Product Name: Kinsta
Brand: Kinsta
Offer price: 35
Currency: USD
Availability: OnlineOnly
Offer URL: https://www.shoutmeloud.com/visit/kinsta-link/
Summary
Kinsta is a powerful managed WordPress hosting that takes care of your hosting worries. It offers completely managed solution for your WordPress hosting requirement.
Pros
- Blazing fast hosting
- Google Cloud server
- Custom panel to manage WordPress
- Staging environment
- Free CDN
- Excellent 24/7 customer support
- 36+ locations to choose from
- Automated and manual backup
Cons
- No telephonic support
- Might be pricey for many
Kinsta has an entry-level plan of $35/month and has a visitor-based pricing model. This is an excellent opportunity for entry-level blogs to enjoy the power of managed WordPress hosting at this cost.
I’ve always loved blogging, but at times I feel frustrated and overworked, due to unexpected issues.
Blogging is mostly a one-person show, and managing a blog is quite the task. It’s a misconception that blogging is only about writing because those who blog know that blogging requires doing various other activities like:
- Optimizing WordPress (or other blogging platforms).
- SEO.
- We are securing the website from hackers.
- Promoting the blog.
- Updating the design.
- Social media marketing.
- …and many more things…
That’s why I always say:
Blogging starts as a side project, but once it makes money, treat it like a proper business.
Being a professional blogger for the past ten years, I have had my fair share of ups and downs
Today, I’m sharing with you one decision that I took almost four years ago that has changed the course of my blogging career, dramatically.
You can imagine the impact of this one decision because four years back I was earning $15k/month, and now I’m making more than triple of that.
So what happened four years back that changed the course of ShoutMeLoud and my blogging journey?
My Experience After Shifting To Kinsta WordPress Hosting:
This article has great insight apart from my experience and review of Kinsta hosting. If you have a growing blog and you often find yourself stuck in technical hosting jargon, this article will be a life-changer for you.
Eight years ago (2016), ShoutMeLoud’s traffic was growing.
I was hosted on shared hosting, and it could not handle the traffic that I needed. I moved to VPS hosting, but managing and optimizing it for WordPress became a challenge. Every day, there was a new issue, and it entangled me in the world of technical woes.
I completely believe we should focus on the stuff we are best at like: Writing, marketing, SEO, and so on. Such tech stuff should be outsourced, and with that conviction, I looked at my options and found Kinsta hosting which came as a recommendation from someone very knowledgeable.
Back in 2015, Kinsta was reasonably new.
I sent out a tweet about this friend’s recommendation, and that caught the attention of Kinsta founder and CEO Mark Gavalda. We hoped on a Skype chat, and he was confident about his offering.
Since I was already tired of excessive bills, and Kinsta was offering me everything for only $157/month, I had nothing to lose.
I thought:
In the worst-case scenario, I will have to shift to another web host.
At that moment, it seemed like a risk worth taking.
Finally, on 15th March 2015, I shifted ShoutMeLoud to Kinsta WordPress managed hosting using their free hosting migration service.
They took care of everything from moving the site to testing the load time. Once I verified everything, I changed my domain nameservers to point to Kinsta.
Here is my first ever bill from Kinsta that formed the foundation for growing ShoutMeLoud:
I believe buying a new web hosting plan and moving your site to a new host is the simple part.
And here is my Kinsta invoice year on year:
The most important thing happens after that.
I will share my personal experience and review of Kinsta hosting during the conclusion of this guide, but first, let me quickly share the specs, features, and other important things about Kinsta managed WordPress hosting.
- Also Check out: Best Managed WordPress Hosting Websites
Kinsta Managed WordPress Hosting Features:
Even though Kinsta is a highly reputed managed WordPress host, they are not for every kind of WordPress site. For anyone who is looking to compromise on hosting quality in order to save some bucks, Kinsta is definitely not for them.
For an entry-level blog, a shared hosting plan is better as it usually costs <$10/month. Kinsta pricing starts at $35/month which is not cheap.
However, for any WordPress or WooCommerce site, which is built to perform well and needs 100% uptime, this pricing is not a problem.
What’s under the hood of Kinsta is what really matters.
Let me quickly give you a glimpse of everything they offer.
Hosting on Google Cloud
With Kinsta hosting, your site is hosted on the Google Cloud platform’s Premium Tier Network, which is one of the most top-notch infrastructures you can get for your website.
You also have the option to choose your data center.
Google offers four locations in multi-regional mode: Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia-Pacific in total, you have the option to pick from many data centers. Here are a few of them:
- Changhua County, Taiwan (asia-east1)
- Hong Kong (asia-east2)
- Tokyo, Japan (asia-northeast1)
- Osaka, Japan (asia-northeast2)
- Seoul, South Korea (asia-northeast3)
- Mumbai, India (asia-south1)
- Delhi, India (asia-south2)
- Jurong West, Singapore (asia-southeast1)
- Jakarta, Indonesia (asia-southeast2)
- Sydney, Australia (australia-southeast1)
- Melbourne, Australia (australia-southeast2)
- Warsaw, Poland (europe-central2)
- Hamina, Finland (europe-north1)
- Madrid, Spain (europe-southwest1)
- St. Ghislain, Belgium (europe-west1)
- London, United Kingdom (europe-west2)
- Frankfurt, Germany (europe-west3)
- Eemshaven, Netherlands (europe-west4)
- Zurich, Switzerland (europe-west6)
- Milan, Italy (europe-west8)
- Paris, France (europe-west9)
- Tel Aviv, Israel (me-west1)
- Montréal, Canada (northamerica-northeast1)
- Toronto, Canada (northamerica-northeast2)
- São Paulo, Brazil (southamerica-east1)
- Santiago, Chile (southamerica-west1)
- Council Bluffs, Iowa, USA (us-central1)
- Moncks Corner, South Carolina, USA (us-east1)
- Ashburn, Virginia, USA (us-east4)
- Columbus, Ohio, USA (us-east5)
- Dallas, Texas, USA (us-south1)
- The Dalles, Oregon, USA (us-west1)
- Los Angeles, California, USA (us-west2)
- Salt Lake City, Utah, USA (us-west3)
- Las Vegas, Nevada, USA (us-west4)
- Johannesburg, Africa (africa-south1)
They are strategically placed to offer the lowest latency anywhere in the world. Based on the country you wish to target, pick the location of your server.
Kinsta has become the first managed WordPress host exclusively powered by the Google Cloud Platform and LXD container technology.
LXD offers the best of both worlds:
- Isolation with server resources allocated individually for each site.
- A high level of transportability between host machines and full container snapshots to enable instant and complete backups of the whole environment.
Here is what the official Kinsta page says about LXD architect:
Kinsta utilizes LXD managed hosts and orchestrated LXC software containers for each site. What this means is that every WordPress site is housed in its own isolated container, which has all of the software resources required to run it (Linux, Nginx, PHP, MySQL). The resources are 100% private and are not shared between anyone else or even your own sites.
However, I find this part not 100% true. Here is how you should understand this architect:
Each site is 100% isolated on its own container and in 1 LXD there are some sites hosted in it (each is isolated on its own container). If one container is having issue with load, it could cause problems in other containers of that LXD. And Only 1 site is hosted on 1 container.
Each site container runs on a generously sized virtual machine in one of multiple Google Cloud Platform (GCP) data centers and is secured behind the GCP firewall. Each live site container has access to 8 GB RAM and 12 CPUs, and each staging environment has access to 8 GB RAM and 1 CPU. The result is a hosting configuration that is secure and private by design while simultaneously allowing access to a reasonable amount of server resources on an infrastructure that’s optimized for CPU-intensive workloads.
I think it’s important at this stage for you to know, that other websites on the Kinsta server could impact your website. At least it caused me 15 minutes of downtime.
I know it’s unfortunate, and something that happened perhaps the first time in 5 years, but it is important for everyone planning to use Kinsta, to be aware of it.
Free Wordress Migration by Kinsta
If you are moving your existing WordPress site from any host to Kinsta, you don’t have to worry about migrating your site.
Kinsta offers premium migrations which is dependent upon the plan you selected and unlimited free basic migration from any host.
Premium migration:
This is recommended when you are hosting your website on a custom setup or you feel that it’s tough for someone to migrate the hosting of your website. I felt the same, but Kinsta’s top-notch customer support will ensure that your website is migrated safely, and then after testing the migration you can update the IP.
Free basic migration:
You can request unlimited free migrations from all hosting including: A2 Hosting, Bluehost, Cloudways, DreamHost, Flywheel, GoDaddy, HostGator, Pagely, Pantheon, Savvii, SiteGround, tsoHost, WP Engine, WPX Hosting.
If you have backed up your existing website using: Duplicator, ManageWP, and cPanel backups, then also you can request a free basic migration.
Just sign up for an account, use the migration form from your Kinsta dashboard, and their migration team will schedule a time and migrate your site for you.
There will be zero downtime with this migration, and they will even test your site before making it live. This way you are sure that everything works as intended after moving your WordPress site to Kinsta.
This is a timesaver, as handling migration yourself could take a lot of time + hassles. Just to let you know, I enjoy such tech challenges, but having someone more knowledgeable taking care of it, saves a lot of time, and offers mental peace.
Support from WordPress experts
When you are paying so much, you can’t accept any sub-standard support. In the past five years, I have never had to worry about any WordPress issue.
If I ever have an issue, I need to send them a quick ping, and within a few minutes, they usually resolve the problem.
There were only 1-2 instances when a few of my tickets took an hour to resolve, but that has only been a small minority of my experience with them.
What I like about their customer service team is their dedication to finding a resolution. Instead of guessing and assuming, the kinds of suggestions and solutions I receive are top-notch and are obviously from very knowledgeable people.
Kinsta’s support is available 24/7/365 and can be conveniently reached through chat inside the MyKinsta dashboard.
Custom client Dashboard
The dashboard offered by Kinsta is very powerful. Even if you are new to managed WordPress hosting, you will have no problem understanding it.
Inside the MyKinsta dashboard, there are numerous optimization tools like a built-in APM tool, WordPress debugging, and a search and replace tool. Everything inside is user-friendly designed, and you can even host and manage other web projects apart from WordPress, such as web apps, databases, or static sites.
Daily Automated Backup and On-Demand Backup
If you are paying for any 3rd party backup service like VaultPress or Updraftplus, you can save your money.
Kinsta takes daily automated backup of your WordPress blog; you can also make an on-demand backup.
They store 14 instances of backup copies. With one click, you can always restore your backup to a live production site or a staging site.
Staging Site
You can create a copy of your live site as a staging site (test environment) and can make all the changes there. After moving to Kinsta, this has become part of our development process.
With Kinsta’s WordPress hosting, each of your WordPress installs can have its own free WordPress staging environment that is completely separate from your live production site.
First, a developer makes changes on a staging site, and once we approve it, we make it live on the production site.
The staging site is a must-have feature for any high-end managed hosting site. When you are shopping for managed WordPress hosting, ensure that that host offers a staging feature.
Free SSL & Advanced Tools Under Your Control
Kinsta offers free wildcard SSL certificates powered by Cloudflare which are automatically installed on every site. You can also use a custom SSL certificate if you need it.
They have a particular page called Tools where you can do various things like restart the PHP, change the PHP engine, and clear the cache.
They also have a custom WordPress plugin that automatically purges the cache when you publish a new post. Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with the infrastructure and features offered by Kinsta hosting.
How About Kinsta Pricing?
When you are shopping for quality managed WordPress hosting, pricing is usually one of the significant catches. Kinsta offers entry-level hosting for $35 which allows 25K views in a month.
They offer various plans, and you should pick one based on:
- How many WordPress blogs/sites do you want to host…
- How many views your blog is getting every month…
- How many PHP workers do you need…
They offer Starter, Business Plans, Enterprise Plans, Single Site Plans, Agency Plans, WooCommerce Plans, and Custom Solutions..
If you are not sure which package is right for you, follow these tips:
- If it’s a new site, opt for the Pro package. You can always upgrade or downgrade the package later.
- If you are moving your site from another hosting package, do check how many views you are getting in a month. If your page views are high, and you are not using DNS-level filtering like Cloudflare or Incapsula, start using it. This will filter bot traffic which is quintessential when you are using a hosting like Kinsta or WPEngine which offers a plan based on page views.
- If it’s a high-traffic site, you should contact the Kinsta team and let them suggest a plan for you. They usually offer a discount on the yearly package. However, I suggest a monthly package to start with, and once you are sure of which plan is best for you, then opt for an annual package.
Currently, I’m on their Enterprise 1 package, as I’m hosting more than 15 websites, and ShoutMeLoud uses more than 50+ plugins at a given moment.
We have the ShoutMeLoud Store powered by Easy Digital Downloads and also a custom deals section developed on WordPress. Moreover, we get more than 1.5 million page views monthly, and I don’t want to limit ShoutMeLoud’s growth because of inefficient technology.
I usually pre-pay since I’m confident about their offering, and I also enjoy the discount when paying annually.
Note: Since I have been using Kinsta from 2015-16, I’m grandfathered to one of the legacy plan.
Conclusion: Is Kinsta hosting worth the money & the hype?
After hosting ShoutMeLoud for over five years on Kinsta hosting, I can say it’s a complete value for the money.
So far, they have under-promised and over-delivered. What I admire the most about Kinsta hosting is its customer support and the continued top-quality server performance.
In the last 7 years, I never had to worry about site downtime or other hosting-related technical issues.
When you realize that time is money, these things add up to success.
More than that, after moving to Kinsta I could scale up ShoutMeLoud without worrying about whether or not my hosting would be able to handle my traffic or website load.
I added the ShoutMeLoud Store and ShoutMeLoud Deals sub-section without worrying about server load. I also started using all the plugins I ever wanted, just so that I could test new features.
My suggestion is that if you ever find yourself in the same junction as I was a few years back when you have to pick a managed WordPress hosting that can guarantee the right hosting environment for your website/blog to grow, pick Kinsta hosting.
You will thank me for this advice.
I could go on with my experience and review of Kinsta hosting, but it would be more fun if you test it out yourself. If your WordPress site requires a top-notch infrastructure and your budget allows it, don’t think twice…
Just get Kinsta hosting.
If you are also an existing customer of Kinsta hosting, do let me know your review in the comments section below. Have a question about Kinsta that I could answer?
Ask in the comments!
Here are a few frequently asked questions related to Kinsta:
Kinsta is a remote company. If you are wondering about data center location, they use Google Cloud infrastructure and currently have 36+ data centers in almost all the geo’s in the world.
Kinsta offers in-house object caching, page caching, and edge caching powered by Cloudflare, and in most cases, you don’t need any external caching plugin. Last time I checked, WP-Rocket is the only cache plugin that is compatible with Kinsta.
It is recommended to use Cloudflare CDN over Kinsta CDN.
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More Kinsta Tutorials:
Note: This article contains affiliate links, but every word is unbiased and based on real experience.
Hi Harsh first of all thanks for sharing such a good information. I have recently started a blog & new in this field. My traffic is not so much but in future it’s a great plan for me to take kinsta but for now can you suggest me any
@Sachin
To suggest you something I need to know:
How much traffic are you getting /month?
Which is your target country for traffic?
Where are you currently hosted?
Great article, been singing the praises of kinsta for sometime. I use wpengine on most websites but did get stung one month when a blog post went viral. (pageview over charge)
The fact kinsta doesn’t set limits makes it super great value compared to wpengine for single high volume sites but most of my sites are local so under 10k visits per month so it depends on your circumstance for you it makes perfect sense.
Which is the best Hosting for WordPress ?
@Nazim
Bluehost, SiteGround, Kinsta.
You can see updated list here
This article comes at a great time for me, thanks for sharing! I’ve been using WPengine for a year on my humble blog and enjoyed the service, but now that I’m beginning to grow, I don’t want to face monthly overage charges (painful as you mentioned). I’m going to check out Kinsta soon.
Cheers!
very good article i got inspired, please keep up good work and keep inspire new generation like us.
Hey Harsh,
Great review on Kinsta, I love how fast your blog loads. I’ll definitely have to take a look at them once my blog gets to that level of traffic and income.
Right now, I am with SiteGround and I am happy with their services.
I do agree that once a blog grows to a big level like yours where you’re in the million views per month, it’s important to invest in a good hosting account.
Kinsta sounds awesome for these types of blogs. I am glad that you’re happy with them and thanks for sharing the review.
I love paying for my hosting for several years in advance. Like you, I love saving money on hosting that prepaying is the best way to do it.
Oh, and I love your deals plugin. I have it set up on my blog. Now I have to keep adding more deals to it.
Thanks for sharing this review with us, have a great day 🙂
Susan
Hi Sir
Very good blogs. Thanks for sharing. Hope very soon I will take this service and it will beneficary for more keep it up your good work
Bluehost.in vs bluehost.com ? which one best , any suggestions ?
@Ashish
Bluehost USA. You can read my detailed comparison here: https://www.shoutmeloud.com/bluehost-india-review.html
Hi Harsh,
Which Hosting do you recommended Me To Use Between Bluehost And Kinsta for My Video Community Site.
Please Reply
@David
They both are different. Bluehost would cost you $5/month where as Kinsta starts at $100/month.
could you let me know more about your community site requirement? What’s the architect (Plugin, theme) going to be?
How many visitors are you expecting per day or per month?
Hi Harsh,
Which Hosting do you recommended Me To Use Between Bluehost And Kinsta
@Naresh
If budget allows, signup for Kinsta hosting.
The review was very detailed about Kinsta Hosting. In fact, I was little-known about the hosting company, but reading this read, I could garner a lot of valuable knowledge regarding the company.
Thanks for sharing such a thorough review on the hosting company,
Regards,
SM
Thanks Harsh,
I am new in this field and your article about hosting. Definitely i will take the services from Kinsta in future. I want to grow in Digital Marketing field. My eye will be on your future post. keep it up.
You really inspire me, love from nepal 🙂
Very good blogs. Thanks for sharing. Hope very soon I will take this service and it will beneficary for more. One more things it is really difficult to grow a blog alone. Not only writting, keyword research, image size, image search (Also draw image) many things needed. For maintain the quality it’s better to start blog by group of friend those who are interested. Thanks again
Hi Harsh,
Recently I have migrated my site to Kinsta and I have to agree with your all points and experience. It is a great hosting with great support and performance.
I have a question since they do not provide dedicated IP, do you think it is okay to host all (5 or 15 sites in your case) on shared IP?
Kinsta is so expensive . Please suggest cheap hosting .
@Bharat
For entry level cheap hosting, see here.
We will move to Kinsta soon because of your detailed and useful review, thanks for sharing Harsh!
Well, That’s very useful Harsh Bro… Thanks for sharing 🙂 You inspire us every-time
Yes, i like kinsta plans and pricing. Before know about i have plans to move my site to dedicated servers. But after getting this points, i like kinsta and change my decision, Thanks for sharing this info and it’s really helpful for beginners who have plans to move their site to dedicated server for manage high traffic wordpress blogs.
@Sasi
If it’s WordPress, a managed WordPress hosting like Kinsta is better than dedicated. However, if you have a reliable & experienced server guy in your in-house team, then dedicated server makes more sense.
Sir which will be cheapest hosting plan to start fresh from which hosting site I should start.
Please help me.
Thank you.
@Pallavi
For entry level you can start with Bluehost USA.
You can find the list of entry level WordPress hosting here.
I’ll really consider them, when migrating to WordPress