviews on Trustpilot to back it up!
93% of which say their web hosting service is excellent.
While I do agree with other users and Jack’s review, there’s one thing I can’t quite align with and that’s their pricing.
Compared to other hosting companies, their pricing is a bit steep. Especially considering that there are other managed WordPress hosting alternatives out there at more affordable prices.. but that’s just my opinion.
But we’ll dive into Kinsta pricing and plans further down this article, for now let’s take a look at the Pros and Cons of Kinsta WordPress hosting and what you can expect.
Kinsta Pros and Cons
The pros far outweigh the cons by a landslide. With Kinsta, you’re going to get a hosting provider that over delivers. From a super fast CDN, to a 99.9% uptime guarantee and global server locations — there’s a lot of upside.
Please note: This host does not offer an email service with any of their plans.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Super Fast | Expensive |
| 30-Day Money Back Guarantee | No Phone Support |
| Cloud Hosting | No Email Hosting |
| Free SSL & CDN | No Domain Registration |
| Unlimited Basic Site Migrations | Capped Features (Storage, CDN, etc) |
| 99.9% Uptime Guarantee | Some Plugins Won’t Work |
| 24/7 Expert Support | |
| Great for E-Commerce | |
| Easy to Use | |
| Choose Your Data Center | |
| Multi-User Friendly (Team Friendly) | |
| Daily Site Backups | |
| Built for WordPress | |
| Staging Area | |
| Developer Friendly |
Features
Usually when I write a web hosting review, the bells and whistles are typically there to cast a shadow on all that’s bad with the web host. Features overload is something that can seem cool on the surface but it can also be something to be uneasy about.
In the case of Kinsta, the features aren’t hiding anything on the back end. You’re going to get a super fast site your visitors will be happy about and optimal disk space as well. You also get real people support via chat 24/7 just in case anything goes upside down.
Most importantly, you’re going to get reliable managed hosting. Did we mention you get to choose your server location? Here are some notable Kinsta features.
Free Site Migrations
Need to migrate your WordPress website over to Kinsta? No problem. With each Kinsta WordPress hosting plan, you get free and unlimited site migrations – no questions asked.
For more complex migrations like an eCommerce website, membership website, or any type of site that uses a reverse proxy, you’ll be able to use one of your premium migration credits that come with all plans.
Any additional premium migration runs $100. So unless you have several complex websites to migrate, enjoy the free migration service!
Built for Speed
While Kinsta hosting has lots of great features, they’re most known for their rapid load times.
They currently use the latest NGINX, PHP 8.0, LXD software containers (Linux Container Hypervisor),
and fully optimized Virtual Machines to make sure you have quick load times.
They even use MariaDB, which is a backward compatible Database server. This means tougher security measures and a fast website.
Uptime Monitoring
Kinsta does daily uptime checks on all of their websites every 2 minutes. That means your websites will get 720 checks per day with their uptime monitoring.
The full daily site backups of your site happen once per day. So if your site disappears overnight for whatever reason, you can restore your entire site with one click.
Built on top of the Google Cloud Platform, you’re able to scale your website effortlessly without any server lag time. They’re even great at handling sudden spikes of traffic, so if one of your links go viral, Kinsta will be able to handle all the new visitors to your WordPress website or eCommerce store.
Finally, you get additional peace of mind with their hack fix guarantee. If your website gets hacked, Kinsta guarantees that one of their expert technicians will resolve the hack for you as their top priority, guaranteeing your website is restored back bug free.
Multi-User Friendly
MyKinsta is a user-friendly database dashboard that makes managing your websites simple. Not only is it great for a team of one, but friendly for teams of all sizes. With a few simple clicks, you can create multi-user permissions, see a detailed activity log, work on staging environments, enable two-factor authentication, and much more.
WooCommerce Ready
If you’re looking to start an eCommerce website to sell your goods online, you’re definitely going to want a reliable web host. And since Kinsta hosting is built specifically for WordPress, you’ll more than likely be using WooCommerce for all of your eCommerce needs.
So when it comes to your website, you want to make sure your customers are getting the best digital shopping experience. This means that a great site uptime, fast loading, and a dynamic website are super important. Especially since 79% of smartphone users have made a purchase using their device in the last 6 months of 2021.
With Kinsta’s WooCommerce hosting, you’ll be able to handle sudden surges in traffic, have automatic-scaling built in, server-level caching, daily backups and of course a fully secured SSL with GeoIP blocking.
Performance
Kinsta is serious about providing an excellent WordPress hosting experience. So much that they run exclusively on the Google Cloud Platform. Agencies like Neuralab moved over 50 client websites (amassing millions of visitors per day) over to Kinsta and saw their load times decrease by 2x!
Quite impressed what @googlecloud and @kinsta can pull of for #WordPress hosting! #DevOps #Cloud #WPDev #webdevelopment pic.twitter.com/Cr7UMaHdpH
— Neuralab (@Neuralab) July 22, 2017
With the Google Cloud Platform, Kinsta is able to scale your websites performance globally across 20 data centers. That’s fast!
All Kinsta servers run on the new TLS 1.3 encryption protocol. It’s faster and reduces HTTPS overhead, which means excellent and sustained performance right from the start.
For this test I took a basic Kinsta WordPress setup and used Google Page Speed Insights (Lighthouse score), GTMetrix and Pingdom. Three of the webs top website performance generators.
Here’s how the Kinsta hosted site held up.
Google Page Speed Test
GPS (Lighthouse Score) came back at a whopping overall score of 95 with a fully loaded page load time of 2.3 seconds! This is incredibly fast and I can’t say I’m surprised. This is the standard you can expect with Kinsta.
GTMetrix
Next up we have our GTMetrix. This time the fully loaded site came back at 1.5 seconds. I told you Kinsta WordPress hosting was fast, didn’t I? But just to be sure, I ran one more test.
Pingdom Test
For the Pingdom test I chose to run our test site from Washington D.C. – North America. Without any doubt, the overall performance grade came back at 92 with a load time of 732 milliseconds! Imagine if your web page loaded in under a second! That’s a fast load time!
So as we can see, site performance is not going to be an issue. No matter which website test I ran, load times came back lightning fast.
Kinsta Uptime Guarantee
What do you call a WordPress host who’s servers are flaky? Unreliable! When shopping for web hosting plans, you want to make sure that the company offers an uptime guarantee. Many web hosts offer them but not all are equal.
Kinsta offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee! Which is great in comparison to other web hosts I’ve reviewed.
Kinsta Security
Something I’ve never seen any other web host do is call out the competition in regards to their security. Yes, you read that correctly. Kinsta called out the biggest web hosts in the industry on their security page.
If you scroll down on that page, you’ll see 10 links that point to articles about data breaches and security exploits from the top players in the industry.
Security is something every site needs, especially for your WordPress website. Here’s what you can come to expect with Kinsta Security.
Linux Containers (LXC)
Kinsta isn’t your typical managed WordPress host. They’ve done things a lot differently from their competitors – Linux Containers is one of those subtle differences.
Linux Containers are a set of applications or processes that are stored separately from the main host. Developers love using Linux Containers because of the ease of use, testing, deployment and of course security.
Through this they’re able to isolate each account and each WordPress website, which means a faster and more secure experience for you.
DDoS Attack Detection
Nobody wants to go through a DDoS attack (Distributed denial of service). Unfortunately, it’s something that happens in the online space. Typically it’s a piece of malware deployed to target specific website(s) with the objective of making your website crash. This is no bueno!
Why would someone want to target your website specifically for a DDoS attack? It could be a hacker doing it for fun but more often than not it would be a competitor trying to crash your website to gain an upper hand in say SEO.
If your website isn’t working, Google would detect that and de-index you from their search engine results, moving your competitor up a space and getting more traffic. Or maybe it’s political. Whatever the case, DDoS attacks aren’t entirely preventable but Kinsta reduces the chances that a DDoS attack would occur on one of your sites through layers of protection (Linux Containers).
Google Cloud Platform
Acording to a forecast by Cisco, it’s predicted that cloud traffic would represent 92 percent of all data network traffic.
Google Cloud is not only fast, its secure, and extremely cost effective. This means that any saved money that isn’t spent on additional IT resources gets passed along to you.
Notable companies who have switched over to GCP include: Spotify, HSBC, Home Depot, SnapChat,
HTC, Best Buy, Phillips, Coca Cola, Domino’s, Feedly, ShareThis, Sony Music, Ubisoft and Evernote. Even Apple uses Google Cloud for its iCloud service. The biggest and best companies in the world work with GCP and so does Kinsta.
Hack Fix Guarantee
Did you know that over 40% of the web runs on WordPress? Pretty impressive, right? (W3Techs) Even so, just because WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) doesn’t mean it’s the most secure.
Having so many plugins and applications compatible with WordPress actually makes it more susceptible to hackers and malware. In fact, over 30,000 websites are hacked daily (WebARX).
If you suspect your site be hacked, the experts over at Kinsta will begin working to resolve your issue right away.
They’ll do a deep inspection of your website to find the malware, then they’ll install a clean version of WordPress to all of your websites core files. Finally, they’ll remove any infected plugins and themes that may have caused the hack in the first place.
Kinsta’s security guarantee doesn’t cover any nulled plugins of WordPress themes. So if you found a bootleg version a theme or plugin for free online, it’s usually more susceptible to having malware on it.
Fully Encrypted
Kinsta understands that your privacy is super important, which is why everything run through Kinsta is fully encrypted and only supports encrypted SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol) and SSH (Secure Shell) connections.
They also offer a free SSL Certificate powered by Let’s Encrypt to ensure your site is enabled with HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure). This is a MUST have in today’s Web 2.0 world, especially in the eyes of Googles for SEO purposes as well as for your users browsing privacy.
Automatic Backups
Kinsta has automatic backups, just in case a digital disaster strikes your website. They call it Disaster Recovery. And since nothing is ever 100% certain online, Kinsta automatically creates at least 2 weeks worth of backups of all of your WordPress sites. This way you can fully restore your website just in case.
They also create and store what are called persistent disk snapshots of their infrastructure every 4 hours. This is something they do to have extra information just in case they need to go in and manually restore your site data.
Kinsta Support
The Kinsta reviews revolving around how great their support team is is speaks volumes. Not only do they have a great knowledge base, they also have WordPress specific tutorials and of course 24/7 live chat agents on standby waiting to lend a helping hand.
You can also get a ton of extra information by checking out the weekly updated Kinsta blog. Unfortunately, they don’t offer phone support. I’ve got more info on why that is down in the FAQ section.
Live Chat Support
Kinsta live chat is easy to access. From your MyKinsta dashboard, simply click the support chat button on the bottom right hand corner and a team member will be there within seconds to help you out with your WordPress site.
Ease of Use (MyKinsta)
Choosing a hosting platform with a great looking dashboard might not seem super important until you need to get under the hood.
They’ve made it easier than ever to manage and access all of your sites through the MyKinsta dashboard.
Access across all of your WordPress sites, migrations, DNS management, analytics, multi-user management, and activity log access are all just a click away.
Toggle through the photos below to get an inside look of what you can expect to get.
Kinsta Pricing and Plans
Kinsta pricing starts at $30/mo for their Starter plan. While they do offer a variety of managed WordPress hosting plans, they do not offer shared hosting.
Keep in mind that Kinsta provides monthly and annual plans. If you opt for an annual plan, you’ll save about 17%.
- Starter – Starting at $30/mo or $300/annually
- Pro – Starting at $60/mo or $600/annually
- Business 1 to 4 – Starting at $100-$400/mo or $1,000-$4,000/annually
- Enterprise 1 to 4 – Starting at $600-$1,500/mo or $6,000-$15,000/annually
- Customize – Need more power? No problem! Create a fully customized hosting plan including VM (Virtual Machine Hosting)
Since Kinsta works with Stripe as their payment processor, they’re unable to offer flexible payment dates. Whatever date your initial billing starts, it will renew on the same date monthly or annually depending on which Kinsta WordPress hosting plan you go with.
Whatever plan you go with, you’ll get the following features:
- Data Center Selection
- Expert Support
- Secure Network
- Super Fast Website
- Staging Environment
- Powerful Admin Area
Kinsta Alternatives
Some great alternatives to Kinsta WordPress hosting are going to depend on what your budget and web goals are. Here are a few WordPress hosts I recommend and why. Note: None of these hosts offer shared hosting.
- WPX Hosting: These guys give you a CDN, lightning fast load times, under 30 second support and incredible uptime all at a price you can afford. Highly recommend WPX as an alternative.
- WP Engine: Excellent hosting in terms of performance and price. WP Engine also acquired StudioPress so you get access to the Genesis Framework when you purchase one of their plans.
- SiteGround: A standard for managed WordPress hosting and WooCommerce hosting. SiteGround offers excellent pricing, a user friendly interface and security without compromising on performance.
Kinsta Reviews via Twitter
It’s one thing to take our word for it and another to get real life reviews via social media. These Kinsta reviews are straight from twitter so you know they’re legit.
Most of the reviews are super positive. From basic WordPress bloggers to your technical coders. Everyone seems to love their experience except for one dude who had some downtime issues back in 2019.
Here’s what everyone had to say about Kinsta WordPress hosting.
More projects launching soon 👀 Looks like I need to upgrade my @kinsta hosting plan.
— Jack Kitterhing 📈 (@codemonkey_jack) May 10, 2021
And in case you’re wondering Kinsta is the best host I’ve used in the past couple of years without a doubt.
The folks at @kinsta hosting really are insanely responsive. Sure the godaddy’s entice you with low entry prices but you get such a value with your bucks at their joint. I can’t recommend them enough.
— Justin Eisele (@Jteisele) December 24, 2020
Why You Should Move Site To @kinsta
— Hemant Sharma (@itsHemantSharma) December 3, 2019
1. Google Based Infrastructure
2. Speed Optimisation
3. Highly Speed CDN and Backup Feature
4. Updated WordPress Automatically#WordPress #Kinsta #Hosting #Blogger #DigitalMarketer
Does your hosting company notify you via email of your plugins security vulnerabilities?
— Robb Fahrion (@RobbFahrion) July 29, 2019
If not, another reason you should switch your @WordPress website to @kinsta hosting.
Best thing about @kinsta hosting and it’s security is that it is based on multi-layer protocols on the back-end which makes sure your site is super secure. #WordPress #WP
— Ministry of Coding 🇮🇳 (@NaveenS16) August 18, 2018
My current recommendations for a standard WordPress install for speed:
— Joe Youngblood (@YoungbloodJoe) March 23, 2021
1. WP Rocket
2. Imagify with auto compression enabled
3. Asset Cleanup Pro to remove bloat
4. Kinsta hosting
5. Cloudflare OR Cloudinary
Very impressed with @kinsta so far. My only major question is how does Kinsta hosting default security compare vs vanilla WP install elsewhere that uses @wordfence?#wordpress #security
— Andrew McGarry (@beyondcontent) June 14, 2020
@kinsta EVERY one of my sites on the Montreal server has been down for over two hours and I’m getting the run around on chat. Is someone going to do something or can I expect to keep burning cash? #kinsta #hosting #502error #downtime
— Dave C (@rekalibrated) September 6, 2019
I really can’t say enough good things about @kinsta hosting. Their support (for pain in the asses like me) is second to none! If you are running WP to power your business, there really is no other option.
— Gregg Tilston 💉💉🍷🥘🤘⛷🏎🇨🇦🐾👩👧👦👨👧👦 (@greggtilston) May 9, 2019
Final Thoughts
You get to choose from over 20 data center server locations world wide, get fast response times from their expert support team, a content delivery network (CDN) for all of your sites, server side caching, an easy to use control panel, all from a managed WordPress hosting company that everyone seems to trust and approve.
If you need extra disk space for your sites and don’t mind paying extra for a reliable web hosting plan, then this is a top choice. Are there more affordable options that can do just as good of a job? Yes. But you may be compromising on site speed by trying to save a few bucks.
It all comes down to what you can afford and what you’re looking to achieve. You can accomplish anything from a simple WordPress blog to an all out eCommerce store. The possibilities for this managed hosting service are endless.
Here’s the bottom line: Try Kinsta for 2-months free and see if it’s the right host for you.
FAQs
Where is Kinsta located?
Kinsta HQ is located at 8605 Santa Monica Blvd #92581, West Hollywood, CA 90069, United States.
Why Doesn’t Kinsta Provide Phone Support?
They believe that the best way to resolve any issues is 100% through online tickets. Their support tickets are stored and shared with all of their experts across all channels, this way each support request is tracked from start to resolution.
Is Kinsta Shared Hosting?
Kinsta is a managed WordPress hosting provider. They do not offer shared hosting plans.
Is Kinsta Safe?
Yes. Sites hosted with Kinsta are secured with DDoS protection behind Cloudflare’s enterprise level firewall.
Why is Kinsta so expensive?
You get expert customer support 24/7 (not cheap to maintain) lightning fast managed WordPress hosting and a user interface that Steve Jobs himself would be proud of. You’re paying for quality, speed, and support you can count on.
Who Owns Kinsta?
The current CEO of Kinsta is Mark Gavalda.
Is Kinsta a VPS?
No. The Kinsta platform is built on top of Google Cloud and Cloudflare, which is different from VPS, shared, or dedicated hosting.
