Kinsta Review

Kinsta is a managed WordPress hosting company designed for enterprises and websites with high volume traffic.

Kinsta, the managed WordPress hosting company, was founded in December 2013. Lead by its founder and CEO, Mark Gavalda, the company host some of the global-recognized brands including Intuit (Quicken), Ricoh, ASOS, General Electric, and Ubisoft on its servers.

While the company may not be the largest managed WordPress hosting operation in market, Kinsta has a solid offering that is worth a closer look.

We started tracking Kinsta hosting service since January 2018 and have gathered some useful data for this review.

Read on to find out if Kinsta is right for you.

About Kinsta, the Company

• Headquarter: Los Angeles, California, United States.
• Established: December 2013
• Office locations: Los Angeles (US), London (UK), Budapest (Hungary)
• Services: Managed WordPress Hosting

(Quick Link) Review Kinsta Hosting in:

Kinsta Hosting Performance

Our Experience & Thoughts:

Kinsta Server Locations

As a Kinsta user, you are free to choose from a list of 15 data center locations when you add a new site.

* Click to enlarge image.

Choice of Kinsta server locations

Kinsta Server Uptime

Hosting Speed Tests

Kinsta’s network seems to live up to their premise of quality service.

The following are screenshots of speed test results at Bitcatcha and Webpage Test. My test site is hosted at the Singapore data center – so naturally we have a smaller TTFB when testing from Asia region.

Bitcatcha Speed Test: A+

Webpage Test (from Singapore): A, TTFB = 111ms

Webpage Test (from United States): A, TTFB = 567ms

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Kinsta Customer Care & Support

Our Experience & Thoughts:

Unsolicited Kinsta Reviews

It’s hard to miss Kinsta these days because there are so many legit, unsolicited, positive reviews on Kinsta on social media networks, blogs, and forums. Here are some that I have read and found useful.

Feedback from notable bloggers 

I’ve used other WordPress hosts, but Kinsta has been the best by far.

My site is always online and speedy without even really trying. I have never experienced caching issues like some other managed hosts and I’m never worried about getting suspended for exceeding resources like on shared hosts. Their support team is small but they’ve never let me down. They may cost slightly more than other hosts, but they have been worth every penny.

I can’t recommend Kinsta enough.

– David Wang, Speaker at WordCamp Malaysia, Founder of Click WP

Source: Break your website speed limit with Kinsta

Feedback from Facebook

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Feedback from Twitter

Kinsta Knowledge Base

Kinsta hosts a comprehensive knowledge base for those who wish to save time and solve problems by themselves.

99.9% Uptime Guarantee

Kinsta’s uptime guarantee is supported by a service level agreement (SLA).

Should they fail to meet their service availability goal, you will receive a credit of 5% of your total bill for each complete hour.

[…]

1. Service standard

Our goal is to ensure that the Service is available to Clients twenty-four hours a day, seven days per week, three hundred and sixty five days per year (Service Availability).

Our SLA has a 99.9% uptime guarantee. Our goal is to respond to Severity Level 1 notifications presented by Clients. We have a 30 minute first reaction time on emergencies (Error Response). Our Error Response goal is a time to acknowledge only, not a time to resolve. Credits will not be given should we fail to meet our Error Response goal.

(source)

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Kinsta Hosting Features

Our Experience & Thoughts:

MyKinsta – How WordPress site management should be done

I am usually skeptical when hosting companies tell me that they are running on a custom-built control panel. Based on my past experience, these in-house control panels are often ugly, difficult to use, and lack practical functions.

Thank god that is not the case with Kinsta.

Kinsta’s custom-built control panel, known as MyKinsta, is impressive in many ways.

Let me show you in the following screenshots.

Dashboard overview

First of all, MyKinsta dashboard is beautiful and easy to navigate.

* Click to enlarge image.

Setting up staging area

It has an easy-to-use staging environments – which you can switch between live and staging environment in a few clicks.

* Click to enlarge image.

Implementing SSL certificate 

Adding a free or third-party SSL certificate, monitoring your site uptime, and performing database search-and-replace can be done in just a few clicks.

The GIF image shows how you can add a free Let’s Encrypt certificate to your site.

* Click to enlarge image.

Site backups and restore

Kinsta stores at least 14 consecutive backups at a time.

You can access and restore these auto backup easily from MyKinsta.

(Whereas with other hosts – even that they provide auto backup, you will need to contact their support team to initiate server restoration.)

Auto Scaling & Overage Charges

Kinsta is one of the few managed WordPress host that is powered by Google Cloud Platform – which features automatic scaling and LXD containers.

This allows Kinsta to take a different approach (compared to traditional hosting providers) when users overload their server. Instead of pulling down a user’s site, Kinsta will auto scale up their server capacity and charge an overage fee of $1/1,000 visits.

Free Hosting Migration

Moving your site to Kinsta is easy as the company will take care of everything for you.

Their support staffs will assign a temporary domain to your migrated site and check everything (site load time, site functionality, etc) before going live.

In contrast, WP Engine includes a DIY plugin and does not offer site migration service.

No Email Hosting at Kinsta

Kinsta is a WordPress-only hosting. This means that the web host does not provide email hosting service.

To send and receive emails via a business email account (something like email@mydomain.com), you will need to host your email accounts at other places.

Kinsta recommend Google’s G Suite as an email solution (which is a good call) but that means extra costs to your daily operation.

Cron Jobs at Kinsta

Note that Kinsta does not support cron but this shouldn’t be a major issue in 2018.

Backup and malware scanning are done automatically by Kinsta system. And if you need to schedule repetitive server tasks, WP-Cron is your answer.

The staffs at Kinsta have created this helpful guide on how to create and modify a WordPress cron job. Be sure to check it out if you need help.

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Price: Is Kinsta Worth the Money?

Our Experience & Thoughts:

With Premium Quality Comes…  Huge Bills

Starting at $25 and going up to $750 per month (annual subscription), Kinsta is priced as an high-end / enterprise hosting service.

While personally I think the prices are reasonable and on par with what is being offered; it’s certainly not for everyone – especially newbies and bloggers with multiple low traffic sites.

The plan in review, Kinsta’s Starter, allows only one WordPress installation and costs $300/year.

Kinsta’s Pro, Business 1, and Business 2 plans allow multiple WordPress installations per account (2, 3, and 10 respectively) but cost $600, $1,000, and $2,000 per year.

Kinsta vs WP Engine

It’s inevitable to compare Kinsta with WP Engine as there are so many similarities in their hosting plans.

Both companies focus on WordPress only hosting, priced their service based on visit counts, and pride themselves as WordPress experts.

At a glance, here’s how the two stack up.

* Price based on one-year subscription.

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Verdict: Should You Host at Kinsta?

Kinsta is not for everyone due to its expensive price tag and advanced features (which are not needed by most newbies).

That said, at this point of writing, I regard them as one of the top 3 managed WordPress hosting companies in the world.

If you are looking for a top class WP hosting, look no further – Kinsta is your answer.

Official response from Kinsta

We are ecstatic to see that the team here at WHSR clearly understands the mission we have at Kinsta; which is to provide high-quality managed WordPress hosting with the best support and speed in the industry.

For businesses that rely on their website to make money, hosting should be seen as in investment, not just another expense. There are a lot of hosting providers people can go with, but we strive on a daily basis to make choosing Kinsta a “no-brainer.”

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Visit / Order Kinsta Online

Click: https://kinsta.com

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