Why you can trust TechRadar
We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.
When it comes to best web hosting and website management, there is no shortage of options. The vast majority of companies out there offer affordable services that are good enough to get the job done. For us, Kinsta is the stand-out choice for hosting for agencies.
Kinsta is a cloud-based hosting solution providing services for WordPress websites, web applications, databases, and static sites. They provide access to high-performance servers and features such as staging environments, automatic backups, enterprise-level Cloudflare integration, and more.
Kinsta also includes quality security features such as DDoS protection, SSL certificate with wildcard support, and malware scanning and removal.
- Kinsta subscription options:
- 12 month plan – $284 per month ($3,408 total cost)
From the main website, you can access Kinsta’s official blog. It’s easy on the eye and filled with a myriad of articles, most of which are related to WordPress and software development. In addition to this, Kinsta offers a fresh and video-packed YouTube channel and relatively active presence on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
(Image credit: Future)
Kinsta features
Kinsta offers high-end CPUs, as well as global availability thanks to Google’s C2 and C3D machines on its premium tier network. By using these top-of-the-line CPUs, you are guaranteed that your website will be up and running faster than ever before.
To further improve the speed of your website, Kinsta also offers a global content delivery network with over 260 locations around the world. This allows Kinsta to deliver fast pages and serve cached assets from your visitors’ closest location.
Kinsta also comes with built-in application performance monitoring (APM), which is its custom-designed performance monitoring tool specifically for WordPress sites. We used this feature to identify any potential issues or bottlenecks slowing down our site during our test of the hosting service.
Kinsta’s DevKinsata feature provides a comprehensive development environment that makes it easy to develop applications locally on your computer. DevKinsata includes many helpful features such as version control which allows developers to roll back to previous versions of their code if needed, easy debugging capabilities with Xdebug integration, and deployments to production servers with just one click.
With the new Kinsta Cloudflare integration, we took advantage of a wildcard SSL certificate which let us secure our subdomains with just one certificate. A wildcard SSL is an SSL certificate that secures both a root domain and its individual subdomains. This is in contrast to other types of certificates that require you to list each individual subdomain on the certificate.
As part of its Cloudflare integration, Kinsta offers customers a unique benefit – reserved IP addresses. Reserved IPs are unique IP addresses assigned to each Kinsta customer site. These IP addresses are reserved exclusively for use by that specific customer and ensure that the DNS A-record IP address will not be shared by other sites on Cloudflare’s network. In some cases, this can cause problems if a service blocks a spam site that happens to share the same Cloudflare IP address as your site.
We were also impressed with the Kinsta Brotli Compression Tool (a lossless compression format that is supported by all major browsers and achieves better compression ratios than gzip).
Kinsta also released a tool called Edge Caching. This is an incredibly powerful tool for websites running WordPress that can significantly reduce the amount of time it takes to serve cached HTML to site visitors. Edge Caching is included free with all Kinsta plans, and no additional plugins are required.
Kinsta’s Edge Caching works by saving your website/page cache to Cloudflare’s global network of over 260 data centers. When site visitors load your website, cached responses will be delivered from the location closest to them, helping to reduce latency and ensure faster loading times.
With the help of the Early Hints, you can further improve site speed. Early hints is a modern web standard that defines a new 103 HTTP status code. Enabling this web standard on your site, it gives your site visitors’ browsers the chance to download certain resources in advance or in parallel with others. This results in a faster page rendering speed.
A curiosity of Kinsta’s hosting, but one that we found made sense, is the apparent lack of a temporary URL for checking the site runs accurately. However, this is a feature that can be easily turned on and off, and lasts for around 60 minutes when enabled. Given that a site doesn’t need to be seen by the public or crawlers before launch, this is useful.
For web hosting services in Australia, Kinsta CDN is in six Australian cities, including Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney.
(Image credit: Future)
Is Kinsta easy to use?
We find Kinsta easy to use – from signing up to navigating through the dashboard. The web host provides you with an intuitive dashboard that makes hosting your website easy. The dashboard let us quickly access all the features and settings in one place, which makes it simple to manage our website’s performance and security.
With Kinsta, you can also set up and manage multiple websites from one account, as well as deploy applications, databases or static sites, meaning you don’t have to switch between different accounts every time you want to make changes or update your site or create a new web app.
Kinsta also has a number of helpful features that make managing your website easier. All these features are designed so that even those who aren’t tech-savvy can easily manage their website without too much hassle.
As a fully managed WordPress hosting provider, Kinsta’s prices are higher than other web hosts (Image credit: Future)
Kinsta plans and pricing
Kinsta offers different plans, ranging from $35/month to $1700/month. All plans include free wildcard SSL, CDN, staging, and unlimited migrations. But what do you get when you purchase one of these plans? The Single plans starts at $35/month and allows you to install 1 WordPress, 10 GB of storage space, 125 GB free CDN, and 35,000 visits per month. The Single-site plans scale with each step up getting more site visits, storage, and CDN bandwidth. Each Single site plan denotes the support amount of visits. The plans go as high as 1,250,000+ visits, 15 GB+ storage and 1000GB CDN bandwidth.
Multiple-site plans support multiple WordPress installs. Each plan name denotes the amount of WordPress installs supported. Each multiple-site plan supports multisite network and site cloning. For WP 2 ($70/mo) you get two WordPress installs, with 70,000 visits, 250 GB of CDN bandwidth, and 20 GB storage. As the plans increase in price the resources, site visits, and amount of WordPress installs increase too. The WP 40 plan ($450/mo) supports 40 WordPress installs, 60 GB storage, 1500 GB of CDN, and 75,000 monthly visits.
Kinsta also offers an Enterprise Plan for multiple sites, which starts at $675/month and includes 60+ WordPress installs, 100+ GB of space, 1,250,000+ visits, and a 30-day backup retention.
All the above plans come with unlimited free migrations and a 30-day money-back guarantee, so if you are not satisfied with the service, you can request a refund. Select plans on Single and Multiple-site tiers also include a one month free trial.
Agency Hosting
Kinsta’s Agency program is targeted, price-wise, at established digital agencies. The Agency 20 plan, which we tested, offers support for 20 WordPress installs, so potentially 20 clients. It also includes an extra site, for your agency. 500,000 visits, 50GB of storage, and 1,000GB CDN storage makes this an attractive starting point, but Agency 40 ($375/month with annual billing) and Agency 60 ($563/month under the same terms) are also available, with corresponding increases in installs.
These plans also include a white label provision, removing the Kinsta branding for reselling the hosting to the client, and access to beta tools. Backups, advanced caching, and migrations are also included with these packages, along with that all-important developer support. A number of tools are available here, from easy site cloning to Git integration and access to the Kinsta API.
We used GTmetrix to measure the uptime and response time of our Kinsta site (Image credit: GTmetrix)
Kinsta speed and experience
Kinsta argues that it is almost a certainty that users will see “faster page load times, along with back-end (WordPress dashboard) speed” when hosting with them. Faster than what, we asked ourselves. Faster than the average speed, faster than lightning or faster than Superman?
In any case, GTmetrix (a tool we used to test the speed performance of Kinsta’s main website) appears to agree with them given that it rated the performance of their website with an A (91%), which is not a result we often see. All major core metrics related to the speed were above the average, which looks pretty promising.
When it comes to uptime, Kinsta’s technical team monitors all of its users’ websites at all times, which means that they will be notified if any downtime occurs and lasts longer than five minutes, and, thus, prompt them to rush to resolve the issue. After monitoring Kinsta’s main website for a month using UptimeRobot, we couldn’t find a single trace of downtime, which does inspire confidence.
Latest results
We recently ran more tests on Kinsta for our best hosting for agencies guide. We did the same test we do for every host. We migrate a simple website and perform some baseline WordPress benchmark test and do some Siege testing for concurrent visitors. We used the Agency 20 plan. While these don’t show what the server is like under load. It does show a good baseline score for site performance.
Swipe to scroll horizontallyWordPress benchmark
Performance metric
Result
Operations with large text data
6.68
Random binary data operations
8.24
Recursive mathematical calculations
7.32
Iterative mathematical calculations
8.63
Filesystem
Row 5 – Cell 1
Filesystem write ability
9.71
Local file copy and access speed
9.56
Small file IO test
10
Database
Row 9 – Cell 1
Importing large amount of data to database
9.23
Simple queries on single table
9.88
Complex database queries on multiple tables
8.23
Object cache
Row 13 – Cell 1
Persistent object cache enabled
0
Network
Row 15 – Cell 1
Network download speed test
10
Server score
8.1
Swipe to scroll horizontallySiege
Performance metric
5 concurrent visitors
9 concurrent visitors
Transactions
8484
13580
Availability
96.37
96.36
Elapsed time
299.43
299.19
Data transferred
91.72
145.90
Response time
0.17
0.18
Transaction rate
28.33
45.39
Throughput
0.31
0.49
Concurrency
4.87
8.11
Successful transactions
8164
13068
Longest transaction
1.33
39.76
Failed transactions
320
513
Shortest transaction
0.09
0.08
Kinsta security
Kinsta is one such provider that offers quality security measures (in our opinion) including SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates. An SSL certificate is a type of digital certificate that provides encryption and authentication for data sent over the internet. It helps protect user information, like credit card numbers and passwords, from being accessed by malicious third parties.
An SSL certificate also helps verify the identity of a website so that users know they are connecting to the correct server and not a malicious one.
Kinsta uses Cloudflare’s infrastructure to provide wildcard SSL certificates with 128-bit or higher encryption as well as 2048-bit RSA keys. Kinsta says its servers are also constantly monitored 24/7 for any signs of suspicious activity or hacking, which is good to know. Kinsta also offers a 99.9% SLA-backed uptime guarantee.
There’s also a Malware Security Pledge in which Kinsta’s team will help restore a site in the event of an attack. Kinsta have earned SOC 2 and ISO 27001 compliance so security standards are high and hopefully you’ll never have to use that.
You’ll find plenty of how-to guides in Kinsta’s knowledgebase (Image credit: Future)
Customer support
Kinsta offers knowledgeable sales representatives who can help you find the hosting plan that best fits your website or project.
If you want a deeper dive into all of Kinsta’s features, consider scheduling a personalized demo with one of its experts. This is an excellent way to get familiar with Kinsta’s powerful dashboard and hosting features, as well as ask any questions that come up during the process.
We had a few questions about our website and contacted Kinsta through its question form on the website. They got back to us the next day with answers tailored specifically to our hosting dilemma.
Kinsta’s support team is available 24/7/365 via live chat in the MyKinsta dashboard so that you can quickly receive help. You can also open up tickets here if there are ever any issues with your site.
As noted, we also tried Kinsta’s Agency 20 plan, arranging for a site to be migrated via a backup. The support operative who took ownership of this task completed it within a couple of hours, a timescale that included not just scanning the ZIP file for potential issues, but also fully migrating it and testing the site.
We later ran into an issue trying to point a domain at the hosting. This requires a bit more clicking and settings configuration than with other hosts (switching nameservers is just one aspect of this), but while I found this baffling at first, the support team member who walked me through it helped me solve it within 15 minutes.
Kinsta also offers free webinars to its customers (Image credit: Future)
There are more than a few self-help options including regularly updated documentation, free e-books, free webinars, a newsletter and a blog we mentioned before, and everything is dedicated to bringing knowledge about WordPress to its users. In addition to this, Kinsta’s YouTube channel is filled with step-by-step guides and the new ones are coming out on a week-to-week basis at the very least.
As an alternative, you can reach Kinsta’s “timely and knowledgeable” support via email and chat.
Kinsta alternatives
Much like Kinsta, Flywheel is a fellow US-based host specialized in “top-of-the-line” managed WordPress hosting solutions. Both of them strive to be beginner-friendly, offer well-rounded, feature-packed packages and are on the high-priced side of the spectrum. However, Kinsta’s least expensive solution starts at a whopping $30, half as much as what is offered by Flywheel. Therefore, if the price is the key criterion (since both hosts are competent) for you, you could save some bucks by going with Flywheel.
Bluehost is one of the most popular hosting options on the market today, even when it comes to managed WordPress hosting. In comparison with Kinsta, Bluehost has a myriad of hosting types and options besides WordPress and its WordPress plans are well-structured and suitable for newcomers. If you are, however, looking for premium managed WordPress options, you might find yourself at home with Kinsta.
DreamHost is a US-based provider supplying WordPress-optimized hosting solutions and related services, including a domain registration, which is something you won’t get with Kinsta. Another thing they don’t provide is a website builder and you’ll have that as an option with DreamHost. What is more, in addition to offering more hosting options, DreamHost has more pocket-friendly plans, so you’ll save some money as well.
Although HostGator does not specialize in WordPress hosting, it has a few rather attractive solutions on the offer. Nonetheless, if you are looking for a premium fully managed WordPress hosting (and you are ready to shell out the money) Kinsta might be a better pick. If you would rather have something simpler and more on the affordable side, HostGator is an excellent choice.
WP Engine is also a great alternative as it offers a wide range of services, from shared hosting to managed WordPress hosting and dedicated servers. WP Engine is known for its fast speeds and reliable uptime, as well as its excellent customer service and support team.
SiteGround is another great option if you’re looking for an alternative to Kinsta. This provider offers a variety of hosting plans that range from shared hosting to VPS and cloud solutions. SiteGround also has excellent customer service and support, which makes it a great choice if you need help getting started or have questions about how to use their services.
Is Kinsta right for you?
Kinsta offers a range of features to help businesses get up and running quickly and easily, including easy scalability, managed updates, automated daily backups, and 24/7 support.
Kinsta offers a range of features to help businesses get up and running quickly and easily, including automatic scaling, managed updates, automated daily backups,SSH access, WP CLI, a powerful API, Application Performance Monitoring, and 24/7/365 support in 10 languages, with a response time within a minute and 98% client satisfaction.
Kinsta also prides itself on its performance and reliability – It’s caching technology ensures websites load faster than ever before; this helps keep visitors on your site longer which can lead to increased conversions.
Kinsta FAQs
Is Kinsta only for WordPress?
No! While Kinsta is an excellent choice for WordPress websites, that’s not all it can do. It also supports static sites, application hosting, and database hosting.
Do I need a security plugin with Kinsta?
No – and that’s one of the many advantages of using Kinsta hosting. The security at Kinsta is built into the platform itself; all accounts are automatically scanned daily for malicious code and activity and protected with regular backups as well as enterprise-grade DDOS protection.
Plus, every account includes free SSL/TLS encryption to protect your data in transit.
