Kinsta Review

Kinsta is a managed WordPress hosting provider that offers high-performance and reliable hosting solutions to businesses and individuals worldwide. The company was founded in 2013 and has since grown to become one of the leading providers of managed WordPress hosting services. Kinsta’s hosting plans are specifically designed for WordPress sites and include a range of features such as automatic updates, daily backups, and security measures to ensure the safety and smooth operation of WordPress sites. The company prides itself on providing fast and reliable hosting services with exceptional customer support, all while offering competitive pricing plans. 

Kinsta also offers a variety of additional features and tools, such as website staging, free SSL certificates, and easy-to-use control panels. With its focus on providing high-quality managed WordPress hosting services, Kinsta has gained a reputation for being one of the most trusted and reliable WordPress hosting providers in the industry. In this review, we’ll take a closer look at Kinsta’s hosting plans, features, and performance, to help you decide if it’s the right hosting provider for your WordPress site.

Overview

Kinsta is a managed WordPress hosting provider that offers enterprise-grade hosting solutions with features designed to optimize and scale WordPress sites. Founded in 2013, Kinsta has quickly become a well-known name in the WordPress hosting industry. With their platform powered by Google Cloud Platform, Kinsta offers high performance, security, and scalability to WordPress users. 

Kinsta’s hosting plans are packed with advanced features such as automatic backups, staging environments, and integrated CDN, as well as a 24/7 support team of WordPress experts. Their plans cater to businesses of all sizes, from small blogs to large enterprises. With their focus on delivering fast and reliable WordPress hosting, Kinsta has become a top choice for many website owners looking to optimize their WordPress sites.

Opening Kinsta for the first time? Below is the homepage that will greet you. Once you go through this Kinsta review for the first time, you’ll be prepared to do the entire registration process with ease. Here’s what’s up with Kinsta. 

Kinsta is a modern cloud hosting provider focused on WordPress hosting. It offers premium managed WordPress hosting for all types of businesses. It is one of the first hosting companies that is exclusively powered by the Google Cloud Platform. 

It is entirely cloud-based and not a shared hosting service. Kinsta WordPress hosting began in 2013 and has been a fast-growing managed web hosting site in the industry since then. It has 28 Google Cloud data centers scattered worldwide, utilizing the latest software and advanced technologies to power small and advanced infrastructures, with more than 20000 WordPress sites on its platform. 

This managed WordPress hosting service provider advertises not only being a better WP engine than other web hosts, but also offers unique and powerful hosting optimized for speed, performance, and security. 

They also have 24/7 support from WordPress experts. Kinsta provides hosting solutions to agencies, enterprises, WooCommerce, small businesses, membership sites, education, learning management systems, nonprofits, and others. 

Kinsta was recognized as the #1 WordPress Hosting Provider by G2; a business software review site. It rated above average based on ease of use, quality of support, and ease of setup.

Customer Support

Kinsta is a managed WordPress hosting provider that offers a variety of hosting solutions, including shared hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated servers. Along with their hosting services, Kinsta provides a range of customer support options to ensure their clients have a seamless hosting experience.

One of the key customer support options from Kinsta is their 24/7/365 support team. This team of experienced technical experts is always available to assist with any WordPress-related issues or questions that clients may have. They can provide support via phone, live chat, or email, depending on the client’s preference.

Kinsta also provides a comprehensive knowledge base on their website. This knowledge base includes a wealth of information on WordPress-related topics, including how to manage your WordPress site, troubleshoot common issues, and configure your hosting environment. Clients can use the knowledge base to find answers to their questions or to learn more about the hosting services that Kinsta provides.

In addition to their live support and knowledge base, Kinsta provides a range of tools and resources to help clients manage their WordPress sites. For example, their custom-built control panel provides easy access to server settings, application management tools, and other important details about your hosting service. They also offer a variety of integrations with popular WordPress plugins and applications.

Overall, Kinsta provides a comprehensive set of customer support options for their hosting clients. Whether you need help resolving technical issues or simply want to learn more about the WordPress hosting services they provide, the Kinsta support team and their online resources are always available to help.

Plans & Pricing

Kinsta is a managed WordPress hosting provider that offers high-performance hosting solutions for businesses and developers. They use the Google Cloud Platform to provide a fast, reliable, and secure hosting environment. In this article, we will provide an overview of the plans, products, and pricing available at Kinsta. For more detailed information, please visit their official website at https://kinsta.com/.

Kinsta offers a variety of hosting plans with different configurations and pricing tiers based on the amount of resources and features you need.

Here is a breakdown of the available plans and their pricing:

Starter Plans

Kinsta’s starter plans are designed for individuals and small businesses that require a basic hosting solution.

All plans come with a free SSL certificate, daily backups, and a staging environment. Higher-tier plans come with additional features such as a premium DNS service, ElasticSearch, and more.

Custom Plans

Kinsta also offers custom hosting solutions for businesses that require more resources or specialized configurations. Their custom plans come with a range of additional features such as dedicated support, migration assistance, and more.

It’s important to note that these prices may vary depending on the length of the contract and any additional services you may choose. Kinsta also offers a 30-day money-back guarantee for all new customers.

Getting Started with Kinsta

For this review, I’ve chosen the cheapest available plan – the Starter plan. It costs $30 per month for 10 GB disk space, 25,000 visits, a free Content Delivery Network, one site installation, and 24/7 support. To create an account, you have to input your email address, name, and password. 

Next, you have to fill in the billing information and card details. Once everything is set, you will receive confirmation and a welcome message via email. You can now go back to Kinsta and log in! This time, you will be redirected to the MyKinsta dashboard.

Using and Managing Your WordPress Site in Kinsta

Website management is perhaps one of the most critical factors in choosing your WordPress host. Whether you are tasked to manage multiple websites or a single site, you always need a dashboard tailored to your needs. This is where the MyKinsta dashboard comes in. Here, you can manage your sites with ease.

Kinsta Control Panel

MyKinsta dashboard is a custom control panel just like cPanel or Plesk but optimized for WordPress hosting. It has a wide array of tools for managing your WordPress website. It has a very comprehensive dashboard with visually appealing graphics that provide vital insights into your site performance. 

I tried the MyKinsta free demo to explore how it looks and feels which was nice considering I didn’t have to pay anything. I input my name, phone number, email address, and the kind of hosting I am interested in on the registration panel. I chose the one that has an online store with digital or physical products. 

When I clicked the Register button, it redirected me to the MyKinsta dashboard. It is a one-stop control center to manage everything about your WordPress website. 

Dashboard Tab

This section shows all your managed WordPress websites, resource usage, notifications, the graph showing the data transfer and unique visits, CDN usage, and the resource center.

Sites Tab

This section shows all the sites you manage. You can also see essential details like the data center’s location, the number of visits, bandwidth usage, disk usage, PHP version used, and the status of the WordPress environment. 

When you click on a site, you will see more advanced details about it. It is like your site’s control panel built-in in your managed hosting account dashboard. 

You can see the following:

• Info – Shows your site’s basic details like IP address and data center location, SFTP/SSH, database access details, transfer sites, and an option to delete your site.
• Domains – This shows your primary domain and your other domain list.
• Backups -This shows your daily backups.
• Tools – In this tab, you can modify your site cache, restart your PHP, enable WordPress debugging, search and replace the database, monitor PHP tools, enable password protection, SSL certificates, Geolocation, force HTTPS, and modify PHP versions.
• Redirects – This shows your redirect rules and allows you to modify them.
• WP Plugins – This shows your installed WordPress plugins; it shows the status, version, and updates available for the optimization plugins. Here, you can update your plugins automatically but not the WordPress core software.
• IP Deny – This tab shows the IP address that you deny on your site.
• Kinsta CDN – You can manage your CDN here and clear the cache.
• Kinsta Application Performance Monitoring(APM) Tools – Shows the monitoring results; it monitors transaction time, WordPress plugin, database, and external request.
• Logs – Shows log viewer, error logs, Kinsta-cache -logs, and access logs.

Migrations

Free, basic, and premium site migrations are included in all of Kinsta’s managed hosting plans. On this page, you can submit a migration request, and the tech experts will take care of migrating your site.

Kinsta DNS

It is a free DNS service provided by Kinsta for free to all customers. Here, you can manage your DNS records. It is powered by Amazon Route53, which constantly ranks among the fastest DNS services in the world. This page is where you go to manage domain registration.

Analytics Tab

This tab opens the analytics dashboards. 

You can find the following here: 

• Resources – This tab shows the visits, disk space, bandwidth, top requests by bytes, and views. You can hover your mouse over a specific time you want to inspect, and it will show the details you need. You can select the site and the timeline you want to be displayed.
• CDN Usage – Kinsta’s web hosting plans come with free CDN. This tab right here shows your CDN usage, top files by request, top files by bytes, top files extension by bytes, and correct error response codes breakdown.
• Dispersion – This tab shows the difference between handheld and desktops usage.
• Performance – This page displays your average PHP + MySQL response time, PHP throughput, PHP worker limit, AJAX usage, top average PHP + MySQL response time, and top maximum upstream time.
• Response – This page shows the response code breakdown, response stats, 500 error breakdown, 400 error breakdown, redirect breakdown, and top 404 errors. You can hover your pointer to the graph to see the specific time you want to inspect. You can choose to display individual sites, all sites, past week, months, and days.
• Cache – This displays the cache component stack, cache component chart, and top cache bypasses.
• Geo and IP – This page tells you the top country, top city, and top client IPs.

Company Tab

This tab displays the hosting plan add-ons, disk space add-ons, external backups, invoices, payment methods, billing details, and site labels. You can choose to pay via VISA, MasterCard, Kinsta account balance, or premium migration credits. 

User Tab

The User tab is where you can add new users or change existing user permissions. You can restrict the sites they can access. You can also invite users via email address then assign their company role. 

Activity Log Tab

This tab shows all your activities from all sites and users. You can filter it to only show the data you need. For example, you can change All Sites selection to one specific site only. 

Knowledge Base

This section contains the resources, blogs, and articles you can read to find out more about Kinsta’s services and how to manage them. 

Kinsta WordPress Website Builder

Kinsta is an alternative WP engine powered by the GCP and Google Premium Tier Network, which is maximized for speed, performance, and security. Since Kinsta is a managed WordPress hosting provider, it is compatible with any WordPress page builder. Among them are Elementor, Beaver Builder, Oxygen, and many more. 

For this review, we will be exploring DevKinsta, a free development tool to build, test, and create WordPress sites in minutes. You can download and install it easily on your local computer. 

DevKinsta features include:

• One-click site creation and local development
• Built-in database manager
• Open-source database management via Adminer
• Works with HTTPS locally
• Built-in email testing
• Built-in WordPress debug toggle
• Easily deployed in Kinsta
• Supports 10 languages
• Single click PHP version switching
• Supports automatic updates
• It makes local site creation quick and easy

You can start creating a new WordPress site with just one click. Next, you need to input the name of your site, your admin username, and your admin password. Make sure you remember this info because you will need it later when you want to manage or edit your site. 

Then, you have to configure NGINX and create the My SQL database to complete the installation.  This page shows your site info, SSL and HTTPS, database, and more. You can see the Open Site button, Push to staging, database manager, and WP Admin buttons at the upper portion of the page. 

When you open your site for the first time, this is the default view. You can customize and enhance this site by adding themes and plugins. Opening the database manager brings you to this page, where you can manage your database tools. 

Kinsta WordPress App Installer

To install WordPress using Kinsta, click the Sites tab from your MyKinsta dashboard, then click the add site button. You will be asked to fill in the form below. 

Choose to install WordPress, input your site name, choose a data center location, admin username, password, admin email, and select a language. You will also be asked if you want to install multisite, WooCommerce, and Yoast SEO. If not, just click Add site. You can now see your new site on your MyKinsta dashboard.

Kinsta Customer Support

One of Kinsta’s top priorities is to give fast and knowledgeable support to its user. They have WordPress experts and a support team available on standby to assist the customers 24/7/365. I put their service to the test by asking about the difference between the basic and the premium migrations that Kinsta offers with their plans. Below is the reply I got from them.  

The reply was fast and very informative. Great work! Aside from this, they also have a vast knowledge base, complete with resources like blog articles, ebooks, webinars, podcasts, cheat sheets, and much more. If you ever get stuck, you will have a lot of options in getting help. Kinsta is also present in social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Linkedin.

Buyer’s Guide and Pricing

Kinsta offers specialized in managed WordPress hosting services. WordPress is a free content management system written in PHP, MySQL, and MariaDB database. It is perhaps the most well-known of all CDN, and there are millions of WordPress users today. 

Kinsta has 10 WordPress hosting packages you can choose from. Price starts as low as $30 per month and can go as high as $1,500 per month. 

You might be wondering why the prices are so much higher than the rest of the hosting providers in the market? 

Let’s find out! 

All WordPress hosting plans come with the following Kinsta core features a 30 -Day Money-Back Guarantee. This money-back guarantee covers the cost of the pre-built hosting plans and all add-ons used during the 30 days. 

Plans, Pricing, and Additional Features

Starter Managed WordPress Hosting Plan

• Start at $30 per month
• 1 WordPress site
• 25,000 monthly visits
• 10 GB SSD storage
• Free SSL and CDN of up to 50 GB
• One free premium migration
• 14 days backup retention
• Two PHP workers on site

Pro Managed WordPress Hosting Plan

• It starts at $60 per month
• 2 WordPress installs
• 50,000 monthly visits
• 20 GB SSD Storage
• Free CDN of up to 100GB
• 2 Free premium site migrations
• 14 days backup retention
• 2 PHP workers per site
• Site cloning

Business 1 Managed WordPress Hosting Plan

• It starts at $100 per month
• 5 WordPress installs
• 100,000 monthly visits
• 30 GB SSD storage
• Free CDN up to 200 GB
• Three free premium migrations
• 14 days backup retention
• 4 PHP workers per site
• Recommended for e-commerce /membership sites

Business 2 Managed WordPress Hosting Plan:

• Price starts at $200 per month
• 20 WordPress installations
• 250,000 monthly visits
• 40 GB SSD storage
• Free CDN up to 300 GB
• Three free premium migrations
• 14 days back up retention
• 4 PHP workers per site
• Recommended for e-commerce /membership sites
• Site cloning

Business 3 Managed WordPress Hosting Plan

• Price starts at $300 per month
• 20 WordPress installation
• 400,000 monthly visits
• 50 GB SSD Storage
• CDN up to 500 GB
• Three free premium site migrations
• 20 days backup retention
• 6 PHP workers per site
• Recommended for e-commerce/membership sites

Business 4 Managed WordPress Hosting Plan

• Price starts at $400 per month
• 40 WordPress installs available
• 600,000 monthly visits
• 60 GB SSD storage
• CDN up to 500 GB
• Four free premium migrations
• 20 days backup retention
• 6 PHP workers per site

Enterprise 1 Managed WordPress Hosting Plan

• It starts at $600 per month
• 60 WordPress website
• 1,000,000 monthly visits
• 100 GB SSD storage
• CDN up to 1000 GB
• Five free premium migrations
• 30 days backup retentions
• 8 PHP workers per site
• Recommended for e-commerce /membership sites

Enterprise 2 Managed WordPress Hosting Plan

• Price starts at $900 per month
• 80 WordPress website
• 1,500,000 monthly visits
• 150 GB SSD storage
• CDN up to 1000 GB
• Five free premium migrations
• 30 days backup retention
• 10 PHP workers per site
• Recommended for e-commerce /membership sites

Enterprise 3 Managed WordPress Hosting Plan

• Starts at $1,200 per month
• 120 WordPress
• 2,000,000 monthly visits
• 200 GB SSD storage
• CDN up to 1000 GB
• 5 free premium site migrations
• 30 days backup retention
• 12 PHP workers per site
• Recommended for e-commerce /membership sites

Enterprise 4 Managed WordPress Hosting Plan

• Price starts at $1,500 per month
• 150 WordPress sites
• 3,000,000 monthly visits
• 250 GB SSD storage
• CDN up to 1000 GB
• Five free premium migration
• 30 days backup retention
• 16 PHP workers per site
• Recommended for e-commerce /membership sites

Aside from the hosting packages listed above, you can also choose to customize your plan. All you have to do is contact their sales representative to help you out.

Security and Backups

It is undeniable that Kinsta is one of the established managed WordPress hosting providers in today’s tech industry. 

So how does it handle the security of your WordPress site? 

Here, let us take a closer look at the promised secure and safe Kinsta WordPress web hosting. You will be the judge whether you are getting your money’s worth or not. Kinsta users can rest assured that they are using state-of-the-art infrastructure and technology to provide not only speed but also safety. 

They take your security very seriously. The Kinsta managed WordPress host offers an enterprise-level secure firewall powered by Cloudflare. It stops malicious attacks and bad intentions before they can affect your site’s performance. 

It has active and passive security and advanced features to prevent access to your data. It secures your site at the same time as improving its performance. The best part? If your site is compromised, Kinsta will fix it for you, free of charge. 

They offer the following security measures along with your Kinsta WordPress hosting plan:

• DDoS detection to prevent traffic spikes causing your site to crash
• Uptime monitoring every 2 minutes (720 daily uptime checks )
• Hardware firewalls
• SSL support
• Two-factor authentication
• IP Geolocation blocking
• Automatic banning of IPs that have more than 6 failed login attempts in 1 minute.
• Enforced strong password suggestions for all new installations
• High-performance Kinsta CDN

Kinsta hosting service supports encrypted SFTP and SSH connections and offers free Let’s Encrypt certificates to enable HTTPS on your new site. Daily automatic backups allow your site to be installed instantly after being hacked. 

No more crying over hundreds of hours of lost data. This time, your new site comes back more secure than before. They also offer system-generated WordPress backup for all sites on your account. 

These backups are available as restore points on the MyKinsta dashboard. Kinsta WordPress hosting uses Linux containers on top of the Google Cloud Platform. It can isolate not just each Kinsta account completely, but also separate each of the WordPress sites. 

Truly, security is one of Kinsta’s top priorities.

Pros

Aside from the features listed above, here are some of the advantages of using Kinsta:

• Free site migration if you have an existing site from another web host
• 24/7 customer support team who are available just a few clicks away from your Kinsta account dashboard
• Free SSL certificate for existing or new sites that is one click away from MyKinsa Dashboard
• Bigger, safer, and faster server space using Google Cloud Platform
• Offers free demo of their control panel without signing up for a hosting plan
• Option to choose the nearest data center to your audience
• Excellent site speed based on demos and other Kinsta reviews
• User and beginner-friendly custom control panel
• 99.9% uptime guaranteed
• Optimized for business and e-commerce
• Easy site installation and set up
• Great reviews

Cons

Here are the disadvantages of using Kinsta:

• It is super pricey compared to other providers
• Unlike most entry-level shared hosting providers, Kinsta does not offer a lower starting price for all its plans
• No email hosting plans provided
• No phone support

Final Thoughts

If your business needs are big, then Kinsta is the perfect host for you. It is reliable, fast, and secure. It is optimized for businesses and enterprises. 

Although the plans are limited, you can customize your plan according to your business and project requirements. 

Support is available for you 24/7. Overall, it is not only a fast-growing hosting company but one that adapts to the changes brought by its customer’s needs. 

I hope this Kinsta review helped you in your hosting journey!