Kinsta.com Reviews
The online business world is a constantly shifting landscape of complex comparisons and foreboding feature sets. Choosing which company to use for your hosting service is the first step that many take towards having an online presence.
There are a lot of options out there for new web designers and experienced business people alike. Every day there seems to be a new host popping up with uptime guarantees and discounted rates ready to range in any clients needing to host their content.
In order to break it down and give you a focused look at exactly what each web host can do for you, we’ll be taking a look today at Kinsta, a WordPress-specialized hosting company with a wide range of plans built around satisfying your WordPress hosting needs.
To start off, we’ll do a little intro on the company and give you an idea of who they are and what they stand for.
What is Kinsta?
Founded in 2013, Kinsta began with a desire to become the best WordPress hosting platform across the globe. The team consists of veteran WordPress developers who are determined to bring cutting-edge technology, speed, security, and stability into a rapidly growing industry.
The company offers a huge array of WordPress optimized plans; ranging from starter packages suitable for startup bloggers and hobbyists, all the way to huge enterprising accounts meant for large corporations to manage troves of content all at once.
Compared to other companies, which usually offer some WordPress hosting, but with their focus on other areas as niches, their WordPress hosting is simply unbeatable. They have excellent reviews online, as well as a list of big-name clients like Tripadvisor.
Overall, it’s pretty easy to buy into the hype here; Kinsta simply seems like the best option hands-down for WordPress hosting. That being said, it’s always a good idea to take a focused look at exactly what a company has to offer you.
To that effect, we’re going to take a look now at some of Kinsta’s pros and cons. There’s a lot that this company has to offer, and a lot of buzz around the web about them (both good and bad). In order to get down into the nitty-gritty of what we’ll need to know in order to make our decision, we’ll start off with some of the advantages which Kinsta has to offer.
Pros and Cons of Kinsta Hosting
In the following I will show you the pros and cons of Kinsta.
Pros of Kinsta
Kinsta has a wide range of advantages, including:
- 30-day money-back guarantee. Kinsta offers a refund if you cancel their hosting services within 30 days. There’s always some fine print to go along with these guarantees, so it’s a good idea to take a look at their website and see for yourself if you’re getting what you bargained for. The guarantee itself is fairly standard when it comes to web hosting companies, but it can be nice for clients looking to minimize their risk.
- No downgrading or upgrading penalty. Kinsta won’t penalize you with extra charges for changing your mind about what you want with your plan. Upgrading to a higher plan as well as downgrading to a smaller plan will not incur any extra fees or costs besides the actual difference between the two plans if you’re upgrading. This is nice because a lot of companies can get into the habit of gouging with little fees for everything that their customers do.
- 2 free months included with annual plans. When you sign up for an annual plan rather than a monthly plan, you will receive two free months of WordPress hosting free of charge. Along with the discounted rates they offer with longer commitments, this is a very nice feature, especially for people looking to save some money while still getting high quality WordPress hosting.
- No fixed-term contracts. Kinsta doesn’t limit their plans by time periods. This is an excellent feature for people with volatile business models, frequent website migrations, and finicky clients. Knowing that you can get out of a contract with less hassle is always a boon when you have better things to worry about. This is an especially cushy factor when you consider the powerful features and technology that come along with Kinsta’s WordPress hosting.
- Prorated refunds. When you get a refund from Kinsta, they prorate the refunds so that you don’t get screwed out of refunds for services already rendered. If you only received hosting for part of a pay period, you will only be billed or refunded according to the amount you paid, rather than truncated into a larger pay pigeonhole. Again, this is a nice perk for those who feel they may require a refund at some point.
- Daily backups. Kinsta WordPress hosting manages daily backups of its content, so you never lose any of the important stuff that happens on your website. A lot of other WordPress hosting companies provide backups less frequently, or only with specific plans, but Kinsta WordPress hosting includes the backups with all of their plans. This means you never have to worry about large amounts of your data being lost.
- Staging Environments. Kinsta provides staging environments with its plans. This allows you to see and test changes to your website before taking it live, and make sure you have exactly the kind of online presence that your business needs. Again, many other web hosts provide similar staging features, but it’s nice to have them included as a free feature in all of their plans. This means that no matter what scale of service you go with, you will receive the advantages of having a staging environment. Just one of the many ways in which Kinsta shows they care.
- Killer WordPress optimization. Kinsta has some of the best WordPress hosting out there, with killer uptime stats and state-of-the art hardware optimized to bring breakneck speeds to your WordPress site. Their customer reviews and opinion pieces about their performance are generally glowing in this category. I tend to believe the masses when they tell me that a host has amazing performance. Some people seem to have had some issues with small amounts of downtime, but these seem to be more the exception than the rule.
- Nice Dashboard. Although Kinsta doesn’t seem to use the industry standard cPanel interface, their UI is very intuitive, and has all the information and tools at your disposal that any web developer would want. Although you won’t learn any industry-standard skills when you familiarize yourself with the interface, you will notice that the features and streamlined look make it a very capable interface, nonetheless.
As you can see, there’s a lot to like about Kinsta, since they have arguably the most powerful WordPress hosting out there. While their plans might seem a bit pricey compared to the basic shared hosting plans offered by some other websites, the prices are actually very competitive compared to other cloud and dedicated hosting plans. Besides, their powerful tech and feature sets are well worth the little bit extra, in our opinion.
If you do choose to go with Kinsta, there are a few disadvantages that you should be aware of before you go putting money down on a $600 plan. If you decide that their specialized WordPress hosting has what you’re looking for, you should look into a few of these cons and see if they don’t make or break your decision to go with Kinsta.
Cons of Kinsta
There are a lot of good things that you will get out of your time with Kinsta, if you decide to go with their services. That being said, no company is perfect, and there are always areas in which a host can improve. Although Kinsta tends to go over well in corporate and customer reviews alike, there are some common areas of short-falling that many tend to identify.
- No domain registration. Although Kinsta offers very powerful WordPress hosting that tends to blow a lot of other hosts out of the water, they don’t offer their own domain registration services. This is fine for customers who are used to dealing with their domain registration separately from their hosting services.
- No email hosting. Again, Kinsta unfortunately doesn’t include email service hosting with their plans. This is more or less a standard for WordPress hosts, who like to dedicate more of their resources toward things that WordPress sites really need. Still, it can be a bit of a pain if you want an email to go along with your website. If you’re used to getting your email services hosted through your web host, this might be a bit of a big deal for you, but its more likely that this simply won’t be too much of an issue.
- Somewhat restrictive. Like many other managed WordPress hosting services, Kinsta places some restrictions on the types and numbers of plugins that you can have installed on your website. This is a bit of a necessary evil, as it allows Kinsta to regulate their hosted WordPress sites in such a way as to guarantee the kind of speeds and uptime that they’re known for.
- Price structure. Some people who are used to using shared plans may be a bit taken aback by the price structure used by Kinsta. You have to keep in mind that these prices are for cloud-based and dedicated servers, and that the prices are still very competitive compared to other companies. The feature sets and tech are still very powerful for all their plans, even in spite of their price point.
As you can see, these cons aren’t all that bad. There aren’t too many things here to raise any huge red flags. Some of these shortcomings are a bit of a shame, but overall the advantages are enough to outweigh the disadvantages.
So, now that we’ve kind of compared the good with the bad when it comes to Kinsta, there’s really only one more area to look at, and that’s price. The actual cost of their services and the features that you get included with them are typically the make-or-break moment for a lot of users, so let’s go over it a bit here.
Kinsta Price
If you’re used to shared hosting plans such as those offered by BlueHost or Hostinger, you may be a bit off put by the price points offered by Kinster. Since their plans offer powerful dedicated and cloud based WordPress hosting, their prices are a bit higher to match.
Although these prices may be a bit higher than what you’re used to if you’re coming from a basic shared plan, they’re definitely worth the extra features and functionality that goes along with Kinster’s WordPress hosting. The prices are actually quite reasonable compared to other hosts of similar quality.
- Kinster’s WordPress hosting plans range from around $30 per month all the way up to $900 per month for their enterprising plans.
- You can also contact their sales team to set up a customized plan made just for you, in case you need even more power compared to their higher-end plans.
- Their Starter plan, at $30 per month, includes 1 WordPress install, 20,000 visits, 5GB of space, and free SSL and CDN. This is a fairly standard set of features for a basic WordPress plan.
- The Pro plan bumps this up to 2 WordPress Installs, 40,000 visits, and 10GB of space fo $60 per month. The plans continue to scale up like this, and the prices themselves are a little steeper than what you would expect from another service. Just remember that you’re paying for the extra quality.
- Their Business plans graduate in much the same fashion; ranging from $100-$400 per month, and ranging from 5 to 40 WordPress installs, 100,000-600,000 visits, and 15-40GB of space.
- Their most expensive Enterprise plans go for either $600 or $900 per month, and include up to 80 WordPress installs, 1,500,000 visits, and 120Gb of space.
These plan options are very scalable, with powerful feature sets and tech to go along with their guarantees and special deals. Always check around to see if they aren’t offering special packages or discounts, since companies like these often have promotions and such to rangle in new customers.
The Verdict
Overall, Kinsta vastly outperforms the majority of other WordPress hosting sites. They have a well established reputation and glowing customer reviews online. Their list of big-name clients also speaks for itself, professing the quality and care with which Kinsta brings their hosting services to the table.
If you have any comments or things we missed, feel free to let us know!
