[ad_1] Kinsta is a recognizable brand in the WordPress hosting space. The main thing that sets them apart is that they only offer WordPress hosting setups. This means that you cannot run any other website script on their servers. This WordPress-only nature comes with its pros and cons, which we’ll discuss in this Kinsta hosting review. In the following sections, we’ll go over the server parameters of Kinsta hosting, list the features you get and for what price, and, at the end, we’ll tell you who should use Kinsta hosting and when. Kinsta hosting review: What is Kinsta? 🤔 Established in 2013, Kinsta is what most people call a managed WordPress host. A couple of things to unpack about this: “WordPress host” means exactly what we mentioned briefly in the intro – Kinsta only accepts WordPress websites on their servers. Therefore, you cannot run any additional standalone scripts on your server (scripts that would run outside of WordPress). “Managed” means that the hosting company itself handles everything that’s usually involved in managing/maintaining a server. This means that you don’t have to, sort of, get your hands dirty and, instead, can focus on creating content for your site and marketing it. That being said, the term “managed” is often overused by many a hosting company. It’s not like there’s any legislation regarding what can and cannot be called a managed hosting setup, so companies tend to get rather liberal with the term and slap it onto anything. Not Kinsta though! In the following sections of our Kinsta hosting review, we’ll go over all the features and traits that make Kinsta a true “managed WordPress” setup. Features and pricing ⚙️💵 Let’s start this Kinsta hosting review by discussing the pricing, since this is probably what you want to know most of all. Right out the gate, we have to be honest and admit that Kinsta hosting is not the cheapest way out there to host a WordPress website. But it does come with its perks! Here’s the current pricing: What you see here are Kinsta’s prices when paid annually. If you want to pay month to month, the prices rise by 20%. First off, Kinsta’s pricing plans are very clear and don’t complicate the choice for users more than necessary. Basically, Kinsta has decided not to limit any specific server features from one pricing tier to another but rather put a cap on the easily measurable parameters, like allowed websites, allowed traffic, and disk space. Some of Kinsta’s competition in the hosting industry tends to exclude certain features (like automatic backups) or customer support options based on the pricing plan. This is an understandable marketing tactic, but it makes picking the right plan difficult for the user. Not with Kinsta. The only thing you have to think about with them is how many websites you want to run on your account. Kinsta is also one of the very few hosting companies in the entire industry that doesn’t increase their prices on renewal. Just to give you an example. SiteGround – a popular budget WordPress host – offers their plans at an attractive entry-level price of $4.99/mo. However, when the initial contract period is up, the price rises to $14.99/mo. This is unavoidable. If you want to continue hosting your site with SiteGround, you will have to pay those higher prices. Overall, Kinsta’s entire pricing model is very refreshing in how clear and surprise-free it is, albeit not that budget-friendly for new websites. There’s one surprise when it comes to Kinsta’s server infrastructure, though. In fact, Kinsta doesn’t run their own server machines. Instead, they rent out server space from Google Cloud and put their own software on top of it to make it optimized to handle WordPress sites. As a result, you also get to choose from 25+ data center locations for each of your WordPress installs. Google being Google, those data centers are literally all over the world, so you will easily find a location that’s near your target market. Now, let’s look at the features you get for the price. For starters, Kinsta seems to realize that most users who choose a $25+ hosting setup usually move from another host. The story is simple, really; people get annoyed with some shortcomings of their current host so they decide to switch to a more optimized one. This is where Kinsta hosting comes into play with their website migration services. First, each hosting plan gets a set number of premium website migrations included in the price. It’s 1-5 depending on your tier. As part of this premium migration, Kinsta will ask you to fill out a form in your dashboard, and then Kinsta engineers will migrate the website for you – making sure that everything is safe and that your site gets transferred with no downtime. Then, you also get unlimited basic migrations – on all plans. Those basic migrations will still be enough to handle standard WordPress websites. However, some restrictions apply. Here’s what else you get: Automatic self-healing technology. WordPress runs on PHP, and PHP sometimes experiences some glitches. Kinsta monitors the status of their servers every minute and applies fixes when needed. Hack and malware removal. As awesome as WordPress is, it’s also one of the most commonly attacked website platforms of them all. If your site is ever compromised when hosted at Kinsta, they will fix it for free. Automatic daily backups with 14-30 day backup retention. Additionally, optional hourly backups are also available. And, most importantly of all, you can restore from any backup with a single click. Automatic database optimization. This is not its finest trait, but WordPress is known for having a tendency to clutter the database after a while. Kinsta fine-tunes the database automatically every week. WordPress Multisite support on all plans except the cheapest one. Multi-user environment. This is a great feature if there are more people than just you taking care of the site. You can create additional user accounts for
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