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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Note: This article contains affiliate links, but every word is unbiased and based on real experience.
hi Harsh,
i am using kinsta from last 4 months with their business 1 plan. overall its really best hosting but one thing that i am realizing is my google analytics is showing 44,000 visits every month where kinsta is showing around 90,000 per month and once i am seeing cloudflare dashboard for whole traffic its some how close to kinsta. i am really not understanding why kinsta visit and google analytics is not matching. thanks.
I’ve been with Kinsta for several months and must say their hosting continues to impress not only in quality, but in support as well. The Kinsta team is very responsive and always willing to assist with issues, even if sometimes I cause them :-). When a recent zero-day for a very popular mail plugin become known resulting in a hacked site, they were super responsive in getting everything back online and made sure the rest of my sites were secure. So impressed, moving to the annual plan now… PS. Not a paid review, just a happy customer.
nice sir I think Cloaudways is way cheaper and better than Kinsta in all departments, especially support.
I moved from Bluehost to Kinsta and it was amazing in terms of site speed.
I hate no of page views limitation. I run a website on which we share information and no products sell. Our traffic is 1M per month which will grow to 5M in coming 6 months, can you suggest any hosting for this.
@Ashish
For Unmetered high traffic, I could recommend:
Cloudways
Nestify – This one shows the visits count but when I had a word with their founder, they mentioned its just to keep the spammers away. However, you should check with their support before getting this.
They both are slightly managed, so you would enjoy them.
Hello Harsh, did you ever try Cloudways? I think Cloaudways is way cheaper and better than Kinsta in all departments, especially support.
I think Kinsta is solely focused on WordPress whereas Cloudways handles many other platforms. Is this why you preferred Kinsta?
Regards,
Manju
@Manju
I was on Cloudways before I moved to Kinsta. Cloudways is definitely a great platform and I recommend it. However, they were unable to manage ShoutMeLoud (our traffic was very high) and I think its because of we were using WordPress and as you said, Cloudways is multi-platform hosting. However, on Kinsta this was not an issue as the support is outstanding. They walk extra miles to ensure your issues are fixed.
Cloudways? No freaking way, a nightmare !!! I just moved away from there. They suck big time.
Right now I am using a big rock and it will soon go to expire. Can you suggest me good hosting for business website.
Hello Jitendra,
You can go for Bluehost U.S. Read this article:https://www.shoutmeloud.com/buy-web-hosting-domain-name.html
It would be great if provide your GA stats and kinsta stats so we can comprare what is going on. You just copy pasted their features from their site. They are using visit approach now and happy that you’ll update the post with that.
I tried their hosting for 7 days and their hosting is just excellent. But since they moved to visit based model they counted my 1500 visit to 5000 visits according to their Analytics. They are now counting request to wp-login.ph, robots.txt and even if a single image is served they are counting this as a visit as well.
I feared the overage fees and moved back from their hosting.
But I am waiting for your stats about new Kinsta hosting.
Thanks,
Bunty
@Bunty
You are right about the overage charges and the best way to tackle this is by using a DNS based filter such as Cloudflare which has a free plan. Just using it will take care of bots visit and you could enjoy the power of Kinsta hosting.
Sir,
Is Bluehost failed to handle the 1M traffic per month ??
@Yogesh
With the kind of configuration I have for ShoutMeLoud, it would be impossible to handle 1 million page views on Bluehost shared hosting. The maximum I have seen Bluehost handling for me was 25K page views/day when I was not using Custom post types and EDD.
I run a woocommerce shop with current 50K users per month and growing, my current host given me lot of issues past two weeks and lost huge revenue and was looking for good host and landed here, thanks for the info and glad to get review from Indian author, i am ready to move for their business plan $200 or 300…
This article given me much confidence, thanks again.
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. its very good article grow up
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.
I feel surprised to know wp-engine has restricted bandwidth. However, remainder of the info about Kinsta was amazing.
From here I’m feeling quite pleased to migrate into kinsta in future. I am rather certain it’ll be amazing.
Thank you for sharing your gold thoughts
Hi Harsh!
I want to create Music website and i ask many friends and developer about hosting websites what after reading your article i will surely choose kinsta
Hi, .Awesome and very useful article. Many of your articles are very helpful to grow my blog.
Well, That’s very useful Harsh Bro… Thanks for sharing 🙂 You inspire us every-time well done
Sir I checked Kinsta. It is very expensive. I personally use blue Hosting which is good for beginners and Cheap.
By the way thanks for the amazing Article.
Hello, sir
I feel amazed to know that wp-engine has limited bandwidth. But rest of the information about Kinsta was amazing.
From here I am feeling very happy to migrate to kinsta in future. I am pretty sure that it will be amazing.
Thanks for sharing your golden thoughts.
I have a two questions-:
1. which is the best service provider, godaddy or kinsta?
2. How much amount is payable for kinsta Business 1 (in rs)
Please help me…..
1) Kinsta hosting
2) $100 * current exchange rate. Right now its about INR 6400
Hey harsh
what should the price of 1 year web hosting of kinsta???
2nd question is kinsta is best web hosting for 50,000 visitors per month??
please reply me.