Kinsta’s entry-level plan is priced at $35 per month with a visitor-based pricing model. For entry-level bloggers, this is a great opportunity to enjoy the power of managed WordPress hosting at this price.
I always enjoy blogging, but sometimes I get frustrated and overworked by unexpected questions.
Blogging is mostly a one-man show and managing a blog is a difficult task. It is a misconception to think that blogging is just about writing because bloggers know that blogging requires doing various other activities such as:
- Optimize WordPress (or other blogging platform).
- Search engine optimization.
- We are protecting the website from hacker attacks.
- Promote your blog.
- Updated design.
- Social media marketing.
- ...and much more...
That's why I always say:
Start blogging as a side hustle, but once it’s profitable, treat it like a regular business.
As a professional blogger, I have experienced many ups and downs over the past decade.
Today, I’m sharing with you a decision I made four years ago that has dramatically changed my blogging career.
You can imagine the impact of this decision because four years ago I was making $15,00 a month and now I make more than 10 times that.
So what happened four years ago that changed SidelinePlay and my blogging journey?
My experience after switching to Kinsta WordPress hosting:
Besides my experience and review of Kinsta hosting , this post is quite insightful. If you have a growing blog and often find yourself bogged down in technical hosting jargon, this post will be a life changer.
Eight years ago (2016), SidelinePlay’s traffic was growing.
I was using shared hosting, but it couldn't handle the traffic I needed. I switched to VPS hosting, but managing and optimizing WordPress became a challenge. New issues popped up every day, and I was in technical trouble.
I totally believe that we should focus on what we do best, like: writing, marketing, SEO, etc. These technical aspects should be outsourced, and with this belief in mind, I looked at my options and found Kinsta hosting, which was recommended by a very knowledgeable person.
In 2015, Kinsta was still relatively new.
Since I was tired of the high bills and Kinsta offered me everything for just $157/month, I had nothing to lose.
I think:
In the worst case scenario, I will have to move to another web host.
At that moment, I felt like it was a risk worth taking.
Finally, on March 15, 2017, I moved SidelinePlay to Kinsta Managed WordPress Hosting using their free hosting migration service.
They took care of everything from moving the site to testing loading times. Once everything was verified, I changed my domain name servers to point to Kinsta.
I believe purchasing a new web hosting plan and migrating your site to the new host is the easy part.
The most important thing happened after this.
I’ll share my personal experience and review of Kinsta hosting at the end of this guide, but first, let me quickly share the specs, features, and other important things about Kinsta’s managed WordPress hosting.
- Also check out: Best Managed WordPress Hosting Sites
Kinsta Managed WordPress Hosting Features:
Although Kinsta is a reputable WordPress hosting provider, it’s not suitable for all types of WordPress websites. For those who would sacrifice quality in order to save money, Kinsta is definitely not for them.
For entry-level blogs, a shared hosting plan is better as it usually costs less than $10 per month. Kinsta starts at $35 per month , which is not cheap.
However, for any high-performance WordPress or WooCommerce site that requires 100% uptime, this pricing is not a problem.
It’s the internals of Kinsta that really matter.
Let me quickly walk you through all that they offer.
Hosted on Google Cloud
With Kinsta hosting, your website will be hosted on the Premium Tier Network of the Google Cloud platform, which is one of the top-tier infrastructures you can get for your website.
You can also choose your data center.
Google offers four locations in a multi-region model: Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia Pacific, and you can choose from many data centers. Here are some 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)
- Saint-Ghislain, Belgium (europe-west1)
- London, UK (europe-west2)
- Frankfurt, Germany (europe-west3)
- Emshaven, Netherlands (europe-west4)
- Zurich, Switzerland (europe-west6)
- Milan, Italy (europe-west8)
- Paris, France (europe-west9)
- Tel Aviv, Israel (me-west1)
- Montreal, Canada (northamerica-northeast1)
- Toronto, Canada (northamerica-northeast2)
- Sao Paulo, Brazil (southamerica-east1)
- Santiago, Chile (southamerica-west1)
- Council Bluffs, Iowa, United States (us-central1)
- Moncks Corner, South Carolina, United States (us-east1)
- Ashburn, Virginia, USA (us-east4)
- Columbus, Ohio, USA (us-east5)
- Dallas, Texas, USA (us-south1)
- The Dalles, Oregon, United States (us-west1)
- Los Angeles, California, United States (us-west2)
- Salt Lake City, Utah, USA (us-west3)
- Las Vegas, Nevada, USA (us-west4)
- Johannesburg, Africa (africa-south1)
They are strategically located to provide the lowest latency worldwide. Depending on the country you want to target, choose the location of the server.
Kinsta has become the first managed WordPress host fully powered by Google Cloud Platform and LXD container technology.
LXD offers the best of both worlds:
- Isolation , where server resources are allocated separately for each site.
- High transportability between host and full container snapshots enables instant and complete backup of entire environments.
Here is the description of LXD Architect from Kinsta’s official page:
Kinsta uses LXD hosting and carefully orchestrated LXC software containers for each site. This means that each WordPress site is in its own isolated container that contains all the software resources needed to run it (Linux, Nginx, PHP, MySQL). These resources are 100% private and are not shared with anyone else, not even your own site.
However, I found this part to be not 100% correct. You should understand this architect like this:
Each site is 100% isolated in its own container and there are several sites hosted in 1 LXD (each site is isolated in its own container). If one container has load issues, it may cause problems in other containers of that LXD. And there is only one site hosted in 1 container.
Each site container runs on a large virtual machine in one of several Google Cloud Platform (GCP) data centers, protected by 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 allowing access to a reasonable amount of server resources on an infrastructure optimized for CPU-intensive workloads.
I think what you need to know at this point is that other sites on Kinsta's servers may affect your site. At least it caused me 15 minutes of downtime.
I know it’s unfortunate and this is perhaps the first time something like this has happened in five years, but it’s important for everyone planning to use Kinsta to be aware of this.
Free WordPress Migration by Kinsta
If you’re moving an existing WordPress site to Kinsta from any host, you don’t have to worry about migrating your site.
Kinsta offers premium migrations, depending on the plan you choose, as well as unlimited free basic migrations from any host.
Advanced Migration:
This is recommended if you host your site on a custom setup or if you feel it would be difficult for someone else to migrate your site hosting. I feel the same way, but Kinsta’s top-notch customer support will ensure your site is migrated safely, and then after testing the migration, you can renew your IP.
Free Basic Migration:
You can request unlimited free migrations from all hosting services including: A2 Hosting, Bluehost, Cloudways, DreamHost, Flywheel, GoDaddy, HostGator, Pagely, Pantheon, Savvii, SiteGround, tsoHost, WP Engine, WPX Hosting.
If you have already backed up your existing website using Duplicator, ManageWP, and cPanel Backup, then you can also request a free basic migration.
Simply sign up for an account, use the migration form in the Kinsta dashboard, and their migration team will schedule and migrate your site for you.
There won’t be any downtime for this migration, and they’ll even test your site before it goes live. That way, you can make sure everything works fine after you migrate your WordPress site to Kinsta.
This can save time as handling the migration yourself can be time consuming and annoying. Just so you know, I enjoy a technical challenge like this, but having someone more knowledgeable handle it can save a lot of time and give you more peace of mind.
Support from WordPress experts
When you pay that much money you can't accept anything less than sub-par support. I have never had to worry about any WordPress issues in the past five years.
If I have a problem, I need to send them a quick ping and within minutes they usually have the problem fixed.
There were only 1-2 times where a few of my tickets took an hour to resolve, but that was a small percentage of my experience.
I like their customer service team because they are dedicated to finding solutions. The advice and solutions I received were first class and clearly from knowledgeable people rather than guesswork and assumptions.
Kinsta’s support is available 24/7 and can be contacted conveniently via chat within the MyKinsta dashboard.
Customize the Client Dashboard
The dashboard provided by Kinsta is very powerful. Even if you are new to managed WordPress hosting, you will be able to understand it easily.
There are many optimization tools within the MyKinsta dashboard, such as a built-in APM tool, WordPress debugging, and a search and replace tool. Everything inside is designed to be user-friendly, and you can even host and manage other web projects besides WordPress, such as web applications, databases, or static sites.
Automatic daily backups and on-demand backups
If you are paying for any third-party backup service like VaultPress or Updraftplus , you can save money.
Kinsta automatically backs up your WordPress blog every day; you can also back up on demand.
They store 14 backup copies. You can restore a backup to a live production site or staging site at any time with just one click.
Staging Site
You can create a copy of your live site as a staging site (testing environment) and make all your changes there. This has become part of our development process since migrating to Kinsta.
With Kinsta’s WordPress hosting, each of your WordPress installations gets its own free WordPress staging environment, completely separate from your live production site.
First, the developer makes changes on the staging site, and once we approve it, we publish it to the production site.
Staging a website is a must-have feature on any high-end hosting site. When you purchase managed WordPress hosting, make sure that the host offers staging.
Free SSL and advanced tools at your fingertips
Kinsta offers free wildcard SSL certificates powered by Cloudflare, which are automatically installed on every website. You can also use a custom SSL certificate if you want.
They have a specific page called "Tools" where you can do various things like restart PHP, change the PHP engine, and clear the cache.
They also have a custom WordPress plugin that automatically clears the cache when you publish a new post. Overall, I am very happy with the infrastructure and features provided by Kinsta hosting.
How is Kinsta priced?
When you’re shopping for premium managed WordPress hosting, price is often one of the most important considerations. Kinsta offers entry-level hosting for $35, which allows you to get 25K page views per month.
They offer a variety of plans, and you should choose one based on:
- How many WordPress blogs/websites do you want to host...
- How many page views does your blog get each month...
- How many PHP workers do you need...
They offer Starter Plan, Business Plan, Enterprise Plan, Single Site Plan, Agency Plan, WooCommerce Plan, and Custom Solutions…
Check out Kinsta's entry-level plans
If you’re not sure which plan is right for you, follow these tips:
- If you have a new website, choose the Professional plan. You can upgrade or downgrade your plan at any time.
- If you are migrating your site from another hosting package, check how many page views you get 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 crucial when you are using hosting like Kinsta or WPEngine that offers plans based on page views.
- If you have a high traffic site, you should contact the Kinsta team and have them recommend a plan for you. They usually offer discounts on annual plans. However, I recommend starting with the monthly plan first and then opting for the annual plan once you’ve determined which plan is best for you.
Currently, I am using their Enterprise 1 plan as I host more than 15 websites and use more than 50 plugins of SidelinePlay at the same time.
Note: Since I used Kinsta from 2016-2021, I had access to one of the traditional plans.
Conclusion: Is Kinsta hosting worth the money and much touted?
After hosting SidelinePlay on Kinsta for over five years, I can say it’s worth every penny.
So far, they have lived up to their promises and delivered on their expectations. What I admire most about Kinsta hosting is their customer support and continued top-notch server performance.
In the past 7 years, I have never had to worry about website downtime or other technical issues related to hosting.
These are the things that will make you successful when you realize that time is money.
Not only that, but moving to Kinsta has allowed me to scale SidelinePlay without having to worry about whether my hosting can handle my traffic or website load.
My advice is that if you find yourself in the same situation as I was a few years ago and have to choose a managed WordPress host to guarantee the right hosting environment for your website/blog, choose Kinsta hosting.
You will thank me for this suggestion.
I could go on and on sharing my experiences and reviews of Kinsta hosting, but it would be more interesting if you test it yourself. If your WordPress site requires top-notch infrastructure and your budget allows, don’t hesitate…
Just get Kinsta hosting.
If you are also an existing customer of Kinsta hosting, let me know your review in the comment section below. Got a question about Kinsta that you want me to answer?
Ask away in the comments!
Here are some common questions about Kinsta:
Where is Kinsta located? Kinsta is a remote company. If you are curious about data center locations, they use Google Cloud infrastructure and currently have more than 36 data centers in almost all regions around the world.
Can you use any caching plugin with Kinsta? Kinsta offers internal object caching, page caching, and edge caching powered by Cloudflare, and in most cases you don’t need any external caching plugins. Last time I checked, WP-Rocket was the only caching plugin compatible with Kinsta.
Should you use Kinsta CDN or Cloudflare CDN? It is recommended to use Cloudflare CDN instead of Kinsta CDN.
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Note: This article contains affiliate links, but every word is unbiased and based on real experience.
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