Kinsta Review 2024: 13 Reasons to Choose Kinsta for Your WordPress Sites
Searching for a reliable web host is a crucial aspect when you are starting a blog or creating a business site. If your website is experiencing frequent downtime and slow speed issues, then your customers or visitors will be turned off, so no sales or views. So, you need to be very careful while deciding on a web hosting company.
Fortunately, there are web hosting providers that offer consistent services along with blazing-fast support services. So if you haven’t found the best for you, we undoubtedly can say that Kinsta is the best solution for bloggers, marketers, developers, and businesses. In this article, we describe the top features that make Kinsta a dominant player over others when it comes to world-class managed WordPress hosting.
What is Kinsta?
Kinsta is a Cloud Platform that specializes in managed WordPress hosting, application, database, and static site hosting. They offer hosting services on one of the most robust servers (powered by Google Cloud’s Premium Tier network) to offer maximum reliability to their users. Unlike simple shared hosting, in managed WP hosting, the company takes care of most of the system optimizations and security issues.
Kinsta holds the industry’s best customer support department. The support team at Kinsta is made up of specialized WordPress (CMS) engineers and developers. Overall, Kinsta is an incredible host that delivers an amazing experience.
Kinsta Review 2024: 13 Reasons Why You Should Choose
1. Cutting-Edge Cloud Platform by Google
Google is well known for its scalability and state-of-the-art infrastructure to handle huge traffic waves. Kinsta utilizes Google Cloud’s Platform Premium Tier network, which means it provides you access to the infrastructure that Google uses for its search engine and YouTube.
Kinsta runs on C2 and C3D virtual machines, providing a reliable and high-performance platform for your website. In addition, the cloud capabilities enable the hosting company to provide the highest uptime in the market, thus saving you from any sales loss.
2. Premium Features with All Plans
No matter what plan you choose, Kinsta offers the same high-level infrastructure and premium features across all plans.
Free premium migrations from other hosts are included and performed by their experts to ensure a smooth transition. The number of premium migrations depends on the plan you are on, but the lowest plan comes with at least 1 premium migration. Kinsta also offers unlimited basic migrations from any host.
Enterprise-level Cloudflare integration is included in all plans and comes with features like wildcard automatic SSL certificates, Edge Caching, CDN with 260+ worldwide PoPs, HTTP/3 support, Brotli compression, DDoS protection, and much more.
Kinsta also provides one-click staging environments for every WordPress site, allowing you to test changes before pushing them to your live site.
Other features worth mentioning are the built-in Application Performance Monitoring tool for debugging your WordPress site, API for automation, DevKinsta for creating and managing WordPress sites on your local machine, and MyKinsta dashboard with unlimited user access and optimization tools.
3. Irresistible 24/7 Expert Support Services
If you are a beginner, a hosting company without a hasty support service might get you in trouble. There are lots of technical aspects when dealing with websites, and for a newbie taking care of every aspect of a website is pretty overwhelming and time consuming. With Kinsta, you don’t have to worry about the support side.
Kinsta offers 24/7/365 live chat support and a ticketing system. They have a team of developers with experience on open-source projects, including WordPress. The chat support is easily accessible through the MyKinsta dashboard. Open the live chat, and a support agent will connect within no time (roughly – less than 1 minute).
The expert support team is available in 5 languages, with Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and French in selected hours. English expert support is available 24/7, no matter the day of the year.
In addition to the world-class support Kinsta provides, you have access to well-written guides and documentation, troubleshooting materials, tutorials, and useful articles.
4. Secure Web Host and Malware Removal
A managed WordPress web host offers great peace of mind to businesses and individuals when it comes to security precautions. On simple shared hosting, you have to take care of every security protocol, and if anyone hacks in, you are on your own. Sometimes, the company even suspends the hacked account.
Kinsta implements numerous security protocols to let you operate freely. By utilizing cloud infrastructure, Kinsta isolates each WordPress site in a software container with all the necessary resources—Linux, NGINX, PHP, MySQL. It is the most secure way to protect users. Furthermore, to cover security holes, they no longer support the old PHP versions, which are not getting patches. Kinsta supports all PHP 8+ versions.
As for the uptime monitoring, Kinsta continuously monitors for uptime and security with a site check of every 3 minutes. They provide SLA-backed 99.9% uptime guaranteed.
Kinsta enhances security through 2 firewalls: the Google Cloud Platform’s IP-based protection firewall and Cloudflare’s enterprise-level firewall that includes scans for hack attacks like DDoS.
The amazing part of Kinsta’s security is that it includes malware removal. No doubt your site is well protected, but if your website is compromised, they will fix it for you. To avoid performance issues, Kinsta restricts some security plugins on their platform like WordFence – the Traffic Logging feature is disabled as it causes high IOPS. However to add an extra security layer, the hosting is compatible with Sucuri and is fully integrated with enterprise-level CloudFlare. Besides these security measures, Kinsta has:
- Two-factor authentication
- 6 failed attempt auto IP blocking
- Strong password indication
- IP blocking on request
- Wildcard SSL certificates
- Automatic daily backups
- SOC2 compliance
5. Free Wildcard SSL Certificates by CloudFlare
Alongside the aforementioned security measures, Kinsta offers free automatic wildcard Cloudflare SSL with no headache of renewals. Due to increasing cases of hacking, encryption of credentials such as login details and credit card numbers become a necessity. Besides, SSL may give your site a little SEO benefit.
Because it’s an inevitable option, so Kinsta offers free SSL to their user to ensure a secure environment to operate. You don’t have to get through the arduous process to activate the SSL instead, Kinsta integrated it right into their dashboard. The SSL certificates are automatically installed on each WordPress site. For renewals, you don’t have to worry as the company will provide it free forever.
6. Developer Friendly Features
Advanced developer features, such as PHP version customization, SSH access via WP-CLI, and Git compatibility, are included for all plans to help the technical team make all kinds of changes in a fraction of time. With just a single click, changing the PHP version is dead simple yet convenient. Website cloning and staging area features are also available to make it hassle-free to migrate your data from one server to another or test new updates in a staging environment.
Plus, webmasters can set up different PHP workers for each hosted site on Kinsta, allowing ultimate flexibility regarding performance. For maximum security, secure tunneling into the database for remote access ensures robust protection.
Kinsta Rest API is also available for all Kinsta customers for workload efficiency and automation. You can easily retrieve data analytics, schedule tasks such as PHP restarts, clearing cache, or even automate WordPress site launch and installing plugins like Woocommerce or Yoast without the need to log in to MyKinsta.
7. Advanced Server-Side Cache and Edge Cache
Believe us or not, sometimes optimizing WordPress becomes a headache. With shared hosting providers, you have to configure a cache plugin and manage dozens of options to enhance site speed as well as cache mechanism. When done wrong, it causes a site break or results in an ugly look. It happened to us many times with other of our blogs. On the other hand, for maximum results, you have to install two or three plugins to cache different assets which causes more HTTP requests.
Kinsta knows this hurdle, and that’s why it offers server-level cache instead of utilizing plugins. They provide a fine-tuned LXC-powered hosting environment to deliver lightning-fast speeds across the world through their CDN network. LXC containers isolate each website’s resources for the best possible performance. It ensures 100% availability of each account’s resources, including Linux, PHP, MySQL, and NGINX.
Furthermore, you can switch between different PHP versions to enhance performance. However, one should enable PHP 8 or a higher version to avail the fastest loading speed. All these features work out of the box and require nothing to configure. They are utilizing the following four types of mechanisms at the server level:
- Bytecode cache
- Page cache
- Object cache
- CDN cache
- Edge cache
8. Free Automatic Daily Backups
Backups are essential to secure your data from the worst incidents and help restore your website if newly implemented updates break it. With that said, no matter what kind of host one is using, whether shared or dedicated, you should set up a backup system. Many third-party services are available, such as VultPress and CodeGuard; however, they cost extra.
Luckily, Kinsta offers free automatic daily backups with a one-click restore feature. It’s easy and highly convenient for users to restore their assets like a charm with minimum hassle. Besides that, manual backups can also be made with a click. Even though many hosts charge a fee for backups (especially shared), Kinsta is generous enough to provide such a feature at no extra cost. You can manage site backups right from the MyKinsta dashboard.
You might say there are various WordPress plugins available for the same thing (backups) that cost nothing, but we are confident enough to say that plugins are sometimes not easy to configure. It takes a lot of time to set up plugins, maintain FTP access, and make database connections. In a nutshell, you cannot compare those free solutions with Kinsta’s dedicated backup system.
9. 36 Data Centers Around the World
Kinsta lets you make use of one of the biggest infrastructure systems in the industry. Because of its incorporation with the Google Cloud Platform, Kinsta has feet in 36 different regions. This includes the locations:
USA
- Council Bluffs, Iowa
- Moncks Corner, South Carolina
- Ashburn, Virginia
- Columbus, Ohio
- Dallas, Texas
- The Dalles, Oregon
- Los Angeles, California
- Salt Lake City, Utah
- Las Vegas, Nevada
South & North America
- Montréal, Canada
- Toronto, Canada
- São Paulo, Brazil
- Santiago, Chile
Europe
- Warsaw, Poland
- Hamina, Finland
- Madrid, Spain
- St. Ghislain, Belgium
- London, United Kingdom
- Frankfurt, Germany
- Eemshaven, Netherlands
- Zurich, Switzerland
- Milan, Italy
- Paris, France
Asia
- Changhua County, Taiwan
- Hong Kong
- Tokyo, Japan
- Osaka, Japan
- Seoul, South Korea
- Mumbai, India
- Delhi, India
- Jurong West, Singapore
- Jakarta, Indonesia
Southeast
- Sydney, Australia
- Melbourne, Australia
Africa
- Johannesburg
You will be given with a choice to strategically host your site on a server near your target audience. In this way, the data transmission will be quick and your site will experience a fast loading time. This is really a beneficial option, especially for e-commerce sites.
Google is taking care of servers well, no doubt, but if a server breaks down, your site will not go down because of cloud capabilities, where servers are interconnected through a robust network. Kinsta is using Google’s Premium Tier network, which is designed for low latency.
10. Free CDN Network with 260+ PoPs
No matter how many data centers your web host has around the world, having a CDN network enabled is always better compared to using the host servers for many reasons. CDN (content distribution network) fetches the data through the nearest located server to the user, resulting in the lowest latency and, thus, the fastest loading. That said, it helps to deliver a better user experience as well as reduce the load on your hosting server as it caches your site’s assets.
CDN works by caching the website content into their servers, which are usually located all over the world. When someone accesses the site it loads back-end files from the cache server instead of the actual hosting server. However, when you update anything, it automatically retrieves that data to provide fresh content. Luckily, Kinsta includes a free CDN powered by enterprise-level Cloudflare to help you enhance site speed. It has 260+ points of worldwide presence and HTTP/3 enabled for higher performance.
11. Containerized Infrastructure & Fastest GCP Virtual Machines
Kinsta’s infrastructure utilizes Google Cloud Platform’s C2 and C3D virtual machines, which offer the highest per-core performance and are optimized for CPU-intensive workloads.
Also, thanks to Kinsta’s isolated container technology, each site’s resources are allocated privately, with each live site container having access to 12 CPUs and 8 GB RAM by default. Simply put, you’ll have all the resources they need for the smooth running of your WordPress sites.
As, for resource usage like monthly traffic and disc space, you’ll be notified about the resource limits, and your site won’t be down for even a single second.
12. Kinsta Dashboard – MyKinsta
If you ever host a site on simple shared hosting, the hosting provider might provide you cPanel access to control the hosting features. cPanel is being widely used in the industry because of its intuitive interface but it might not be friendly for everyone.
Kinsta adopts a different approach by offering a custom in-house dashboard so you can manage your site effortlessly. Even if you are experiencing hosting for the first time, the Kinsta dashboard offers you maximum usability and accessibility.
Within the MyKinsta dashboard there are numerous site optimization tools such as WordPress debugging, Ealy Hints web standard, force HTTPS, New Relic monitoring, or site preview tool, among many others.
Kinsta also includes a custom-built Application Performance Monitoring tool that allows you to identify and debug performance issues on your WordPress site. An APM tool normally costs extra, but with Kinsta’s hosting, it is available at no extra cost inside the MyKinsta dashboard.
13. Host All Web Projects under One Roof
Kinsta introduced new hosting services to give clients even more flexibility. You can now host and manage all kinds of web projects inside the MyKinsta dashboard.
The solid infrastructure, premium features, and 24/7 expert support are also extended to the new services.
Kinsta’s App hosting offers smooth development with Git-based workflows, automatic deployments, fast-build caching and multiple environments. It also includes persistent storage, SSH access, and API support. You have unlimited concurrent builds across 25 strategically placed data centers, providing both horizontal and vertical scaling options.
The service supports a wide range of programming languages, including Node.js, Ruby, Python, Java, Scala, PHP, and Go. It also allows you to deploy any application through Docker using your own Dockerfile.
Kinsta’s Managed Database Hosting offers dedicated top-performance CPU and RAM, ensuring optimal speed. You’ll enjoy peace of mind with the latest database versions, automatic daily backups, scalable resources, and one-click restores for easy data management.
If you’re hosting your apps and databases on Kinsta, you can set up internal connections to create a private network and also benefit from unlimited free internal traffic.
The latest addition to Kinsta’s services is Static Site Hosting. It’s tailored for pre-built static websites and modern static site generators using Node.js and includes multi-user access, deployment to the edge, custom domains, and integration with GitHub, GitLab, and BitBucket.
It is a free hosting service, and you can host up to 100 free static sites with 100GB bandwidth/month and 600 build minutes.
The Thing You Won’t Get From Kinsta: Email
Usually, a shared hosting plan also includes email hosting, which allows you to create an official email address that includes your domain name. For example, if your domain name is xyz.com, then the email address can be admin@xyz.com or something you prefer.
For this, you need to use a separate service like Gsuite, which costs just $5/month. Further, there are also some free solutions with some limitations. Kinsta is solely focused on providing premium hosting services for your web projects.
Kinsta Review Conclusion: Should You Choose It?
Web hosting is a crowded industry where many companies make many claims. So, finding the best managed WordPress host with solid performance and protective security measures is a considerably difficult task.
So, if you want to host a business site or a blog, Kinsta managed WordPress hosting is the best place to stop on. Without any hesitation, we can say Kinsta is incredible when it comes to uptime and speed.
The other crucial department, customer support, is extremely impressive. They are knowledgeable and friendly and respond within 12 minutes whenever you contact them via live chat.
As a whole, Kinsta is an outstanding choice. They absolutely deliver consistent services. Though they have hasty price tags but by delivering total peace of mind with premium security and state-of-the-art infrastructure, they well satisfy the pricing. We are sure you will find them an amazing web host too.