Kinsta Review 2020

Is Kinsta the Best WordPress Host?

If you’re looking for premium WordPress hosting for your website, we strongly encourage you to consider Kinsta. In fact, we have such a strong belief in Kinsta that we use them as our sole hosting provider for our different websites. The reason is simple: They meet and exceed expectations on every level.

In this Kinsta review, we’ll look at some of the features that Kinsta offers and then compare Kinsta against its competitors, like WPEngine. In an effort to make this Kinsta review as unbiased as possible, we will also be reviewing some of the disadvantages of working with Kinsta, compared to other WordPress hosting companies. 

Benefits of using Kinsta 

If you’re looking to purchase hosting for your WordPress website, you’ll want to do some research on WordPress hosting companies before making your decision. Take a look at all of the features that they have to offer and make sure that you’ll be able to benefit from their hosting plans. 

You’ll also want to look at their pricing plans and make sure that they have plans with features that you’d like for a price that you can afford. This will help ensure that you pick the best web host for the needs that you have. 

We performed an extensive Kinsta analysis, and we’ve compiled a list of Kinsta’s main features. You’ll be interested in taking full advantage of these if you choose Kinsta as your WordPress hosting company.

1. Great Uptime 

If you’re looking for hosting for your WordPress website, then you’ll want to make sure that your web host of choice has a history of excellent server uptime. Uptime is the amount of time that your website is actively being hosted on a month-to-month basis. 

Your website won’t do you any good unless it’s actively being hosted and accessible by your target audience. This is why every web host needs to have a strong uptime record.

If your web host has a lot of servers crashing and a lot of maintenance for their web servers, then this can cause a lot of downtime for your website. During downtime periods, your customers won’t be able to access your site, and this can cause them to become frustrated with your business. 

When you work with Kinsta Hosting, you’ll find that they have an uptime record of over 99% and they take this a step further providing an uptime guarantee of over 99% every month. 

2. Kinsta has fast load times

If you’re going to work with a hosting company on a long term basis, then you’ll want to make sure that they guarantee lightning-fast hosting speeds.

A slow website can often become a frustration for your viewers, and you’ll want to do everything that you can to prevent this from happening. Sadly, if your web host is slow, then there’s only so much that you can do to make your website faster.

Kinsta has designed and built its hosting services to be super fast. This is because fast websites will be favoured by search engines such as Google, and this often results in higher search results for websites that are faster.

We did a review of over 30 different hosting companies, and we found that the average load time within the hosting industry is 700ms. However, Kinsta stands out from its competitors and boasts load times of only 146ms (!!!).

This load time is super fast for any web host, and it gives you an advantage when your web host can load your website this quickly.

3. Kinsta manages your WordPress website

When it comes to Kinsta, we will be the first to say that they are one of the best WordPress hosting companies that you’ll be able to find. You’ll have access to a dedicated dashboard that will save you the hassle of switching between your WP dashboard and your hosting provider. 

If it’s WordPress, then Kinsta is paying full attention to the details, which results in an optimized environment that is designed for WordPress websites to thrive. They will also monitor your WordPress website every 60 seconds for any security breaches. This will help ensure your customers’ safety while on your website and helps safeguard you against malicious activity.

Kinsta also has a dedicated support staff that’s always on hand if you happen to run into any issues with your WordPress website or with your web hosting.

4. Kinsta has Excellent WordPress Security 

If you’re going to work with a hosting service, then you’ll want to make sure that they offer good website security. It’s more important than ever that you and your audience are secure online. If you’re planning on creating an e-commerce store, then you’ll need to create a secure environment or else your customers won’t purchase from you.

Kinsta does a great job of making sure that all of the websites that they host have access to excellent security features. They have software that detects DDoS attacks, runs scans for malware every 60 seconds, and they even allow 3rd party SSL certificates for added security.

Read more about Kinsta’s WordPress website security.

5. Flexible / Scalable Hosting Plans

When you’re working with a hosting provider, you’ll want to be sure that they offer a wide range of hosting plans and pricing tiers. This is because your website should always be growing, and you’ll need scalable hosting plans that fit your needs. 

One of the things that we love about Kinsta is the fact that their plans are flexible. You can easily upgrade your hosting plans so that your website always has enough hosting resources to keep growing. 

Flexible hosting plans also allow you to save money because you don’t need to purchase a large plan and leave most of your available resources untouched. Instead, you can simply buy a plan that fits your current needs and upgrade your hosting plan when the time comes.

View Kinsta’s scalable hosting plans.

6. Kinsta performs daily backups

If you’ve ever lost a project, photos, or any other important files due to a malfunction, you’ll appreciate Kinsta’s automatic updates. It’s incredibly frustrating to have your data accidentally deleted, and Kinsta helps guard against this possibility.

When you’re building your website, you don’t want any accidents to happen that could result in your site being lost or needing repairs. This could be a time-consuming accident that may even cost you money.

When you use Kinsta as your WordPress hosting company, then you can rest easy knowing that they will backup your website on a daily basis. All you’ll need to do is use their 1-click restore option to restore your site to a previous version. 

This option is also great if you’re not great at making websites and you find that you’re making mistakes. This way, you’ll be able to save your site and restore it to the previous version of the website if you make a mistake while building your WordPress website.

7. Kinsta’s CDN is Impressive 

If you want your audience to have a better experience while viewing your website, you may want to start using a Content Delivery Network (CDN). A CDN will load up a cached version of your website and then store this version of your website on servers all over the world. This will allow global viewers to be able to access your site more quickly because the servers are closer to their location. 

When you’re working with Kinsta, they will provide your website access to the Kinsta CDN. This is an extremely valuable feature, as it will take a load off of your servers and allow your customers to view your site with less bandwidth use. 

A CDN is also a great option for e-commerce websites because many online stores have a lot of products that need loading. A CDN could be the difference between a customer buying your products or them leaving your website out of frustration. 

8. Free Website Migrations 

If you’ve ever needed a website migration, then you’ll understand the headaches that it can cause to ensure that your website is migrated successfully. It can take a lot of time and even money (up to $200 per migration) to make sure that your website has a trouble-free migration. 

One of the nice features that you’ll find with Kinsta is that they provide website migrations with no extra charge. You can have the peace of mind by letting a team of professionals handle your website’s migration without worrying about whether it’s done correctly or not. 

This is a nice bonus, especially when you consider that many companies would charge up to $200 for this service.

Learn more about Kinsta’s website migrations.

9. Kinsta is perfect for E-commerce 

If you’re thinking about creating an online store with your website, then you may want to consider using Kinsta as your hosting provider. They have a lot to offer when it comes to hosting e-commerce online, especially if you’ll be attracting a lot of traffic. 

WordPress is one of the best platforms to build and scale an online store. If your web host is designed to make WordPress websites thrive, then you’ll be in good hands as an e-commerce store. 

Online stores can often become slower because they attract a lot of traffic and have many products. However, with Kinsta, you’ll find that they are a fast web host that can handle the extra traffic.

They also offer free caching plugins to reduce the amount of extra baggage that your website is carrying that you could get rid of. 

Learn more about e-commerce hosting with Kinsta.

10. Kinsta’s Custom cPanel 

Many times, when we do a hosting review, we’ll rate custom cPanels poorly, due to their poor built and user experience.

However, there are a few custom cPanels that are well built, and we believe that Kinsta’s custom cPanel is among the best cPanels available. Their control panel is well-built, easy to use, and simple to navigate.

 If you’re used to the traditional cPanel, then you won’t have any issues getting used to the cPanel that Kinsta has to offer to their customers. Even if you’ve never used a Cpanel before, you’ll likely be able to figure out Kinsta’s Control panel without any issues. 

Learn more about Kinsta’s custom dashboard.

11. Optimized Caching Plugins for WordPress

Kinsta is making great strides to ensure that the websites that they host are faster than their competitions. One of the ways that they make this happen is by offering well-managed caching plugins to ensure that your site takes less time to load.

If you use Kinsta, then you won’t need to worry about finding an excellent caching plugin that doesn’t conflict with the other plugins on your website. Kinsta solves this problem by creating their own custom caching plugin for all of their hosting clients.

12. WordPress Support

If you’re going to use a web host for an extended period, then you’ll want to make sure that they have an excellent customer support team. Without good customer support, you’ll become frustrated with your problems because it will take longer to resolve them. 

We found that Kinsta Hosting has a reliable support team that’s able to answer any questions that you may be having. Their well-trained and knowledgable support staff is always quick to help resolve any issues that we may encounter with our website or hosting.

It’s ideal when a company can offer excellent customer service. When it comes to hosting, some customers may be out of their element. It’s comfortable to know that there is a knowledgeable support team that’s ready to help. 

13. Kinsta lets you cancel any time 

When you’re choosing a web host, you’ll want to take a look at their refund policy. Make sure that they offer a money-back guarantee or a refund policy that allows you to get your money back if you’re unhappy with the services.

This will allow you to try out the service before locking yourself into a long term contract and then becoming unhappy with the services while still paying for them. 

While Kinsta doesn’t have a money-back guarantee, they allow you to cancel your hosting plan at any time. They then refund the portion of your monthly term that you haven’t yet used. 

In a way, I prefer this policy better than the 45-day money-back guarantees that require you to make you commit to a long term contract within a specified period. This is because it can be hard to set up your website within 45 days and then test the platform before you need to commit long term.

Disadvantages of working with Kinsta 

If you’re looking for the perfect web host, then you’ll be quickly disappointed because there isn’t a truly-perfect web host. When you look at each hosting company, you’ll be able to find flaws in their services and reasons why you shouldn’t purchase hosting from them. 

You’ll be left with a list of pros and cons for each hosting company. You’ll need to decide which hosting service is the best fit for your needs. This is one way to ensure that you pick the best web host for you and your website. 

We took a hard look at Kinsta Hosting, and we found a few things that may be a disadvantage if you’re hosting your website through Kinsta. 

1. No Email Services

Surprisingly, Kinsta doesn’t offer an email service of any kind. If you’re looking for email hosting, then you won’t find it with Kinsta (or WP Engine either). Many website owners like to have a domain name like ‘yourname@yourdomain[dot]com.’ 

If you want an email like this, then you’ll need to use a 3rd party such as G Suite, and they allow you to use the G suite platform to create an email for your website. 

Kinsta has said that they don’t offer an email service because their main goal is to provide exceptional hosting services. They don’t want to deviate from their hosting services with other things such as email services. 

2. Banned Plugins 

Another negative fact about Kinsta is the fact that its platform bans some of the WordPress plugins that you can find in the WordPress Plugins store.

This is because some WordPress plugins mess up the Kinsta hosting servers and their ability to optimize it for speed. As such, Kinsta has taken the initiative to ban those plugins so that they won’t cause any issues.

While this is a legitimate reason for them to ban some plugins, it could be a problem if you’re relying on certain plugins for your website to function.

Kinsta Pricing

Do we recommend Kinsta Hosting? 

Yes, without a doubt, we would recommend Kinsta to anyone who needs WordPress hosting. While Kinsta may not be officially endorsed by WordPress themselves, this doesn’t stop them from being one of the best — if not THE best — WordPress hosting companies on the market. 

We have found that their hosting uptime and server load time is exceptionally fast in an age where your viewers expect online speed. They also offer a lot of security features to ensure that your audience is always safe while they’re viewing your website. 

Another reason why we would recommend Kinsta is the fact that they have one of the best support teams that we have come across. Their support team is happy to help, and we found that they know what they’re talking about, which results in issues being resolved quickly.  

While there are some disadvantages to working with Kinsta, we believe that the benefits outweigh these disadvantages. And remember, if you’re unhappy with Kinsta’s hosting services, you can simply cancel your plan at any time, and they will issue you a refund for the remaining portion of your plan.