Do you need the fastest WordPress web host? Are you looking for someone to keep your WordPress website safe and backed up? Kinsta is one of the reliable options that you can go for. But before you sign up, just look at our comprehensive Kinsta review.
In this review, we will look at its background, features, pricing, and our final verdict.
So if you are looking for reliable WordPress hosting, or you’re just curious to know what Kinsta can offer you, this review is for you.
So, Let’s move forward to know more about it.
What we will cover in this Kinsta Review.
- About Kinsta WordPress Web Hosting
- What do you get with Kinsta?
- Technical Details of Kinsta Managed WordPress Hosting
- Kinsta Account Management Dashboard.
- Kinsta Hosting Pricing Details
- Final Verdict
1. Kinsta WordPress Web Hosting
Kinsta was founded in 2013, and since then, it has been working to become the best hosting provider for WordPress users who are prepared to look ahead to marketing campaigns and low prices to get a fast and secure home for their website.
That does not mean that Kinsta’s $30-per-month entry-level plan isn’t competitive over other premium managed WordPress hosts. But it’s just that this is not low-cost budget hosting.
What you will do for your money is managed WordPress hosting. It means Kinsta not only manages some aspects of managing a WordPress website for you, but it also hosts your site in an environment that is optimized for WordPress websites.
It helps you in tasks like securing, caching, and backing up the WordPress website that is needed to be done by you. It enables you to save time, as well as reduces the risk of something going wrong if you’re not familiar with the system WordPress works.
Using Kinsta managed WordPress hosting, you can expect quicker website loading times and less downtime, and fewer performance issues than another web hosting.
Moreover, as Kinsta exclusively offers to host WordPress websites, all of their support staff are extremely experienced at assisting WordPress users. They are also specialists in resolving problems related to this software. Some of the support staff are also contributors to the WordPress software.
Let’s move forward to know what Kinsta offers and how what makes it stand apart from its competitor hosts operating in this space.
2. What Do You Get with Kinsta?
If the concept of fast loading times, fewer website management tasks to take care of, and shorter downtime sound appealing to you, then Kinsta could be the best web host for you. To understand if that’s the case, let’s check out precisely what you get when you sign up with them.
2.1 AUTOMATIC WORDPRESS WEBSITE BACKUPS
As we have mentioned above, automatic daily WordPress website backups are part of the service at Kinsta. Automated backups are kept for a minimum of 14 days on the entry-level plans and longer on the higher plans.
Restoring backups is simple, with the option of extending them to your live site or the test environment. With the Kinsta account dashboard, you can easily manage WordPress website backups.
Apart from daily backups, you can upgrade to six-hour and hourly backups for an additional monthly fee. You can also manually generate complete website backups with a few clicks of a button, as and when required. Also, you have the choice of downloading these backups for safekeeping.
2.2 USE OF THE GOOGLE CLOUD PLATFORM
By utilizing the Google Cloud Platform, Kinsta can allow 20 server locations for hosting your website. What makes Kinsta different from most other managed WordPress hosting providers is its use of the Google Cloud Platform.
It means WordPress websites are hosted on the infrastructure built and managed by Google and employed by companies such as Snapchat, HTC, Spotify, Best Buy, Philips, and Coca-Cola, and much more.
Being a Google Cloud Platform partner lets Kinsta host your website on a state-of-the-art infrastructure with the option of 21 global server locations, and many more are on the way (Hong Kong and Switzerland are coming soon).
This highly scalable hardware of the Google Cloud Platform makes sure that your website always has a way to the resources it needs to deliver a seamless user experience for your visitors. For instance, if your website goes viral, automatic scaling makes sure that your site will handle any surges in traffic.
2.3 WORDPRESS WEBSITE STAGING SERVICE
Utilizing the staging site covered with all Kinsta hosting plans, you can examine any changes before copying them to your live site.
All Kinsta hosting plans involve access to a staging site where you can check out new plugins, website customizations, and code edits before driving them to your live site in just one click.
Kinsta owns some simply accessible tools that developers may find helpful.
Developers should also relish switching between different PHP versions, easy restarting of the PHP engine, and path to the New Relic PHP monitoring tool. There’s also a search-and-replace feature accessible from the Kinsta dashboard for making changes to the contents of your WordPress website database.
3. Technical details of Kinsta Managed WordPress Hosting
This part of our Kinsta review will answer many questions that you may want to know about the finer points and technical details of the Kinsta service:
- HTTP/2.0: In use on the servers and the CDN.
- Post-hack clean-up services: If your site got hacked while hosted by Kinsta, they’d fix it for free.
- SSL: Get a complimentary SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt or install your own.
- Datacenter locations: You will get 21 server locations to choose from, including options in Australia and South America, as well as multiple locations in the USA, Europe, and Asia.
- WordPress website migration: It is available for free on all hosting plans.
- Staging sites: All plans include access to a staging site with one-click deployment to the live site.
- Visitor Analytics: Review data on your website traffic through the My Kinsta dashboard.
- SFTP: You will get Secure FTP access to your webspace for uploading and editing files.
- Website caching: Four types of caching are there, that includes server-level caching and an in-house WordPress caching plugin.
- Server file manager: You will not get an online file manager, just FTP access to the server space.
- Content Delivery Network (CDN): You will get 50 GB of KeyCDN usage monthly on the entry-level Kinsta plan, more on the higher plans.
- Uptime checks: Your site status is checked every five minutes to enable the support team to respond to any instances of downtime that are detected.
- Database access: phpMyAdmin is used to obtain the WordPress website database through a browser.
- Plugin restrictions: There’s a list of banned plugins that involve some caching, security, and optimization plugins that can influence website performance.
- PHP: You can switch between PHP 5.6, 7, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, and 7.4 at the touch of a button.
- Email service: There is no email service on any of the Kinsta plans; G Suite is the recommended option.
- WordPress website management: You will have the ability to update plugins through the My Kinsta account dashboard. There are no automated plugin or WordPress core software updates.
- Security measures: With Kinsta, Many measures are in place to keep your site secure, involving GeoIP blocking, DDoS scanning, proactively stopping malicious code entering the network, self-healing PHP, GCP firewall, plus more.
- Support channels: There is a 24/7 live chat channel and ticketing system, but no telephone support is available.
You can find more information about Kinsta features by visiting the features page of the Kinsta website.
Now, it’s time to see what Kinsta Dashboard can offer you.
4. Kinsta Account Management Dashboard
Kinsta has built its own custom dashboard. The My Kinsta portal is straightforward to navigate. It enables you to perform tasks such as building new WordPress websites, updating any plugins you’ve installed on your site, and handling backups.
Kinsta utilizes a custom dashboard for account and website management.
You can see resource usage stats to understand how much of your plan allocation you’ve used and also view the analytics of website visitors through the dashboard.
4.1 INSTALLING WordPress
Once you have signed up with Kinsta, you can log in to the custom control panel and build a WordPress website. The process is quite straightforward, and in just a few clicks, you’ll own a brand new WordPress installation set up and ready to go.
If you’re hosting many sites with Kinsta through one account, You can manage those sites through the same dashboard.
After logging in to your Kinsta account dashboard, you can also contact the support staff through the live 24/7 chat service. Although Kinsta doesn’t offer phone support, you can submit a ticket or utilize the messenger to reach the help desk.
5. Kinsta Hosting Pricing Details
Kinsta currently possesses eight managed WordPress hosting plans.
Kinsta has the Starter and Pro plans, four Business plans, and two Enterprise plans. Here are their details:
- Starter: $30 per month for one WordPress install, 25,000 visits, and 10 GB disk space.
- Pro: $60 per month for two WordPress installs, 50,000 visits, and 20 GB disk space.
- Business plans: Starting from $100 per month for three WordPress installs, 100,000 visits, and 30 GB disk space.
- Enterprise plans: Starting from $600 per month for 60 WordPress installs, 1,000,000 visits, and 100 GB disk space.
If you pay annually, you will get two months free, and all plans have a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate and CDN access. They also allow a 30-day money-back guarantee on all plans so that you can use Kinsta without financial risk.
Every plan has a way to the same infrastructure, powered by the Google Cloud Platform. It means upgrading just multiplies the number of WordPress installations allowed and the visits and storage allowances, rather than enhancing website performance, as is the case with some other web hosts.
5.1 WHAT ABOUT OVERAGE FEES?
While talking about overage fees, there are two major types. Their visit overage fees are $1 per 1,000 visits, while CDN overages are charged at $0.10 per GB.
These charges are instantly applied to your account, and your website is kept online. However, in the case of what Kinsta term extreme overages, they hold the right to temporarily halt access to your website until the issue has been resolved.
You can review the full details by visiting the Kinsta plans page.
Final Verdict
As you have gone through this Kinsta Review, you have seen that Kinsta allows fast managed WordPress hosting with impressive levels of uptime and the capacity to handle many visitors simultaneously.
You also get some useful features, such as automatic website backups, security monitoring, and an easy-to-use staging environment. The support staff is accommodating and very responsive via the 24/7 live chat service.
Although the Kinsta pricing is competitive with other managed WordPress hosting providers, it’s not affordable compared with entry-level shared hosting. However, in all areas, Kinsta is a huge step up from low-cost web hosting.
So, if you’re looking for a quicker and more secure host for your WordPress website, or if you need to launch your new site on managed WordPress hosting, Kinsta is highly recommended.
If you’re still not convinced, thanks to the 30-day money-back guarantee, you could always sign up and transfer your site to the staging environment. You can then view how quickly your site loads, with the choice of getting a refund if you’re not satisfied with the results.
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