Kinsta Review 2022, Is This Managed WordPress Hosting Any Good?

Today we’re going to look at the hosting service Kinsta. I’ve held hosting account on many difference services. From WPX to Justhost, from Kinsta to Bluehost and many more. But how does Kinsta compare? This is what we look at today. But first, what is Kinsta?

Kinsta is a managed WordPress hosting service. The focus on speed and customer support, meaning you’ll get a fast website using their service, and can get help quickly if ever needed. During this review you’ll find I highly recommend this hosting.

With a service like Kinsta, it can help take all the fuss out of keeping track of your website’s needs. You can focus on the work that is important to your business and let someone else worry about your website. For many people handling a website can be very frustrating. Read on to find out more about Kinsta; there’s a lot to like and very few downsides.

What Is Kinsta?

In simple terms, Kinsta is a web-based hosting company that handles all the day-to-day tasks a website may need. They can help with everything from monitoring foot traffic, backing up your site daily to helping you create a new website. The only thing you will need to worry about is the content or merchandise you want to add to your website. That is it, and they handle it all.

They offer very impressive levels of uptime while simultaneously being able to let your website have many visitors at the same time. Not just tens of thousands but millions (with the higher plans.) They have taken Google Cloud and an excellent engineering team to make up one of the best groups of developers out there. Their staff is all highly trained to handle anything you may need.

Kinsta will also make sure that no one is hacking into your site. If any problems may come up, they will take care of them before your visitors start to notice the issue. You may not be able always to be there, but Kinsta will be. Kinsta says they check the statuses of all the sites in the time it takes to pour a cup of coffee; you can count on the fact that your site has been checked.

How User Friendly Is Kinsta?

At first look, Kinsta can make the site seem a bit overwhelming to some. Their site, however, is very user-friendly. It doesn’t matter if you are new to the website world or if you were already managing ten sites. Kinsta can work for you.

You can even sign up for a demo membership. You simply log in with your name and email. You will be sent right to a demo page to look around and get a nice feel of using the site. After signing up, the demo will walk you through a few steps. One of the first steps is determining what site you will want to migrate over to Kinsta, and the rest is pretty straightforward.

With the demo, you can look through every aspect of the site, even filling out forms as you usually would. The only difference is you won’t be able to submit anything. The demo will have examples of everything you need to see so you can thoroughly determine whether Kinsta is the right fit for you.

You can add a brand-new WordPress site or look at the pre-installed sites they include in the demo. You can also migrate your current WordPress sites over to Kinsta or create new ones. There are usually a set number of credits for this.

If you ever get stuck, you can read one of the many articles that Kinsta has published on their site. They have videos and articles to explain every step to any problem you may need. If you still have trouble, try reaching out to their customer chat. They are wonderful.

Different Plans That Are Available

As of 2021, there are ten different plans to choose from on the Kinsta site. They all come with a 30-day money-back guarantee. If one of the ten plans does not work for you, you can contact the sales team. On their site, they mention that they offer any size plans if you need something even more significant than their top plan. Let us take a look at all the different plans available and what they have to offer.

The Basic Levels Available On Kinsta

These are for those that do not have a large site with large amounts of visitors each month. They are also perfect for a business that only has one to two WordPress installs. If you are a smaller company just starting your business, these two plans are also very budget-friendly. After all, you may need the help but don’t want to break the bank doing so.

	Starter	Pro
Monthly Cost	$30	$60
Annual Cost	$300 ($60 savings)	$600 ($120 savings)
WordPress Installs	One Install	Two Installs
Visits Per Month	25,000	50,000
Disk Space Offered	10 GB	20 GB
SSL	Included	Included
CDN	Included	Included

Business Plans Available On Kinsta

These are the four business plans offered by Kinsta. They are considered to be the middle-level plans, are for any company with between five and forty WordPress installs and much more foot traffic each month. They can be looked at as. These are for the growing business of someone who manages a few too many websites and needs a little help.

	Business One	Business Two	Business Three	Business Four
Monthly Cost	$100	$200	$300	$400
Annual Cost	$1,000 ($200 savings)	$2,000 ($400 savings)	$3,000 ($600 savings)	$4,000 ($800 savings
WordPress Installs	Five Installs	10 installs	20 Installs	40 Installs
Visits Per Month	100,000	250,000	400,000	600,000
Disk Space Offered	30 GB	40 GB	50 GB	60 GB
SSL	Included	Included	Included	Included
CDN	Included	Included	Included	Included

Enterprise Plan Available On Kinsta

These are the four top plans on Kinsta. They are for those with anywhere from sixty to one hundred and fifty WordPress sites needing to be hosted. They offer the highest levels of everything Kinsta offers and comes at a much higher price. These are for very large companies as the average user will not need these levels.

	Enterprise One	Enterprise Two	Enterprise Three	Enterprise Four
Monthly Cost	$600	$900	$1,200	$1,500
Annual Cost	$6,000 ($1,200 savings)	$9,000 ($1,800 savings)	$12,000 ($2,400 savings)	$15,000 ($3,000 savings)
WordPress Installs	60 Installs	80 Installs	120 Installs	150 Installs
Visits Per Month	1,000,000	1,500,000	2,000,000	3,000,000
Disk Space Offered	100 GB	150 GB	200 GB	250 GB
SSL	Included	Included	Included	Included
CDN	Included	Included	Included	Included

Each of these plans also each come with their own added features unique to the plan. There are plans fit for everyone, one and every business.

Can Anyone Use Kinsta?

Any company can easily use Kinsta. As you read above, there are many different plans to choose from that fit every business’s needs. Kinsta is also very user-friendly. They have designed a platform that is easy for the user no matter the depth of your skill levels. The Kinsta dashboard is quite simple to navigate through, too.

Managing Your Site

It doesn’t matter if you need to:

• Add a new site or five
• Apply for a free migration
• Apply for a migration using your monthly credits
• Check on your site’s traffic
• Clone an established WordPress site
• Deploy different staging servers
• See a fine detail of the analytics of your site
• And so much more with a simple click of a button

Large Business With Many Websites

When you have a big company, you are probably struggling to manage the different websites that come with it. Unless you are using a software or website hosting site, there is no way you would be able to keep track of many different sites on your own.

Some more significant businesses can have thousands of different sites. There is not enough time in the day to keep track of all of those sites. Kinsta seems to do it without any effort. They take on very well-known companies’ sites and keep them maintained.

Smaller Businesses With Only A Few Websites

If you are just starting your business adventures and have one or two websites, the $30 a month is low considering everything the site does for you. You can focus on your work, and they will keep track of every aspect of your site. Kinsta is perfect for small bloggers who have loads of files. Photographers and videographers can also benefit very well.

Websites Are Maintained Effortlessly

While every website and software can have negative reviews, Kinsta has excellent all-around reviews. No matter where you look, you will find customers raving about the benefits of using this website hosting software.

As the site says, “Spend less time worrying about your website and more time growing your business. – Kinsta.” It is a very true statement. It does not matter how small or large your daily foot traffic is on your site. Kinsta will handle it all.

You will be able to focus on what means the most to you—your products or services. You can work on what you love to do and leave the not-so-fun work to the web professionals. After all, you most likely didn’t get into business to run websites you wanted to share your business with the world.

Your Website Will Be Watched Daily

As mentioned above, Kinsta not only does daily checks on your site, but they also check it every two minutes. That’s right, every two minutes day and night, your website is checked. This averages out to over 700 uptime checks every single day.

These checks will pick up any issues that your website may be having and quickly resolve the issue. This means you can rest easy as your website is not only fully maintained but receives a safety review and check often. It would be next to impossible for you to check your own site every two minutes, let alone if you have five or ten thousand sites. You would never have the time.

Never Worry About The Security Of Your Site Again

Many people love the security that Kinsta has to offer. They take many different steps to ensure your website is safe from hackers. The last thing you want is your visitor’s information to be stolen. Even if it is just one person with fraudulent charges on their card, it could make you lose a lot of business and ruin your company’s reputation.

Kinsta’s security is top-notch. You can enable a two-factor authentication feature and GeoIP blocking to limit how many failed login attempts can happen. You can enable it, and after an IP tried and failed to log in a certain number of times, they will be blocked from the site. Don’t worry if you have trouble logging in. They have excellent customer service who will help you get logged back in.

Their security goes a step further by being monitored to remove any malware they find. They also have a page that has every banned or incompatible plugin for Kinsta.

The Many Benefits To Using Kinsta

There are tons of benefits to using Kinsta. From having professionals migrate your website for you to having customer support day and night. Not to mention the fact that your website will be a very hands-off part of your business to you from now on. Kinsta (as mentioned above) will handle all of the rest if you create the product and content.

Migrating With Kinsta

You can easily migrate your established WordPress sites to Kinsta. No matter what plan you have, you will have one free migration to use. You can technically do a manual migration, but many people would rather just have the professionals at Kinsta do it.

You put in a migration request and simply relax. They will handle every part of it and notify you when it is up and running. You will be able to check your site to make sure everything looks to be running smoothly. If you would instead prefer to do it manually, there is also an option for that too.

If you are using specific hosts, such as any of those listed below, you can request an essential migration:

• A2 Hosting
• Bluehost
• Cloudways
• DreamHost
• Flywheel
• GoDaddy
• HostGator
• Pagely
• Pantheon
• Saccii
• SiteGround
• tsoHost
• WP Engine
• WPX Hosting

Excellent Support Staff For All Of Your Needs

While they do not have an on-call phone, they do have a chat. This may be a put-off for some people. Gone will be the days of staying on hold and being transferred from one person to another, hoping to get answers to your questions. Their chat service will have someone available to speak with you in under two minutes.

Can you imagine? Two minutes seems unheard of these days. They stand behind their chats, and people seem to love their customer service. They are highly trained in all things related to their site, and they are available 24/7, no matter what. Kinsta’s customer service is said to have a 100% solve rate.

Whether you need help figuring out part of their site or help with server maintenance, they are there to help. Simply start a chat with them at any time, and your issues will be quickly resolved.

Putting Your Mind At Ease

The primary purpose of Kinsta or any website hosting company is to take away all the stress of keeping up a website. There are many great things already listed above, but let us look at some of the favorites.

Daily Backups

Kinsta is constantly backing up your site. Each plan has a different length of time that they hold on to those backups. Your work is backed up every single day and kept for:

Plan	Number Of Days
Starter	14
Pro	14
Business One	14
Business Two	14
Business Three	20
Business Four	20
Enterprise One	30
Enterprise Two	30
Enterprise Three	30
Enterprise Four	30
All Other Larger Plans	30 plus days

You can rest easy knowing you have daily backups automatically. You can manually back up your website five times. Different event backups include changing from staging to production. When there is a significant change, the site is automatically backed up just in case something were to go wrong.

Uptime

In case you are unfamiliar with the term, uptime is the amount of time a website is up and running. This means your website is available for people to visit your site. This is important because, with a lousy uptime, you are not getting the maximum visits to your site that you should be.

Kinsta almost always has 100% uptime and backs it with a guarantee. If your uptime is lower than 99.99% or 100%, you will get some money back depending on the type of plan you have. It is unclear on their site the exact amount you will receive, but it is unlikely the percentage will drop below 100% with their site being very stable.

Google Cloud Platform

As mentioned above, Kinsta uses Google and its team members to create a very stable. The google cloud platform has 25 different data centers all around the world. They use a tiered network that is interconnected, so there is no more jumping around the web. This helps to create a much smoother and safer place for your information.

Top Of The Line Experts

It can’t be said enough that their staff is fully educated in everything website related. They knew how to code and had to build plugins. And because of that knowledge, they can help you migrate your website or set you up with the right plan. Their skills are endless.

They also communicate with each other on issues that come up. If the issues keep coming up more and more, they will actually look into making it more user-friendly. Their goal is to create an extremely easy-to-use website.

Tech Features That Make Kinsta A Great Choice

These next features are for those that are not beginners with more knowledge of how behind the scenes of websites work. This section is also good for those that like to hear the more technical side of a service they may be spending money to use.

This allows you to research Kinsta’s different technical aspects you are unclear on before deciding which web hosting service you would like to use. A tech list of the more in-depth features they have to offer can be found on their website if you need even more information.

Optimized WordPress Stack

They refer to this as their Speed Obsessive Architecture. They use different high-end technologies such as:

• LXD
• MariaDB
• Nginx
• Optimized VMs
• PHP 8.0

This means your website will load very quickly. You don’t want to lose customers because your website is lagging.

Ability To Fully Control And Code Your Website

If you know how to and like to code, you will love this feature. You can use their one click:

• Cloning
• Git
• Push staging to live
• SSH
• Staging environments
• WordPress-CLI

These features give you even more control over your site’s performance. However, as we’ve said, Kinsta’s staff is top-notch and will take good care of you.

Server Features

They offer many different server-related optimizations to help make a fast and efficient website. Those added features are:

• Ecommerce Functionality
• Hardware Stack
• Monitoring by New Relic
• New Relic Performance
• PHP Workers
• Server Level Caching
• Software Stack

With these added features, you can be sure that you have a server that will perform better than average.

Cons To Using Kinsta

While there are clearly many great things about Kinsta, as with anything, there are some downfalls. It would not be an honest review if the cons were not mentioned. Thankfully, the pros more than outweigh the cons, but these are worth the mention.

Paying For Extra Visitors And CDN

Once you hit your plans, Kinsta will charge you an overage fee of $1 for every 1,000 visits after you hit a certain number of extra visitors. You can check the plans listed above or your personal plan to know the exact number of visitors you can have. You will get notifications when you hit 80% usage and then, again, when you hit 100% usage.

You can also upgrade to a bigger plan at any time quite easily. If you think you will only be going over by one or two thousand, it probably isn’t worth it to upgrade, though. If and when you choose to upgrade, though, it is instant, and the plan’s monthly fees will be prorated automatically. There will be no downtime on your website when you upgrade.

You also only get so many GB of CDN bandwidth every month. Once you go over what is allowed, you will be charged around ten cents per GB used. Both of these could easily add up if you are not careful, leaving you with more of a headache than it is worth.

Doesn’t Offer Email Accounts

This may be Kinsta’s biggest downfall. They do not offer email hosting. You will not be able to have an email with your website name unless you use a service on the outside of your website and make an email account that way. You can use Google to create a Gmail for your business, but some companies want a more professional name, such as your business name @ your domain name.

Those who use the smaller plans and are not large companies can work out simply fine. Kinsta simply doesn’t want to manage emails and wants sites that already do email hosting to handle it instead of them. If not having a domain name is alright with you, this is not an issue.

Another way to handle this could be to use the email hosting from the company where you bought your domain name. Large carriers, such as GoDaddy.com, offer this service, and you don’t have to use them for your website hosting to take advantage of the service.

Kinsta Pricing Is A Little High

These smaller plans cost less than cable or a monthly phone bill, but as the visitor’s numbers go up, so does the cost. Not many companies can, or want to, pay $1,500 every single month. There are less expensive sites out there if you are not as concerned with speed for your site. Kinsta is on the top of the list when it comes to speed, which is probably why Kinsta’s prices are as high as they are. You have to pay a premium for a premium product.

Kinsta Review Concluson

By now, you have probably concluded that, overall, Kinsta is a great choice for anyone who needs a website run on their behalf. You will work on the products, content, or services you love while your website(s) are in professionals’ great hands and care. If a problem comes up, it will be solved quickly, but you will still be notified and not need to do a thing.

Others provide a similar service, for example WPX which I’ve compared to Kinsta in our WPX vs Kinsta article. We’ve also compared WP Engine and BlueHost if you’re looking to compare more options, WP Engine being high end, Bluehost being cheaper and more mass market. But for clarity, Kinsta is a very solid hosting choice.