In this Kinsta Review, we will discuss all the features that it provides to users and its pros and cons. Further, we will also look at what speed it offers to the consumers because it is one of the essential factors in web hosting.
Launched in 2013, Kinsta is a London based company that was made by WordPress enthusiasts with the sole purpose of managing WordPress sites.
Kinsta is considered one of the fastest managed WordPress web hosts in the market. One of the main reasons for being the best is that they allow the users to keep their websites secure and backed up all the time.
Most importantly, is it worth choosing this company as a web hosting provider for your website? Before starting the Kinsta web hosting review, let us take a glance at what is Kinsta? So, without wasting your time, let’s go!
What Is Kinsta?
Mark Gevalda (WordPress Web developer) founded Kinsta in 2013; since then, the company has tried to make its name in the market by providing top-notch services. Kinsta WP hosting is a simple platform that provides hosting services.
The company is still entirely based on the Google Cloud Platform, which is very different from the Shared, Dedicated, and VPS servers. When you sign up for an account on Kinsta, it takes care of every critical aspect of your WordPress site and manages it.
For instance, it makes sure that your website is secured and backed up without you worrying about it. The best thing about this is that it saves your time, and also, if you are not familiar with complicated coding stuff, it keeps you safe from doing anything wrong to the site.
Kinsta uses LXD managed hosts and LXC software containers on every site to ensure all the software can be installed on the website. The hosting provider also provides that the website’s sources are 100 percent private to save it from any hacking possibility on the server.
The company also provides its users with exceptional page load speed with a downtime guarantee of only 0.1 percent, which is quite good. And even if you face any downtime or issue regarding the website, their customer service team and staff will solve your problem in no time as they are highly experienced with WordPress.
Most companies just say that they will solve the users’ everyday challenges, but Kinsta web hosting does solve all the day-to-day challenges. Now, we will start our Kinsta managed hosting review by first looking at the price of the company’s packages. So, let’s begin!
Packages of Kinsta
Kinsta provides its users with more than ten different hosting plans to choose from. All of them offer fast load speeds and excellent security features to customers. But before discussing the plans, you should know that every plan’s price is decided by visits to the website, not by bandwidth or traffic.
If you breach the required limit, the company costs an extra dollar for every additional 1 thousand visitors.
Starter
The basic or Starter plan of the Kinsta starts at $30 per month; it includes 1 WordPress Installation, 10GB storage, 25 thousand visits, Free SSL and CDN services.
Pro
Pro package of the company includes 2 WP installations, 20GB storage, Free SSL certificate, CDN services, and 50 thousand visits per month. The Pro package costs $60 per month.
Business 1
This plan costs $100 per month, and it includes 5 WP installation, 30GB storage, Free SSL certificate, CDN services, along with one hundred thousand visits per month.
Business 2
This costs double of Business 1, i.e., $200 per month. The package includes features like 10 WP installations, 40GB storage, a Free SSL certificate, CDN services, and two hundred fifty-thousand visits per month.
Business 3
Business 3 package includes 20 WP installations, 50GB storage, Free SSL certificate, CDN services, and four hundred thousand visits, and it only costs $300 per month.
Business 4
The package Business 4 comes at the price of $400 per month. It includes services like 40 WP installation, 60GB storage, Free SSL certificate, CDN services, and six hundred thousand visits per month.
Enterprise 1
This plan costs $600 per month, and it includes 60 WP installations, 100GB storage, a Free SSL certificate, CDN services, and ten hundred thousand visits on the website per month.
Enterprise 2
This package comes at the cost of $900 per month. It includes features such as 80 WP installation, 150GB storage, Free SSL certificate, CDN services, and 15 hundred thousand visits per month.
Enterprise 3
Enterprise 3 costs $1200 per month, and it includes 120 WP installations, 200GB storage, Free SSL certificate, CDN services, and 20 hundred thousand visits per month.
Enterprise 4
The final plan is called the Enterprise 4, which comes at $1500 per month. It includes 150 WP installations, 250GB storage, a Free SSL certificate, CDN services, and 30 hundred thousand visits per month.
From the above plans, we can figure that Kinsta is a scalable provider, and it offers its users a ton of packages so they can choose one according to their website needs.
As for the performance, every hardware of the company is attached to the same server, meaning you will get the highest version even with the cheapest hosting plans.
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Features of Kinsta?
Easy to Use
Kinsta provides its users with one of the easiest ways to make their account on the Kinsta server. To create the account, you just have to give them the email address and subscribe to their plan (whatever suits you). After you have made the account, you can simply log in and set up your website.
Creating the website is super easy; you just have to fill out this short form in which the company asks about the data centers you would like to use. Once you are done filling up the form, you can push the button Add to finish creating your site. Now, you will be logged into the WordPress dashboard of your site and ready to add content.
Kinsta’s Own Control Panel
Most companies provide their consumers with the market standard control panel like cPanel, but Kinsta has developed its own control panel. The control panel of the Kinsta looks just like WordPress, although it’s no surprise because the primary purpose is to manage WordPress websites and applications.
The dashboard of Kinsta allows the user to review all analytics of their hosting plan in a single tab; they can see the website bandwidth, performance. Furthermore, the best thing about the control panel is that it allows the users to set everything according to their needs.
Exceptional Uptime
As for reliability, Kinsta provides its users with an uptime of 99.9 percent. And they maintain it by checking the uptime of consumers’ websites every 2 mins. If we talk about the whole day, the tally goes up to 720 times daily.
This shows us that even if a website faces downtime, the uptime performance check feature will find the issue quickly and resolve it in no time. This is what everyone wants in a website hosting provider to give them a top-notch uptime.
Top Speed
Speed is one of the critical aspects to consider when choosing a best web hosting provider because no one will ever wait on your website for more than 10 seconds to load. To ensure that Kinta’s users do not face this face, the company takes every necessary step to make your website run 90 percent faster than other sites.
If we talk numbers, a page linked with the Kinsta server takes about an average time of 1.2 seconds to load. And the best thing about the company is that even if you migrate from other servers, the page load speed is just the same.
Great Security Features
Kinsta takes the security of its users very seriously. The company makes sure that they give the consumers a more secure platform for web hosting. For starters, it offers the customers a Free SSL certificate in every plan to provide an extra layer of security and an opportunity to feature the website on top of the Google SEO rankings. what is SEO ?
Furthermore, it also offers the consumers DDoS detection, hardware firewalls, and other essential security features to face any attack from hackers. So, as a user, if you prefer security over everything, then Kinsta is the ideal platform for you.
CDN Services
CDN (Content Delivery Network) is a system that takes the cache data of a website and delivers it to more Data Centers. This system’s purpose is that users should be able to utilize more than one server at a time.
Most web hosting providers offer their users Cloudflare services, but Kinsta has developed its own CDN, which is very fast, and there are no considerable limits. The best thing about this CDN service is that you don’t have to pay extra bucks for it because it is already included in the plans you are paying for.
Kinsta Provides a Staging Environment
Kinsta provides its users with a staging environment, which helps consumers test out some changes on a separate server before making it on the actual website. Not only this, but the staging area also shows you the result when you code some changes on the site.
This feature is provided on all plans, but you can remove it from the package if you do not like it. However, our advice will be that you should have this feature as it allows you to take risks on the staging area rather than on the main website.
LXD Container Technology
Kinsta uses LXD container technology for the hosts that are using shared, VPS, and dedicated servers. There is more than one website on the server, and in case of any hacking activity, most of the time, all the websites get affected. But with LXD, it does not happen; we will show you how.
This LXD container technology allows each site’s users to be isolated but has automatic scalability meaning every site is not obligated to share its resources with other sites. When some malicious hacking event occurs on one site, only that website will get affected instead of all the sites on the server.
WooCommerce Hosting Opportunity
Kinsta allows its consumers to host a site on one of the most famous e-commerce platforms, WooCommerce. It provides the users with top page load speeds and uptime so that no customer leaves the site due to slow speed and downtime.
The e-commerce site or any site in particular needs high speed because the customers will not wait for your website to load, and if they have to wait, they will leave the site for sure. But with Kinsta, you will not face this problem as the company makes sure they provide a fast website with the ability to hold the highest spike in the traffic meter.
Features for Developers
Kinsta offers features to pro web developers as well. For instance, in all the plans, the company provides an SSH account along with FTP accounts. This allows the web developers to have more control over the graphical interface and will enable them to install additional software on the site without any difficulty.
Apart from this, Kinsta also supports tools like Git and WP-CLI. This allows web developers to update and install new themes on the website with ease. This developer option is a handy tool to have by your side.
Now, we will look at some of the Pros and Cons in our Kinsta review and decide whether Kinsta web hosting is the perfect option for you or not.
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Pros of Kinsta
Free Site Migration
Kinsta offers its users a free site migration feature meaning that you can migrate your WordPress site from any platform to Kinsta for free. The best thing about this feature is that it tests the site before launching on the Kinsta servers.
The procedure of migrating the site from any platform to Kinsta is super easy as well. After signing up for the account, you have to go to the dashboard to find the migration option.
In the migration section, you will see a migration request form; fill the form, and the company will allow you time for migration. It is indeed a time saver and hassles task to do.
Automatic Backups
The company offers its users automated WordPress website backups, and these backups are usually saved for 14 days on the basic plan. If you want your data to be held for a long time, you have to choose higher-tier plans.
You can also gain access to daily backups, usually Six-hour backups or hourly backups, but you have to pay extra for this feature. Paying extra is worth it because, with the daily backup, you can manually create the backups of your data and also restore them on your website with only one button.
And to put the cherry on top, you can download these data backups for safekeeping as well.
Data Centers All Over the World
Kinsta has Data centers on all the critical strategic locations over the world. The company has 20 data centers globally:
the list includes Council Bluffs (Iowa, USA), St. Ghislain (Belgium), Changhua County (Taiwan), Sydney (Australia), The Dalles (Oregon, USA), Ashburn (Virginia, USA), Moncks Corner (South Carolina, USA), São Paulo (Brazil), London (UK).
Frankfurt (Germany), Jurong West (Singapore), Tokyo (Japan), Mumbai (India), Montreal (Canada), Netherlands, Hamina (Finland), Los Angeles (California), Hong Kong, Osaka (Japan), Zurich (Switzerland).
When you are signing up for an account, the company gives you many data center options to choose from. Just select a near one for fast loading time.
Can Handle High Traffic Spikes
Kinsta has the capability of handling high traffic spikes without the site facing downtime. This is because the company uses LXD technology, PHP workers, and scaling CPUs; they help the site run faster even when there is a lot of traffic.
This feature is a hand one because there comes a time when your posts get viral, and you get a lot of traffic on the website, but there is a problem that your site gets slow or crashes altogether. Kinsta promises its users that they will not face this problem as they can handle high spikes.
Customer Support Team
If you have any query regarding the hosting site, don’t worry because Kinsta offers the consumer a customer support team available 24/7 through email, chat, and Kinsta live chat tool Intercom. You can quickly contact the customer support team via the chat button located at the right corner of your website’s screen.
You do not have to get stressed about the team’s staff as they are WordPress experts even most of them developed something for WP. In case you still can’t understand them, there are live tutorials, videos available that will surely help you solve your issue.
Money-Back Guarantee
A money-back guarantee is a great option to have at the table because sometimes you do not like something and want to change your hosting provider.
Kinsta hosting is such a right web hosting provider that it does not want its users to leave the platform angry. It offers the consumers a 30-day money-back guarantee in case they change their minds.
It also offers other refunds; for example, when the company does not meet the promised uptime of 99.9 percent, it gives the users an extra credit in their hosting plan.
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Cons of Kinsta
The Company Is Expensive
The packages of Kinsta are so expensive even the company’s basic plan starts from $30 per month. And if we choose the high tier plans, their price goes to $1500 per month. However, Kinsta does offer the users two months free trial when they buy a yearly plan.
Whereas if we talk about the company’s competitors, they start their basic plans under $10 per month, perfect for small businesses. So, we can say that Kinsta is not for the small businesses but for those big companies that are already established and just need managing.
Does Not Allow Specific Plugins
The company has a list of additional plugins that it does not support or install on the website; these plugins include EWWW Image Optimizer and other popular WordPress plugins. For instance, Kinsta restricts you from installing any new caching or backup plugin on the website.
It may be because the company already has an automated backup plan and other daily backup plans for users. But in the end, this is a deal-breaker fact for the consumers who want to store their own backup rather than relying on the company.
No Phone Support Team
Most companies offer their services via mail, live chat, and phone, but Kinsta is currently offering customer support service via online chat only. For most people, the most convenient and immediate mode is the telephone because they are comfortable discussing their problems through human voice interaction.
Moreover, the company published an entire article based upon why they are not offering telephone service. They think the written material (messages) and screenshots are essential when resolving a technical issue rather than calling again and again only to tell your problem to different people, which could cause a lot of headaches.
No Domain Registrations and Email Hosting
Kinsta does not register a domain, so you have to use another service to register a domain. Also, the company does not offer email hosting, and for this purpose, you will have to sign up for a different email hosting service.
This is another deal breaker because most of the hosts are looking to register their domains and want emails according to the domain name. The only positive from this we can get is that the company gives all its attention to hosting and managing your website rather than focusing on domain and emails.
What Makes Kinsta Stand Out From the Rest?
The following are the reasons that make Kinsta stand out from the rest of the market’s hosting providers.
- First of all, the company is based on Google Cloud Platform, and it is perfect for hosting a WordPress site.
- One other thing that makes it apart from its competitors is that it doesn’t offer the consumers a standard control panel. Instead, it has made its own control panel, which is very easy to use.
- Kinsta performs so well that it can handle any traffic spikes, whereas its competitors can not take a sudden increase in traffic.
- The company offers its users exceptional security features for free that other companies charge for. For example, most companies cost extra for providing firewalls and SSL certificates, whereas Kinsta delivers them for free.
- It gives you what it has promised; for instance, it promises the users with an uptime of 99.9 percent, and they do provide the required uptime. Whereas other hosting providers in the market just say that they give 99.9 percent uptime, but in reality, they don’t.
- Kinsta’s customer support service team is well experienced, even most of them have created something for WordPress.
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Final Verdict
Should you use Kinsta as your WordPress hosting provider or not? Well, if you want our advice, then the answer is YES because Kinsta performs well in every field (Speed, Performance, Security, Customer support). It also comes as a very reliable host if you want to launch a new site on the managed WordPress hosting server.
And for this specific reason, it is considered one of the best-managed WordPress hosts present in the market now. Still, everything depends on you at the end of the day, like what you want for your website and which features will be ideal for you.
If you are new in the web hosting world, then shared hosting will be just fine for you, but if you are getting high traffic and making money from your business, you will need a hosting provider to handle everything. In this case, that hosting provider will be Kinsta due to its ability to manage everything with ease, as explained above in the article.
I hope this guide of Kinsta Review has helped you get a basic understanding of how this hosting provider works, and by now, you may have decided what the ideal option for you is. If you have not, then please visit the website of the company for more details about Kinsta. Visit now!
