• Ease of Use: ★★★★★ 5/5
  • Domain Names: ★★★☆☆3/5
  • Email Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆ 0/5
  • Databases: ★★★★☆ 4/5
  • Server Location: ★★★★★ 5/5
  • Security Features: ★★★★★ 5/5

2024 Kinsta Review [Plans, Alternatives & More]

Fact-checked
  • Ease of Use: ★★★★★ 5/5
  • Domain Names: ★★★☆☆3/5
  • Email Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆ 0/5
  • Databases: ★★★★☆ 4/5
  • Server Location: ★★★★★ 5/5
  • Security Features: ★★★★★ 5/5

Best For

WordPress teams or agencies

STRENGTHS

  • 99.9% uptime guarantee
  • 30-day money-back guarantee and prorated refunds
  • Active security monitoring and hack/malware removal

WEAKNESSES

  • WordPress-only hosting
  • Higher prices

Kinsta launched in 2013 as a premium, cloud-based, WordPress-only hosting service with a focus on delivering exceptional uptimes, performance, and scalability. Kinsta offers services and plans to anyone from individual site owners to those with enterprise-scale business hosting needs. In this Kinsta review, we explore whether it lives up to the hype and whether it’s a good value service.

To do that, we’ll cover:

  • What you need to know about Kinsta
  • Kinsta overview
  • Plans and pricing
  • Customer reviews
  • Privacy and security policy
  • Alternatives
  • FAQ

Kinsta Overview

In our research for this Kinsta hosting review, we confirmed that it runs on some serious infrastructure. All hosting is provided from the Google Cloud Platform, one of the fastest, most flexible, and most stable cloud services on the market with exceptional performance all over the globe. Their Nginx servers also support the latest version of PHP 8.0 with multiple PHP workers per hosting client. You also get ultra-fast SSD storage.

MariaDB and other database technologies are supported for an optimized database.

Kinsta’s servers have also been fine-tuned for performance, uptime, and security. LXD software containers ensure each customer gets their fair share of resources and that there is some isolation between accounts in case of a security breach. Furthermore, manual and automated backups will also ensure minimal loss of data in any event. Performance and support are some of the main benefits users praise in their Kinsta reviews.

Another strong reason to consider Kinsta is that it’s a very developer-friendly hosting service. Kinsta takes care of a lot of background maintenance, such as addressing issues within your PHP and DB to keep your site ticking over smoothly. It also provides tools to make the development workflow easier for teams with multi-user environments, staging tools, and more. Developers also have SSH access to WP-CLI, Composer, and Git to automate their workflows.

What You Need to Know About Kinsta

Kinsta is a premium WordPress hosting platform with a list of advanced functionalities worthy of that title. Here are the main Kinsta features you should know about to decide whether this is the right service for you:

Free SSL certificates

An SSL certificate is a must-have security measure when hosting a secure website. Kinsta provides a free, pre-configured SSL certificate for all customers and all of their websites. However, you can also import your own certificate.

Built-in CDN

All Kinsta accounts come with free KeyCDN configuration. This is one of the leading CDNs to speed up your website anywhere on the globe, with 34 data centers across 25 countries.

Self-healing technology

Kinsta’s servers automatically check for issues with your underlying PHP every minute and restart it to avoid downtime.

Highly secure network

Kinsta monitors all websites hosted on their servers 24/7. Their network is also secured by DDoS protection and hardware firewalls.

Automatic daily backups and manual backup points

All Kinsta plans come with free automatic backups to ensure that you won’t lose more than a day’s data, even if disaster strikes. You can also configure manual backups to protect your data further. All data is retained for 14 days.

24/7 customer support

Kinsta offers 24/7 customer service via live chat and email. Kinsta also offers support in multiple languages through a number of local centers. Although there is no phone support, Kinsta claims to have response rates of 1 min 27 sec, 39-minute resolution, and 97% satisfaction rates.

Hack and malware removal

One of the outstanding services provided by Kinsta is that their technicians will try to block and mitigate hacks or malware infections as they are detected for free.

24 global data center locations

When you sign up with Kinsta, you can choose to host your website(s) from any of their 24 data centers located all over the world. This allows you to choose one closest to you or your target market for better website speeds.

Free website migrations

Every Kinsta customer gets at least one free premium site migration as well as unlimited basic migrations. The difference is that premium migration is for sophisticated sites that need some reconfiguration, while basic migration is for standard WordPress installations from known hosting providers.

Staging area

Kinsta features a staging area that allows you to create a test version of your website to try out new functionalities or designs. If you’re happy with the changes, you can publish it live without risking downtime or bad user experiences.

Kinsta Hosting Plans

Kinsta offers a comprehensive catalog of 10 individual hosting plans. In this table, you’ll find a summary of the top Kinsta plans for users:

Features Starter Pro Business 1 Business 2 Enterprise 1 Enterprise 2
Price $30 $60 $100 $200 $600 $900
WP install 1 2 5 10 60 80
Monthly visits 25,000 50,000 100,000 250,000 1,000,000 1,500,000
SSD storage 10 GB 20 GB 30 GB 40 GB 100 GB 150 GB
Recommended for eCommerce/membership sites No No Yes, for SMEs Yes Yes, for enterprise-scale Yes, for enterprise-scale
Site cloning  No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
SSL certificates Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Besides these preconfigured plans, you can also approach Kinsta and get a custom Enterprise solution.

The company offers a 30-day money-back guarantee if you’re not happy with their plans. You can also choose to subscribe annually, in which case you’ll save two months’ worth of hosting. You can cancel your account at any time and get a prorated refund for the unused portion of your hosting. Be aware that Kinsta does charge overages for storage and traffic.

Pros and Cons

Here are the main Kinsta pros and cons that we identified during our research:

Pros

  • 99.9% uptime guarantee
  • Active security monitoring and hack/malware removal
  • 24/7 multi-language customer support
  • 30-day money-back guarantee and prorated refunds

Cons

  • WordPress-only hosting
  • No free domain
  • Relatively expensive

Kinsta Customer Reviews

Kinsta is not BBB-accredited, but this isn’t uncommon for hosting providers. It does have three complaints against it which is a fairly good track record. On TrustPilot, Kinsta reviews by customers have an excellent average rating of 4.7 out of over 300 reviews.

Whether from clients, consumer advocates, or professional reviewers, you’ll find very few negative assessments of Kinsta’s services. As a premium provider, they outperform most hosts in speed, reliability, and customer support. However, some Kinsta hosting reviews complain about the pricier plans questioning whether its customer service justifies the cost.

Privacy and Security Policy

Kinsta has a pretty standard privacy policy without any red flags. The only information they collect is what you freely provide when creating an account, interacting on the forums, sending support requests, and making payments. They actively warn against sharing any highly private information with them or their representatives.

What’s more, Kinsta says it in no way sells or rents data to third parties. Your information is only used for future direct marketing, to improve services, security, and recruiting purposes if you applied for a job. The company will ask for your approval before sharing data with authorized partners for events. We didn’t come across any Kinsta reviews pointing to a breach of consumer trust.

All of Kinsta’s websites and services are also SSL encrypted and compliant with local and international security standards, such as the Privacy Shield Principles. As mentioned earlier, Kinsta has outstanding hosting security features in place.

Alternatives

As part of our Kinsta web hosting review, we identified some of its top competitors in the WordPress hosting industry. While there are many similar services, Kinsta’s variety of enterprise-scale plans is one of the things that set it apart.

Kinsta vs WPEngine

Kinsta and WPEngine are almost like-for-like replacements for one another. Their plans are similarly priced with almost identical resource limits. However, WP Engine also offers phone support, more staging tools, and the ability to hand off sites to clients built into the platform.

Read the full review of WP Engine here.

Kinsta vs Flywheel

FlyWheel is also a WordPress-only hosting service. But Flywheel is aimed more towards freelance developers or agencies that build websites for clients. It offers even more tools to manage your workflow across multiple sites, white-label your service, and hand over sites to clients. It’s also possible to take part in reseller hosting on Flywheel.

Read the full review of Flywheel here. 

Conclusion

It should be apparent from our Kinsta review that this is not your average shared WordPress hosting provider. Kinsta is an option for those who don’t mind paying top dollar for top-notch support, uptime, performance, and the potential to scale their account with multiple websites as well as enterprise-level resources.

Kinsta is also a developer-friendly option for WordPress teams or agencies. With staging tools, multi-user accounts, and a host of developer tools, you’ll have everything at your disposal to manage workflow and create sophisticated WordPress environments.

However, Kinsta doesn’t offer reseller or VPS hosting, so this is something you’ll need to look for elsewhere.

FAQ

Is Kinsta any good?

Yes! Kinsta is a premium hosting provider based on the Google Cloud Platform. If you’re looking for flawless uptimes, speeds, and advanced features for developing, managing, and running a WordPress website, there are few better options. But it does cost more as a result.

Will Kinsta help me with technical issues on my website?

Yes. Kinsta is well-known for its excellent customer support. They go as far as to offer free premium site migration services, 24/7 monitoring, and hacking or malware removal. Live chat is available 24/7, and support is offered in multiple languages.

Can I cancel my Kinsta plan?

Yes. Kinsta offers a 30-day money-back guarantee if you’re not satisfied with your hosting. You can also cancel your plan at any time after the 30 days and receive a prorated refund. In our research for this Kinsta review, we concluded that this is one of the most reliable and risk-free hosts.

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