Kinsta Review

 We have spent more than 16 hours on testing and reviewing Kinsta. Our review is split up into two sections. In the first part of our review, you will find a short summary of Kinsta with ratings, pros & cons, and stats such as server loading time. In the second part, we will go in-depth and look at the details so you get a detailed understanding of what it’s like to have your website hosted at Kinsta.

Kinsta provides cloud hosting services offering a managed WordPress hosting solution, which means they are a perfect fit for beginners and people who don’t want to bother with technical stuff. They also support developers’ full technical stack by providing application hosting, database hosting, and free static site hosting. That being said, Kinsta is not only for beginners. There are also a lot of big brands that use Kinsta, such as UNICEF, Tripadvisor, Hootsuiteand Flippa .

Kinsta Server Performance & Uptime

Server performance and uptime are important factors if you run a serious website, or if you want to rank on search engines such as Google. What happens is that if you have a high loading time or downtime, it will have a big effect on your SEO, especially on Google. It’s a big part of their algorithm. People pay thousands of dollars to get their websites’ loading times improved, and it helps – you can do a lot for it on your website, but your hosting is what defines your loading time and uptime the most.

Kinsta is one of the few hosting companies that have a public record of their servers’ uptime. We have tested their servers and checked if it’s true, and it is – they have had zero downtime during our testing period, they are the only server hosts to have achieved that so far, and we have tested over 5 popular hosting providers.
Kinsta has a 99.9% SLA-backed uptime guarantee. Your site’s uptime is checked every 3 minutes to ensure your site is available at all times. If an issue is detected and your site is not loading, Kinsta’s expert engineers will respond quickly to restore the service to your site. 

We have tested page speed with one of our WordPress themes on their servers and we’ve had impressive results. The website loaded in less than 0.3 seconds (0.294 average) which is way faster than average.

Creating Your WordPress Website With Kinsta

When you first log in to your Kinsta account, you’ll be prompted with a lot of options, but if you notice the top right corner and bottom left of our screenshot, you’ll see the most important things are easy to access – support and adding a service, and creating your website. You can also see your visitors, disk usage and much more, for a constant update on how your website is going. We are using a test account for our review, so the visits, disk usage and so on is of course 0.

If you scroll down a little, you’ll notice the next helpful thing; the Resource Center with quick links to their documentation, changelog, guides to learning WordPress and, system status. System status is a big thing, it shows you how their servers are running – you can even subscribe to the updates so you get a notification in case one of their servers is having downtime or issues.

It’s overwhelmingly easy to create your WordPress site with Kinsta. When you click the “Create a Site” button, you get a nice-looking message asking you to fill out the server location, website name, and domain name. Having the option to choose your own server location is unique. Big brands like Namecheap, GoDaddy and more do not let you choose anything besides “EU” or “US”, which harms your page speed. Having the option to pick your location as “Finland” if you’re from Finland, for example, is an important feature that should not be underestimated.

After that, you’re done. You now have a fully functioning WordPress website where you can start building your blog, eCommerce shop or any other website you’re dreaming of. Of all the hosting providers we have tested, Kinsta is by far the most user-friendly one.

Kinsta WordPress Hosting Plans

Kinsta has lots of different hosting plans, picking from them can be a hard task if you’re a beginner or a non-tech person. Every plan comes with free wildcard SSL, free CDN, 30-day money-back guarantee and much more. The core infrastructure is the same across all plans; built on Google Cloud Platform’s Premium Tier network and its C2 and C3D virtual machines, and utilizing isolated container technology to store each site in its own container. All plans include enterprise-level Cloudflare integration, free migrations, daily backups, uptime check and 24/7/365 support, amongst other features. Selecting a plan all depends on your resource needs; the pricing on the lower-tierplans is mostly based on disk space, monthly visitors and WordPress installations. If you run a blog or a small shop, we recommend that you pick the Starter plan. If you run a bigger website or have more advanced needs, then you should look at the more expensive pricing plans. Kinsta also has single-site plans for single sites with increased resource needs; like a high-traffic business site or a busy eCommerce site. As well as customizable plans depending on your needs. 

Migrating A Website To Kinsta

If you already have a website and you’re considering switching to Kinsta then you’re in luck as they provide unlimited basic free migrations from any WordPress host and at least one free premium website migration on each plan. The basic migrations are perfect for single WordPress installs. If you have a more complex site setup, like reverse proxy, multisite network or an eCommerce or membership site, you’ll need to opt for a premium migration.
Kinsta has multiple guides on how you can migrate your website to them in different ways, so you can pick the one that’s easiest for you.

The migration options are

• Kinsta’s own free migration service; basic, or premium
• Migrate using the Migrate Guru plugin
• Migrate using the WordPress Duplicator plugin
• Migrate manually with MySQL + FTP

There is no perfect migration option for everyone. It all depends on what you feel safe with and how much experience you have. If you’re a beginner, we recommend that you use Kinsta’s own migration option service, where they take care of everything for you, so you just have to lean back and relax. If you’re an advanced user, you might want to do it yourself to ensure that everything is done your way. If you choose to do it yourself, then Kinsta has step-by-step guides that show you how to do every part of it.

Kinsta WordPress Hosting

Kinsta is most known for WordPress hosting, which means they’re extremely good at it. They have a knowledge base and detailed documentation available, which offers answers to the most common questions. If your question is not answered in their knowledge base or documentation, then you can contact their support at any time. Their support has a lot of experience with WordPress and can help you out 24/7/365 with almost every issue, even the technical ones.

When you have your website hosted at Kinsta, you get a lot of unique features such as DDoS detection and two firewalls. Your website will be hosted on Google’s Cloud Platform and its latest and fastest C2 and C3D virtual machines, which means your loading time will be way below average, in fact, it’s hard for other brands to compete with the kind of loading time you can get at Kinsta. Kinsta also provides a Cloudflare integration by default that comes with numerous features to improve security and performance, like Edge Caching, Early Hints, a global CDN network with 260+ PoPs, HTTP/3, and much more. You also get free migrations, so if you currently have your website at, for example, GoDaddy or WP Engine, then you can transfer it to Kinsta for free.

Another great thing about having your WordPress website at Kinsta is that they have automatic daily backups, so if you accidentally delete something or get hacked, then they have you covered – within a few minutes, you can get your website back as it was the day, week or month before it happened. Backup retention is 14 days at least but scales up to 30 days on higher-tier plans. 

So we have covered that Kinsta comes with a great server and performance. Something that really matters for most people is support; after having created a question and having them help us solve it, we can safely say that they have expert WordPress knowledge, and their Support Engineerss are actual developers who sit ready to help 24/7/365. When we started a chat with their Support Team, they answered within a minute, and were very kind and patient. Kinsta also provides email support that you can use, in case chat isn’t the way you prefer to get help. They also offer French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish support during select hours. The only thing we can say is missing support-wise, is phone support – they do not provide that currently.

The Background For Kinsta

WordPress has been growing in popularity for years now. At the end of last year, they had already absorbed over 40% of all websites.

That number is huge and only expected to grow further as they continue to push out other competitors that are trying to stay in the CMS space.

What started as just a tool to help with blogging has mushroomed into something so much more. WordPress has developers all over the world using an open-source mindset that is adding to it, modifying it, and sharing their work.

This has created an amazing ecosystem that thrives as more people contribute to the overall good.

Many Hosts To Choose From

Kinsta is part of this WordPress ecosystem. There are many hosts out there for your WordPress content, such as HostGator, Siteground, and Flywheel. Each one has a set of things that they are good at, ranging from fast loading times to excellent security. WordPress can be hosted on your own servers, but the time and knowledge to accomplish this is not feasible for most users.

That leaves us with the decision of what host to use.

While it may seem like there are many different choices, few hosts have all the features you find with Kinsta. Take for instance, the fact that they are always looking toward the future and finding the right technology to help your site or business. They are powered only by the Google Cloud Platform, which means that when you go with their service, you are using the Premium Tier global network from Google.

If you want fast speeds, go with the experts at Google!

Kinsta is adept at integrating its service with the Google network; Google Cloud recommends them. To get a nod from Google and be considered one of their approved hosts is quite an accomplishment.
Kinsta rolled an integration with Cloudflare and uses their CDN network to increase latency for their clients, but there’s more to the integration users can take advantage of Brotli compression, free wildcard SSL certificates, HTTP/3 support, Edge Caching, DDoS detection and more.
Kinsta is also known as a provider that constantly improves its services; Kinsta always supports the latest PHP versions and keeps adding new features like the Kinsta API. Why would you get WordPress hosting with anybody else?

Also, if you want to go beyond WordPress, Kinsta is able to support your full development stack by offering Application Hosting, Database Hosting and Static Hosting.

Is Kinsta Staff Knowledgeable?

Kinsta has a vast group of people who are trained every day on the technology that you use.

Their support engineers are WordPress developers themselves, which means that they understand how frustrating it is when a plugin is causing conflict, or you have an issue that has been puzzling you for hours. Don’t spend hours scrolling through forums when you can sign up for service through Kinsta and directly contact their staff.

Even better, the support that you are getting is going to be around the clock. Not only can they create themes and plugins, but these guys are also there for you at a moment’s notice.

There are no holidays when it comes to supporting staff, so even if your site goes down on Christmas day, you will still have somebody to talk to who understands the issues you face.

It is difficult to find reliable support that understands the platform and is always willing to help, but Kinsta has put together an amazing crew of people.

Is Kinsta Worth The Money?

From previous paragraphs, we know that Kinsta is one of the leading hosts, but is it worth the money that you pay?

The starter plan is just $35 each month and comes with many features.

• 25,000 visits
• Free wildcard SSL and CDN
• 10 GB of space
• Daily backups
• Enterprise-level Cloudflare integration

That is huge, considering it is the lowest plan that they offer.

If you are just getting started with blogging, all of these extras will start to add up and give you more options when you start.

Is Kinsta WordPress Hosting Cheap?

Kinsta hosting has a high reputation, and they are known for being a quality provider. Is Kinsta hosting cheap? The answer is both yes and no. When you look at the base tier, which is thirty dollars each month, you can easily find other hosts that come in lower than that.

Why would you pay more for the same service? Isn’t it always better to go with a cheaper host? When you consider this, just remember you pay for quality in the long run. When you sign up with an insurance company, do you want the one that charges you the lowest premium each month, or do you want a service that works properly and pays out in full when you actually need it? Going with Kinsta can be considered as insurance in many ways.

A cheaper host might go down when you have your biggest sales day, or the staff might not be able to solve technical issues correctly.

Paying a higher premium is your insurance against things that can pop up in business.

Users can benefit long-term if they sign up for a plan paid annually as they get two months’ hosting off. 

Is Kinsta Good For E-Commerce?

E-commerce is exploding right now. People all over the globe right now are shopping less in physical stores and taking their business online. Are you poised to start taking advantage of the sudden flood of customers for online platforms?

It can be difficult to understand all of the different plugins at first and how they work, but that is why Kinsta offers managed to host with your WordPress site.

Let them worry about how everything works while you just concentrate on how you can get the best content to attract customers.

Whether you write the content yourself or hire a writer, quality information will get customers in the door and look at your products.

Once customers are browsing your site, paying a premium of $35.00 each month is low, considering how well Kinsta performs and its 99.9% SLA-backed uptime.

You will make back your initial investment of thirty dollars quickly with just a few sales, while spotty service on your site can cost you thousands each month.

They know exactly how to work with WooCommerce, so let them answer any questions about the platform.

Is Kinsta Hosting Fast?

We can say with confidence that this host is fast and responsive.

They use the Google network to help them serve their customers, and each data center was picked strategically to make sure there is a little latency as possible.

You can choose which data center you would like to go with, depending on if you are located in Europe, the United States, Canada, South America, Africa or Asia. Inside each of these countries, the data centers are spread out well always to have a fast connection. If you are located in Atlanta, you will connect with the data center set up in South Carolina, while California will link up with the data center in Los Angeles.

When you look at the map of coverage, you can see each corner of the United States was accounted for with places in Virginia and Oregon as well so that both coasts are covered adequately.

Kinsta Doesn’t Use Coupon Codes

Learn more about the Kinsta coupon code and how to get them here.

We are all looking for fast and reliable website hosting at a low cost. Kinsta is not one of the cheapest hosting providers, but it is one of the best. Kinsta is one of the fastest, and they offer WordPress hosting that is easy to use and simple to understand. Do you feel like you are not ready to start a website because you don’t know enough about technology? Kinsta offers managed websites, which means you can put an expert in the driver seat for you. There are many digital coupons for hosts that allow you to save money monthly and get a discount on your hosting cost.
At Kinsta, if you choose a yearly subscription, you get two months’ hosting off. 

Kinsta offers a thirty-day money-back guarantee. This is huge! All of the add-ons that you get are also included in this guarantee. If you pay for managed hosting and several packages with them and still don’t like the service, just contact them, and they are going to refund your money fully within the first 30 days.
After 30 days, you are still eligible for a refund; the system is prorated to the minute, which means you’ll get a refund for the unused portion of your plan.

There is no hassle or arguments when you work with Kinsta. Just tell them the service was not for you, and you will get reimbursed. This is a great way to try out the hosting for free and with zero risks.

Kinsta WordPress Hosting Review : The Verdict

After testing every aspect of Kinsta, we can genuinely say that it’s a great hosting provider, in fact, it’s in our top 3 of all hosting providers, which says a lot because we have tested every popular hosting provider.

There are a few small downsides of Kinsta. The first thing is the lack of phone support. Kinsta does have a support chat where you can get instant human support instead, so it’s not a big deal.

The second thing is that Kinsta is expensive; they offer the same as a lot of other hosting companies just a lot more expensive. There is a thing they do better than almost every other hosting company though, that’s support and server quality. Their servers are a lot quicker than their competitors and have a lot less downtime. If you look at for example Namecheap in recent times, they have around 93% uptime where Kinsta have 99.9% SLA-backed uptime – 93% might still sound high, but it still means it’ll be down a couple of hours every month, which can cost a lot of money in the long run.

Kinsta does for sure, have the most user-friendly interface. Any beginner can create a website easily when using Kinsta; that’s pretty unique. Most hosting companies have old outdated interfaces that are hard to use, which eats up a lot of time.

Overall we would recommend Kinsta to beginners. It’s a perfect platform if you don’t want to spend time on server-related issues and other tech stuff. Their support is incredibly nice, helpful and has a huge amount of WordPress knowledge. Most other companies, such as Namecheap, outsource their support to Russia to ease their budget. It’s awesome to see that Kinsta does not do that. So to sum it up, awesome product, support, and servers.