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Do you want the fastest WordPress web hosting? Do you need someone to keep your WordPress website safe and backed up?
Kinsta might be the managed WordPress web hosting solution you’ve been searching for. Don’t wait to sign up!
This review will detail the different features you have access to and the loading times of my WordPress sites hosted by Kinsta.
If you aren’t the type of person who is easily seduced by fancy marketing and company websites, this review will help to inform you whether My Kinsta is right for you.
This review will help you find the best WordPress hosting or learn about premium web hosts like Kinsta.
Let’s Begin…
Who Are Kinsta?
Kinsta, a US-based hosting provider, offers managed WordPress hosting with many outstanding features. They offer hosting services for all sizes of businesses, including startups.
Kinsta’s offering can be summarized in one sentence: Google Cloud Platform hosting made easy and accessible for everyone.
Sorry if this sounds a little promotional, but it’s how I feel. For example, Kinsta does not believe in the traditional admin cPanel for managing your hosting account. Kinsta offers a custom solution that is easier to use and allows you to get to the most critical metrics.
Let’s start at the beginning. Kinsta WordPress hosting, under the hood, is:
- Fully managed WordPress hosting platform. Although managed is a term many hosts love to use, Kinsta’s focus on managing everything for you is clear. The admin panel mentioned above doesn’t have any management-like options.
- It runs on the Google Cloud Platform.
- It provides Business and Enterprise web hosting solutions tailored to your specific needs.
- This is the most basic plan.
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- Ability to manage one WordPress site
- 10GB SSD storage
- Up to 25,000 unique visits/month
- One site migration free
- 1440 daily site uptime checks
- You can connect to a CDN that interests you.
- Let’s Encrypt support.
- Support for HTTP/2, PHP 7
- Support for SSH, WP-CLI, Git
- Automated database optimization every week to increase the performance
- Self-healing PHP technology
- Premium DNS management
- (learn more about Kinsta’s core features here)
- You can choose the location of your data center.
- Available staging areas
- Extensive knowledgebase available.
What Does the My Kinsta Dashboard Look Like
The dashboard’s nature has been briefly mentioned above. Now let’s look at it from the user’s perspective.
It’s pretty different from what cPanel and other solutions used to be. Kinsta’s panel focuses more on your daily/regular tasks related to your hosting platform than server administration per se.
You can access the following information through the panel:
- Your sites – this is where you can adjust the initial setup, create FTP accounts, view your backups, and add HTTPS.
- Site migrations – An excellent overview of all site moves made on your account and the ability to do more.
- DNS settings.
- Analytics – This section is my favorite. This is an excellent complement to the third-party analytics script.
You will also find sections for Billing and Settings, Activity Log, and User Guide.
Features of Kinsta
1. Kinsta Takes the “Managing” Part Seriously
Kinsta wants to be your website’s overbearing helicopter parent. Although this approach to managing sites is not for everyone, it’s great for most dogs and websites. All plans include website uptime checks every 2 minutes. This guarantees that your website is always secure in case of a hacker.
You can also find many WordPress-specific tools. These include a dashboard that allows you to manage multiple sites simultaneously, site statistics, and analytics. However, there is no cPanel. WordPress is the only CMS you can use, which is normal.
The Starter plan is resource-wise. It includes one website, 10GB of disk space, and enough bandwidth to support approximately 20,000 monthly visitors. This is a great start, and Kinsta is very good at helping you to make the most of your resources.
Higher-tier plans offer more sites and resources. You can have up to 20 websites, 400,000 visits, and 50GB of storage. All plans are identical except for that.
There is no “secret boost” available only to advanced plans. And no pricing system forces you to pay extra for features you do not need. This tactic is used by almost all shared hosting providers, hiding the best parts behind upgrades and paywalls. It is not cool.
It’s important to reiterate that Kinsta is not a shared hosting service. Not at all. It is entirely cloud-based and uses its optimized server technology. Its premium pricing includes almost everything you need. You don’t need to get more money if you already pay a lot.
SSL certificates are included as a premium service. SSL encrypts everything users do on your website, which is excellent for security, avoiding lawsuits, and even getting a Google SEO boost. This has virtually no downside.
By default, you get daily backups. You can also make your backups whenever you want. This feature should come as a default on every host, but it isn’t.
Performance-improving caching options are also included, so static websites can go from heavy to minimized in no time, consuming less of your resources and loading faster for visitors.
2. Global Google Cloud Data Centers (Are a Good Thing)
Talk about loading fast.
Old school hosts (i.e., 99 percent of hosts have their data centers or rent space in existing data centers. This worked well in the past, but the hardware wears out quickly. Today, most shared hosts offer to host on top machines built in the early 2000s or later.
This reminds us, adults, that this hardware is 20 years old. It is almost old enough for Americans to drink but plenty old enough to be able to drink elsewhere. This could explain why hardware this old makes terrible decisions.
Most hosts have only 2-3 data center locations. These are usually located on the US West Coast and sometimes in the Netherlands. This means that visitors from faraway places – often on the US west coast or in the Netherlands – will experience slow speeds and bad times.
My Kinsta does not have its data center but uses Google’s super-performing cloud data centers to host its WordPress platform. This means you can choose from various server locations and get the most up-to-date hardware for your project.
Kinsta has seven US data centers and 24 worldwide. Kinsta is a great host for viewers in these areas, including Tokyo, Seoul, Tokyo, and Sydney.
3. Kinsta has its CDN
A Content Delivery Network (also known as a CDN) is a system that takes cached copies from your website and delivers it to more data centers so that you can benefit from more than one server location.
Many hosts allow you to integrate with third-party CDNs, but Cloudflare is the most popular and accessible. This presents some limitations unless you pay for Cloudflare’s more expensive plans.
My Kinsta’s CDN is fast and included in the price you already pay. What’s not loveable?
4. Auto-scaling CPU and RAM Keeps Your Site Going Through High Traffic
The beauty of a cloud platform is that resources can easily be scaled to meet a growing demand. Kinsta auto-scales your CPU and RAM, instead of arbitrarily limiting it, meaning that if your project ends up requiring more power, or if you’re enjoying a visitor barrage, your website will be able to handle the traffic.
Other hosts simply crash or send you an email saying “pay muuuuch more and maybe your hosting plan can handle the traffic.” With them, it rarely does.
Just to compare, the maximum amount of RAM you can get from Kinsta is estimated to be around 10 times what competitors provide. And that, folks, is the difference between a WooCommerce store that handles dozens of simultaneous visitors and makes you a ton of money, and one that crashes and makes a few measly sales a month, with close to no returning customers.
Kinsta Pros and Cons
Below are the Pros and Cons of My Kinsta:
Pros
- Solid speed: Kinsta loading speeds were impressive when we tested them. It is suitable for your SEO as well as your user experience. They also get points for the robust CDN, last-gen PHP, and free SSL.
- In uptime: Kinsta runs almost 100% of the time. You get your money back if the rate falls below 99.9%. WP Engine offers a 99.95% uptime guarantee in their service agreement (SLA) which is quite acceptable.
- Support: is via chat only, but I have had some of the best Kinsta support.
- Server features and locations: There are 25+ locations worldwide to choose from.
- User-friendly: Simple navigation and pleasant user experience for those who have to spend some time on their hosting provider dashboard.
- Team Management: Unlimited Users, and you can easily set permissions and roles at both the site and company levels.
- Site backups: The lower plans only offer 14-day automatic backups. To get 20 days, you will need to upgrade to the Business 3 plan. Both cloud and manual backups are available. You can also download backups.
- It is made for WordPress: This means that the support team is knowledgeable, the architecture has been optimized for WordPress, and you receive helpful resources about plugins and other WordPress-specific toolkits.
- No cost migrations: Kinsta offers a WordPress plugin that allows you to migrate your site automatically into Kinsta. All plans include professional migrations by Kinsta’s team. This is something that not many providers offer.
Cons
- WordPress only: No other CMS will be installed on a Kinsta server.
- There are many limitations: You can’t store unlimited files, use CDN, or make monthly visits. You’ll be charged an additional fee if you exceed the limit.
- Higher prices: Kinsta may not be the most affordable managed WordPress hosting provider. It’s not the best option for everyone.
- Kinsta has banned the following WordPress plugins: These were removed from the site due to security and performance concerns. This includes external caching, backup, and optimization.
An Initial Impression of My Kinsta
Overall, the impression was positive. However, there were some issues.
The setup and migration were easy. The site was live on Pagely one day and Kinsta the next.
(I wasn’t involved in the migration process at any point. I noticed that something had changed because, unfortunately, I was editing a post during the migration. I finished my work, saved it, and refreshed the page. It turned out that I had made those changes in the old version, and I then saw Kinsta’s when the page was refreshed. )
We saw a drop in response times from 400 ms down to 50 ms right after the move.
It was impressive, to put it mildly, and there were noticeable improvements even when the site was accessed manually without measuring tools.
We also had some unexpected downtime, but that’s not enough to make this story perfect. Over a month, this downtime totaled 1:30h.
Some UptimeRobot statistics:
It doesn’t matter what perspective you take; 1:30 h is a significant amount. If we do the math, 1:30h equals 99.79% overall uptime. This is not something you would be happy with right away after moving to a different host.
The issue was resolved, and we haven’t experienced any downtimes since September 2016. We have been delighted with Kinsta since then.
We also switched the site to SSL around a month later. Although the process was smooth, it resulted in slightly faster response times (as seen in one of the screenshots).
However, this is not surprising. SSL takes more resources because the software/browser at the other end must decode each answer before it is displayed.
Performance of Kinsta WordPress Hosting
The second most important attribute of a WordPress host is performance.
Site speed has received a lot of attention in recent years. While some believe it is crucial for SEO, others don’t agree. Everyone agrees that a fast-loading website is vital for user experience.
We expected Kinsta to deliver top performance, so naturally!
Right away, I must admit that this was a little bit of a mess. The blog is not optimized in terms of its source code or the many tweaks it has received over the years.
Even with the handful of F’s that Pingdom has given us, Kinsta WordPress hosting still manages to load all content in under 2 seconds. You may also notice that our TTFB has been reduced by 50%, which includes the increase in SSL usage.
Must Read: Which Bluehost Plan Is Best for Bloggers in 2022
My Kinsta Pricing
Kinsta caters to many different sites, and prices range from $35 to $1,650 per month. This is a wide range, so we will only compare the first three consumer plans, Pro, Starter, and Business 1. It goes up to Business 4 and then Enterprise 1 & 4.
It is important to remember that the prices shown here are for monthly payments. If you purchase annually, you get two months free.
| STARTER | PRO | BUSINESS 1 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress Installs | 1 | 2 | 5 |
| Monthly visits | 25,000 | 50,000 | 100,000 |
| SSD storage | 10 GB | 20 GB | 30 GB |
| Free CDN | 50 GB | 100 GB | 200 GB |
| PHP workers per site | 2 | 2 | 4 |
| 24/7 email support | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SSH Access | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Free SSL and imported SSL | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Staging area | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Unlimited users | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Multisite | No | Yes | Yes |
| Premium migrations | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| Price | $35 a month | $70 a month | $115 a month |
What can you expect from each Kinsta plan?
Kinsta offers many plans. Each plan is segmented according to how many websites you can run, monthly visitors, storage, and CDN storage. I don’t believe other providers limit this.
All plans have a variety of features, including the following:
- Excellent customer service team. Although it’s via chat, their agents are amazing and available 24/7.
- WordPress-specific site architecture (read more: Better and faster)
- To test your WordPress website before you publish changes, create a staging environment.
- Premium migrations are free (concierge service). Depending on your plan, you may get one to three.
- Unlimited basic migrations to other hosts via a WordPress plugin
- 30-day money-back guarantee
- Automated database optimization
- Manual backup points and automatic daily backup
For specific plans, the names can be self-explanatory.
You can also upgrade to Disk Space upgrades if you run out of web space. You get 20GB for $20 per month. These $20 upgrades can be stacked as many times as you wish.
STARTER: is a good choice for small WP-hosted blogs or websites. Be aware that heavy files (e.g., a videographer or photographer) may require you to upgrade to a new plan or to update your disk space. You can have up to 25,000 visitors per month and 10GB of storage.
PRO: is better suited for small- to medium-sized business websites. While a large blog would be a good idea, My Kinsta does not recommend using it for an online shop. You can have up to 50,000 visitors per month and 20GB of storage.
BUSINESS 1: This is where things get serious in terms of storage and monthly visitors. The site has twice as many PHP workers as the previous plan. This is what My Kinsta claims helps with multiple requests for ecommerce. It will allow you to host a maximum of 100,000 visitors per month and have 30 GB of storage.
Don’t forget to add Business plans 2, 3, and 4 with more monthly visitors and storage. Enterprise plans 1, 2, 3, and 4 allow you to scale up your numbers.
When to Use Kinsta Web Hosting?
Kinsta is a great choice for WordPress-based professional websites. Kinsta can help you keep your website (or sites) online and provide decent site speed for your visitors. It is excellent for SEO and can be used to host large ecommerce sites.
If you are seeing wildly fluctuating monthly visitors, I suggest you look elsewhere. Although you will receive notifications if you exceed any limit, you will still be charged. (See the FAQ to learn more about how it works).
When Not to Use Kinsta Web Hosting?
Many web hosts are less expensive if you don’t need the fastest site performance. WordPress hosts are also more affordable. Portfolios, blogs, and personal websites are good examples of sites that don’t need to be fast for visitors or Google search engine optimization.
Although this may be my personal experience, we have seen many more configuration problems than other WP hosts, such as Siteground or WP Engine. Our developer said best: “WPEngine’s server configuration is easier to use than plugins and WordPress. It works better. There are fewer conflicts.
How easy it is to get started with My Kinsta
1. Add a New Site
To add a new Kinsta site and click Create Site at the top right.
Next, you will be asked to choose the type of website you wish to create. There are three choices.
- Install WordPress: You can install a fully functioning WordPress site right away.
- Do not install WordPress: This option installs all necessary software to manage a WordPress website (web server, PHP and MySQL, etc.). It does not install WordPress. This is an excellent option for users who want to migrate to Kinsta using Duplicator or set up a Bedrock/Trellis install with a custom file system.
- Clone an Environment: This option lets you clone an environment or staging to create a new environment.
Select your choice and click the Continue button.
Option 1 – Install WordPress
You can customize your Install WordPress site with several fields. This is what you need to know about each area. After you have completed each lot, click the Continue button.
- Site name: The site name will be displayed on MyKinsta, but it won’t be visible to your site’s visitors. This will also be used for the first part of your site’s temporary domain (sitename.kinsta.cloud).
- Data center location: You can choose a data center to serve each area. This is the location where your data is stored. We support 35 sites. We recommend that you select a location near your user base to decrease latency and TTFB as well as load times.
- WordPress site title: This allows you to select the title of your WordPress website. It will display in the browser tab and other places depending on your chosen theme. After site creation, you can modify the site title via WordPress settings.
- WordPress admin username: This will be used to log into your WordPress installation. Later, you will be able to add more users. For maximum security, we recommend you choose something other than “admin.”
- WordPress admin password: You will use this password to log into your WordPress installation. To protect users, we automatically create strong passwords. You can use the create new password option icon (reload icon) if you need a new password.
- WordPress admin email: WordPress uses this email address to send important messages.
- Select a language: Choose the language in which you want to use WordPress. It doesn’t matter if your WordPress interface is in English or not. You can choose to write in your native language.
- Install WordPress multisite: Click this box to activate a WordPress Multisite installation. After selecting the option, you can choose from a subdomain or subdirectory installation.
- Install WooCommerce: If you’re creating an ecommerce site, WooCommerce is the best ecommerce plugin. To install it automatically, check this box.
- Install Yoast SEO: Yoast SEO has been installed over 3,000,000 times and received a 5-star rating. To install it automatically, check this box.
- Install Easy Digital Downloads: If you’re creating a website to sell digital products online, Easy Digital downloads are the perfect eCommerce solution. To install it automatically, check this box.
Option 2 – Don’t Install WordPress (Empty Environment)
For users who require a blank environment to perform Duplicator migrations or custom Bedrock/Trellis installations, the Don’t Install WordPress option can be helpful.
- Site name: Your site visitors won’t see the name of your installation, but MyKinsta will display it. This will also be used for the first part of your site’s temporary domain (site name.kinsta.cloud).
- Data center location: Each place can choose a different data center. This is the actual location where your data is stored and served from. We support 35 areas. We recommend that you select a location near your user base to decrease latency and TTFB as well as load times.
Option 3 – Clone an Existing Environment
You can use the Clone existing environment option to copy a live environment or staging environment from an existing Kinsta site to create a new one. This option allows you to create a duplicate of a site without the use of complicated migration plugins.
- Environment to clone: Select an existing stage or live environment.
- Site name: Your site visitors won’t see the name of your installation, but MyKinsta will display it. This will also be used for the first part of your site’s temporary domain (site name.kinsta.cloud).
- Data center location: This installation option is not available if the location is unavailable. Cloning can only be done within the exact location. After the Cloning process is complete, you can open a chat with our Support team to request that we move your site.
Completing The Process
Once you have reached the last modal, click on the Continue link. The creation of the new site takes a few moments. You will be notified in MyKinsta once it is complete.
What Sets Kinsta Apart from The Rest
Ultimately, I believe it boils down to this:
- Kinsta allows you to have all the power and features of the Google Cloud Platform, but it does so in an easy-to-use manner, so you don’t even need to know everything.
- Kinsta WordPress hosting is performance-optimized and ready for any traffic spikes you might throw at it.
- It provides excellent security while backing up everything.
- They also appear to have a straightforward approach to server parameters, promises of performance, and bandwidth metrics.
My Kinsta’s primary staging environment is one of its weak points. The only way to move everything to life is to use Kinsta. For example, you can’t move the files or the entire database. This is not possible if you are working on an existing website and want to make a few changes. It’s okay for new sites, though.
What Does It Cost in Practice?
The pricing column is visible in the table. My Kinsta WordPress hosting can be a little more expensive than other hosting providers. You will pay at least $29.17 monthly for the cheapest plan, with a steeper price increase later.
Why Should You Choose Kinsta?
My Kinsta is a managed WordPress hosting service. If you’re looking for a way to set everything up from scratch and optimize the back end, you might want to consider other WordPress hosting providers. Here are some reasons to choose my kinsta
- Simple to use interface
- No Hassle Migration
- Performance-Driven
- Reliability
- Amazing Security Features
- Developer-Friendly
- Advanced Analytics
- Adopt the Latest Technology to Thrive
- Optimized to WooCommerce
- Premium Support
Frequently Asked Question About My Kinsta
1. How Do I Pay for Kinsta?
They accept debit and credit cards with Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express, MasterCard (including Maestro), and Visa logos. Wire transfers and ACH are also accepted for annual subscriptions. If you’re an existing customer who wants to make wire transfers or ACH payments, please contact sales.
2. Is Kinsta faster Than BlueHost?
Kinsta is quicker than Bluehost. I tested 12 hosting providers (including Bluehost and Kinsta), and My Kinsta performed better than Bluehost.
3. How does Kinsta calculate user visits?
My Kinsta’s hosting plans depend on how many people visit your site each month. The total number of visits to your site in a given month equals the sum of all unique IP addresses seen in 24 hours, as per the Nginx logs.
4. How Much Will I Be Charged For Going Over My Limits?
You won’t have to pay $1 for every 1,000 visits if you exceed your site’s limit.
5. Can I Cancel My Plan?
They make it as simple as possible to use My Kinsta, from the sign-up to canceling. You might have ended your project or were testing My Kinsta for a client. You can cancel your hosting account at any time within My Kinsta. For more information on canceling your plan, Click HERE.
