Kinsta Web Hosting Review (2023)

The world of web hosting can be overwhelming, especially to beginner site owners.

One of the best ways to go about choosing a web host is by reading in-depth reviews to better understand the software and its offerings.

I’m Garrett, and I’ve spent over a decade in the web design and tech industry. I’ve been exposed to a lot of web hosting providers and watched the industry develop.

This background expertise is what led me to craft this Kinsta review. Let’s get started!

What is Kinsta?

Kinsta is a web hosting platform that brands themselves as aiming to “offer industry-leading tools and services for the modern developer.”

They’re known for their extra-fast server configurations, global bandwidth, reliable remote support teams, and intuitive MyKinsta dashboard for site management.

But let’s be real, they’re primarily known for their fast speeds and near-perfect uptime.

So how do they do it?

Kinsta is a cloud-based web hosting service.

This means that websites and applications that they host are accessible using cloud resources, rather than a single physical server.

Kinsta uses a network of virtual and physical servers from Google Cloud Platform to host their websites.

Google Cloud Platform offers seriously advanced cloud hosting infrastructure — the fastest in the world — that contributes massively to Kinsta’s top-tier speed and performance.

Combine those resources with an advanced team of tech developers, and you’re looking at a pretty appealing web hosting operation.

But how did the company start?

Kinsta began in 2013 as a managed WordPress hosting company, then expanded to include application and database hosting as well.

Nowadays, they also offer solutions for agency hosting, single site hosting, WooCommerce features, and enterprise hosting.

Furthermore, the site offers premium add-ons and a performance monitoring tool called APM for WordPress sites. Don’t forget their DevKinsta solutions and CloudFlare Integration either.

All of Kinsta’s features make them a highly impressive managed WordPress hosting service.

So much so that their plans are considerably more expensive than many other managed WordPress hosting providers.

That’s why I created this Kinsta review, to answer our burning question at TYB:

Are Kinsta’s high prices worth it for their fully managed sites?

Kinsta General Review

To conduct this Kinsta review, the Tweak Your Biz Team and I hosted a test WordPress site using Kinsta’s services for the past month.

We test each and every platform we review on TYB thoroughly, with methods including:

• Independent lab testing
• Prior experience
• Third-party review research
• Metrics tracking, i.e. uptime, server speed, and customer support

We’re also constantly updating the articles on this site as we discover new features and developments in the tech world.

You can rest assured that this review is accurate and up to date!

For the purposes of this review, I looked primarily at Kinsta’s solutions for managed WordPress hosting, application hosting, and database hosting.

The following performance notes are based primarily on managed WordPress hosting.

Overall Performance — 9.5/10

• Server caching
• Custom security
• Intuitive site-builder
• Detailed server analytics
• Staging site capabilities
• Multilingual capabilities
• Multi-user access
• Daily automatic WordPress backups

Speed — 10/10

• Ample CPU and RAM resources
• Robust network connections
• Constantly-updating PHP and MySQL for optimized site speed
• Opt for MariaDB if desired
• Nginx > Apache
• Server-level caching
• 24 global data centers
• Kinsta CDN

Uptime — 10/10

• Infrequent limitations on-site visits due to high-level uptime
• Constant site monitoring to ensure uptime
• Kinsta team will contact you directly if your site needs more disk space or PHP workers
• Automatic uptime checks every two minutes
• Automatic server scaling

Customer Service — 8/10

• Many Kinsta features come from customer feedback
• Support team made of developers and engineers
• High-level expertise
• Average ticket wait time is around 1 minute and 30 seconds
• Proactive customer support — their team will reach out if they find something wrong with your site
• 24/7/365 availability via chat
• Chat function saves previous interactions

Ease of Use — 8/10

• Easy and quick sign-up
• Immediate activation
• Simple Kinsta-specific control panel
• Domain name activation can be tricky

Variety of Hosting Options

• Managed WordPress Hosting
• Database Hosting
• Application hosting
• Enterprise hosting
• Single-site hosting
• WooCommerce Hosting
• Agency Hosting

Pros

• Straightforward pricing systems
• Unique server technology
• Best speed and uptime or any hosting provider we’ve reviewed
• 30-day money-back guarantee
• No hidden upsells

Cons

• No cPanel
• No domains available through Kinsta
• Not as affordable as other hosting services

Kinsta Hosting Review

Managed WordPress Site Hosting

Web Hosting Plan Features

• High-end CPUs
• Global CDN
• Automatic database optimization
• Built-in performance monitoring for WordPress websites
• Choice of data center
• 24/7 fast chat support
• MyKinsta dashboard
• 30-day money-back guarantee
• Cloudflare, DDoS, and firewall security

Pricing

SSL Included & Activated?

Yes!

Our Take

Kinsta has everything going for it as a hosting provider that we could imagine.

The only drawback to their features is the price — but if you have the budget, it’s entirely worth it.

The uptime on our WordPress website alone was enough to sing Kinsta’s praises over any other hosting companies we’ve tried, including WP Engine and Liquid Web.

Uptime is so important to a successful site that even if Kinsta didn’t offer its slew of other wonderful features, we’d probably STILL go to bat for it.

I mean, we didn’t experience a drop of downtime during our Kinsta demo thanks to their uptime checker, which goes off every two minutes.

Kinsta’s other features actually match the quality and usefulness of their uptime, too.

The fact that their price plans also come with superior load times, generous storage, scalability, solid customer support, and a beautiful, clean interface?

That large price tag just starts to look like great value to us.

Kinsta’s price plans are fairly inexpensive when it comes to scaling up and staying flexible.

If you experience heightened traffic on your site, you don’t necessarily need to upgrade to an entirely new plan.

Rather, Kinsta allows you to pay additional small fees to keep your site running during your upticks.

These fees include a visits overage ($1/1k visits), disk space overage ($2/GB), and CDN overage ($0.10/GB).

Not too expensive at all!

The only downside we discovered with their managed hosting for WordPress sites was the lack of email hosting.

Kinsta actually recommends keeping email and web hosting separate.

However, their plans do provide support for transactional email via MailChannels. To no one’s surprise, they’re not skimping — just trying to improve UX and offer expertise where they can.

Now lets examine the cons of Kinsta.

They lack some aspects of phone support and customer service in general. We found this to be frustrating on occasion while trying to reach out for assistance.

Overall, from their basic features to site building tool, Kinsta’s managed hosting for WordPress sites seriously wowed us at Tweak Your Biz.

That premium price absolutely comes with premium quality.

Application Hosting

Features

• Choose your own data location from 25 Google C2 machine locations
• Super-fast setup
• Pay-as-you-go model
• 27/7 support
• Premium tier network
• Classic advanced Kinsta security
• Google Kubernetes Engine
• Option for internal connections
• Multiple build options: automatic or with custom Dockerfiles
• Easily deploy apps with MyKinsta dashboard
• Developer support

Pricing

With Kinsta, you’ll be billed only on the server resources you use.

Our Take

Kinsta’s application hosting works much more efficiently and effectively than many other application infrastructure services we’ve tried.

To use it, simply connect your GitHub account and choose a repository.

From there, you can automatically deploy your app. Or manually, if that works better for your purposes.

Kinsta offers an extensive documentation section on their website for DIY purposes and self-guided learning. If this isn’t comprehensive enough, you can always consult their support team with questions.

Their app hosting supports Node.js, Ruby, Python, Java, Scala, PHP, and GO frameworks automatically.

However, you can opt for other configurations by using custom Dockerfiles.

Database Hosting

Features

• Expert tech support
• Immense scalability
• Google Cloud infrastructure & access to Google’s Premium Tier network
• Super-fast configuration
• No internal billing if you also host an app on Kinsta
• No row limits
• No query count limits

Pricing

Our Take

Kinsta’s database hosting allows you to choose the region and data center that works best for your purposes from 25 data centers.

To use their hosting, simply select the database type and version that you need.

From there, choose a location. Then, configure the resources you’ll need on the Kinsta interface. At this point, you’re ready to deploy!

Kinsta offers fast and secure connections to their own apps, but you can easily set up external connections as well.

Especially if you’re looking to Kinsta to host an app, their database hosting is a stellar solution.

You can have all of your hosting features displayed from your MyKinsta dashboard.

Database tracking includes:

• Runtime
• CPU usage
• Memory

Every single one of their database plans also comes with unlimited users. This is highly generous!

Finally, unlike many other database hosting solutions, Kinsta is easy to use. They offer standardized terminology so you can spend less time researching convoluted terms.

Kinsta is a company that truly values customer care, efficiency, and stellar service. It’s clear in any of their hosting plans.

Alternatives to Kinsta

Hostinger

We love Hostinger here at Tweak Your Biz. Our experts would recommend either of these web hosting geniuses to you.

The truth is, they’re each tailored to different needs.

Hostinger offers a huge variety of services and solutions to anyone from first-time bloggers to enterprises.

This means they offer a wider variety of hosting types than Kinsta.

Kinsta is significantly more expensive than Hostinger, so if you’re looking for budget-friendliness, Hostinger is the winner.

However, if you want insane customizability and run a high-traffic website, you can’t do better than Kinsta.

These two hosting pros are difficult to compare because of their respective notoriety in different fields.

Before you pick between them, analyze your site’s needs. This includes the following:

• Traffic
• Disk space
• Control panel preference
• Email hosting needs

Having those metrics in mind will make the decision much easier.

A2 Hosting

If you’re in search of a cost-effective hosting plan, A2 Hosting is a tempting solution.

This web host offers WordPress hosting plans like Kinsta, but specializes more in shared, VPS, dedicated and reseller options.

It’s an excellent starter platform that can provide the essentials while still offering some customization opportunities down the line.

Like our comparison between Kinsta and Hostinger, each of these web hosts offers impressive solutions for the different needs of your business.

A2 hosting is cheaper than Kinsta, but Kinsta offers superior WordPress hosting plans with a larger array of options. A2 does offer the advantage of including email hosting in their pricing plans.

However, Kinsta comes in first when it comes to loading speeds. Kinsta offers substantially more hosting server locations around the globe, while A2 is limited to the USA, Netherlands, and Singapore.

A2 hosting also seems to beat Kinsta on paper when it comes to customer support — however, when you consider wait times, this isn’t the case.

A2 offers telephone hosting, but Kinsta’s customer support solutions are delivered in a more speedy fashion.

A2 and Kinsta are definitely neck in neck in terms of features and reliability. The decision for you should probably come down to preferred hosting type and budget.

Bluehost

I’ll keep it simple with my opinion on Bluehost vs. Kinsta.

If you have the budget for Kinsta, always go for Kinsta.

They’re the first-ever hosting provider to use Google Cloud servers to help host websites. As such, they’re faster, more reliable, and offer overall better quality.

I know you may be thinking, BlueHost is one of the most popular web hosts out there. Why not BlueHost?

It’s not that BlueHost is a waste of time or money. It’s just that, in our experience, Kinsta does everything Bluehost does, but better.

Conclusion

So, what are the major takeaways from this review? Kinsta is a highly-impressive and innovative web hosting service that tops all of the generic hosts we’ve tested so far at TYB.

With Kinsta, you’ll experience great uptime, better-than-average speeds, customizability, and a support team that truly cares about your site’s performance.

If it’s in your budget, you can’t go wrong with Kinsta.

If it’s not within your budget, there are plenty of other amazing web hosts out there who can help you run a successful website.

Do you think you’ll try out Kinsta? Let us know in the comments below!

Kinsta Frequently Asked Questions