Kinsta Review: Is This the Best Web Hosting Platform of (July 2025)?
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If you’re looking for high-quality WordPress hosting, Kinsta is a name you probably already know. They have a great reputation for fast, secure, stable, and easy-to-use hosting and should certainly be on your shortlist.
But how does it compare to the other big names in the managed WordPress hosting space? Does it deserve the top spot?
To help you decide if it’s the best option for your needs, in this post, I’m going to explore its best features, measuring its performance on our independently configured test sites (using two different WordPress themes: one basic and one more complex), and examining what you get for your money and how the pricing compares to its main rivals.
Table of Contents
Kinsta: A Quick Summary
Kinsta specializes in hosting WordPress sites, which means that rather than trying to optimize their hosting infrastructure for all types of websites, their technology is set up solely to provide the best possible experience for those using WordPress.
This means fast load times, high levels of security, a simplified user experience, and solid uptime. Whenever you talk to the support staff, you’ll know you’re talking to a WordPress expert who manages sites like yours daily.
The only downside to Kinsta is the price. While not much more expensive than other top-tier managed WordPress hosting, their plans are significantly more expensive than basic shared hosting services. Also, while its plans are competitively priced in the premium managed WordPress hosting space, its main rival, WP Engine, is slightly cheaper (for the first year, thanks to a new customer sign-up promotion) and also includes a selection of free premium WordPress themes.
But if you’re looking for high-quality managed WordPress hosting, you won’t overpay if you choose Kinsta, and you certainly won’t be disappointed with the service it offers.
If you’re interested in seeing exactly how I’ve come to this conclusion, read on for an in-depth, hands-on review of Kinsta.
Kinsta Review: Pros & Cons
Before we break down and evaluate the service it provides, here’s a quick rundown of the pros & cons to help you understand why you should consider Kinsta:
Clearly, there are many reasons to choose Kinsta. However, you will pay a premium for their services – with higher prices than all typical entry-level shared hosting services and even many reputable competitors in the managed hosting space, Kinsta is only worth considering if it really is as fast, easy to use and reliable as proclaimed (more on this later).
Kinsta Hosting Features
Familiarizing yourself with Kinsta’s features will help you decide if this is the right hosting for you and your website.
It will also help you understand why it charges more than shared hosting providers, and why it’s worth the money.
After you have covered the main features, you will find the results of site speed, load handling and uptime tests. These results will show you how fast your site can load if you sign up with Kinsta (spoiler: It’s safe to say that the results show that it’s a very fast WordPress host).
True Managed WordPress Hosting
As mentioned above, Kinsta is not a cheap shared hosting provider, but specializes in offering a high-performance hosting environment optimized to get the most out of WordPress.
It understands the potential limitations of WordPress, such as slow load times, security vulnerabilities, and caching issues, and has mitigated all of these problems by creating a best-in-class WordPress hosting environment.
Not only has Kinsta designed their hosting environment for the best possible performance, but they have also built their platform on the popular and powerful Google Cloud Platform.
This means you can host your site on an infrastructure built by one of the largest technology companies in the world, Google, but with a hosting environment managed by Kinsta. Not only that, but you’ll be able to host your site in one of the top five regions in the world, thanks to Google Cloud Platform’s 35 data centers.
However, because Kinsta has created its own easy-to-use custom control panel (more on that later), you’ll never know that your site is running on Google Cloud Platform, as everything is managed through your Kinsta account area.
Kinsta has also partnered with Cloudflare for their CDN. Included with all plans, Kinsta’s CDN distributes your site files to over 275 points of presence (PoPs) around the world, so your content is always close to your visitors, wherever they are.
According to Kinsta, activating your CDN can reduce page load times by up to 44% reduction.
Kinsta also manages caching with its own in-house solution. Instead of having to try to find the best caching plugin for your site, and then trying to configure it for your hosting environment, you can let Kinsta handle all of this for you.
All of this means that when you sign up with Kinsta, you get access to a hosting environment that relies on the best technology out there to deliver a premium managed hosting experience.
What Does Kinsta Manage for You?
In addition to tuning and optimizing your servers and hosting environment to keep your site fast and secure, Kinsta will also manage a number of essential tasks for you, including:
Other Notable Kinsta Hosting Features
Using Kinsta is Easy
Since Kinsta focuses primarily on hosting WordPress websites, it has been able to simplify its user experience and focus on making it as easy as possible for its customers to create and manage them.
Therefore, you can create a new WordPress website through Kinsta’s well-designed account control panel in just a few clicks.
Click Here to See More Images of the Kinsta Control Panel.
Accessing other features of your account, such as the backups that are automatically created every day, or the staging site tool, is very simple.
Click Here to See More Images of the Kinsta Control Panel & Tools.
Kinsta has done a great job in offering an advanced hosting environment through a user-friendly interface.
If you ever need help, Kinsta staff is just a few clicks away through the live chat channel located in your account control panel. However, Kinsta does not provide phone support, but their reasons for this make sense.
What Else Do You Get for Your Money?
As mentioned earlier in this Kinsta review, this is not a budget hosting provider that offers a basic service for a low price.
But What Do You Get for Your Money?
Well, the basic Starter plan is quite competitive in this space. For $30 per month (if you pay for a year upfront, or $35 if you choose to pay monthly), you get:
The more expensive plans allow you to host more websites, have more storage space and offer more monthly visits and CDN bandwidth.
Kinsta also offers custom plans and WordPress hosting for agencies.
Unlike other popular low-cost shared hosting, you don’t need to pay for a higher-priced plan to unlock higher levels of performance. With Kinsta, your site should load at the same speed regardless of whether you’re hosted on the entry-level Starter or higher-end Enterprise plans.
Is Kinsta Fast?
No Kinsta analysis would be complete without analyzing load times and overall performance.
I set up some test sites to find out if Kinsta lives up to its marketing claims of being one of the fastest WordPress hosts. I then put those test sites into Pingdom, where load times were recorded every 30 minutes for seven days. This allowed me to establish an average load time that took into account the daily fluctuations of the Internet. Here are the results…
Kinsta Load Time Test Results
I created two sites for testing. One used a free lightweight theme and the other a premium heavy theme. Whichever type of site you decide to create and host with Kinsta, this should give you an idea of the load times you might experience.
Kinsta Lightweight Theme Speed Test Results
I used the free and popular Twenty Twenty-One theme for the lightweight site test.
Here are the results from seven days of monitoring by Pingdom:
As you can see, the page loaded very quickly, with an average time of only 394 ms – just over a third of a second. This was much faster than our Bluehost and HostGator shared hosting comparison results.
Kinsta Heavyweight Theme Speed Test Results
If you prefer to use a more feature-rich theme or build a more advanced website, then my Avada theme test results will be of interest.
Avada is a very popular multipurpose theme that can be used to build any type of website. Its demos are packed with features, such as great graphics, complex layouts and sliders. Because of this, its pages tend to have large file sizes, which low-cost shared hosts can have problems with.
To see if Kinsta could handle a more feature-rich and complex site, I imported the Avada Digital Agency demo to a test site and configured Pingdom to log load time every 30 minutes. After seven days of monitoring, the average load time was 889 ms, less than a second.
Considering that the page size was 4.17 MB, compared to 162.48 KB for the page using the lightweight theme (almost 25 times larger), the average load time of 889 ms was very fast.
I also tested the speed of a blog post from the Avada Digital Agency demo to show how fast your site’s internal pages might load if you were planning to use a heavy theme.
This time, the page size was 1.51 MB and the load time was 756 ms. Again, another impressive result for Kinsta.
Kinsta Load Time Test Summary
Kinsta scored well in all three load time tests. With average load times of less than one second, visitors to these sites will not be disappointed or have to wait a long time.
| Theme | Page Size | Load Time |
|---|---|---|
| Twenty Twenty-One | 162.48 KB | 394 ms |
| Avada Agency Homepage | 4.17 MB | 889 ms |
| Avada Agency Blog Post | 1.51 MB | 756 ms |
Kinsta VS Other Managed Hosts
Compared to its main rivals, Kinsta performed well in the speed tests. Kinsta (889 ms) was faster than Liquid Web (959 ms), WordPress.com (1.06 s) & WP Engine (929 ms) in heavy theme tests.
In the lightweight theme tests, Kinsta (394 ms) was faster than WordPress.com (603 ms) but slower than WP Engine (246 ms) and Liquid Web (358 ms).
| Kinsta | Liquid Web | WordPress.com | WP Engine | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Heavyweight Theme | 889 ms | 959 ms | 1.06 ms | 929 ms |
| Lightweight Theme | 394 ms | 358 ms | 603 ms | 246 ms |
Loading time is based on the seven-day average recorded by Pingdom.
However, all the hosts were fast, and much faster than the cheapest shared hosts.
Kinsta Load Impact Performance Testing
To find out how the Kinsta-hosted sites handled visitors and traffic spikes, I used the K6 service to run some load impact tests.
The test simulated multiple visitors accessing the site at the same time, starting with one visitor and increasing to 198 simultaneous virtual visitors over a five-minute period. K6 recorded response times (not load times) for the site during the test.
The blue line in the graph below shows the site response time, while the gray area shows the number of virtual users accessing the site. Since the response time remained stable, the site did not experience any performance issues during the test. This test was run on the site with the lightweight theme.
A second test was run, this time on the site with the heavy Avada theme. As can be seen in the graph below, the response time (blue line) again remained stable during the test.
If you take a look at the Load Impact Performance Testing section of our Bluehost, GoDaddy and HostGator comparison, you’ll see that the low-cost shared plans from these three hosts suffered performance issues before 50 virtual users accessed the site simultaneously.
So, if you expect to have a busy website, you’ll likely need to invest in premium managed WordPress hosting from a company like Kinsta.
Kinsta Uptime Test Results
So far, our tests have shown that Kinsta is fast and able to handle multiple simultaneous (virtual) visitors comfortably.
But how good is Kinsta’s uptime? Well, it guarantees 99.9% uptime, but does it deliver?
Pingdom monitored the uptime of two test sites for seven days to find out. At the end of the test period, Pingdom recorded that both sites had 100% uptime, with no instances of downtime.
Although the cheaper hosts also guarantee 99.9% uptime, 99.9% still allows for a not insignificant amount of downtime. For example, if a site has 99.9% uptime, it may be down more than one minute a day, or eight hours and 45 minutes in a year.
In our comparison of Bluehost, GoDaddy and SiteGround, all three hosts achieved 99.9% uptime, but Pingdom still recorded some downtime. So, if downtime and site availability is important to you, it’s another reason why it’s probably worth investing in premium managed hosting.
Kinsta Pricing Details
While I’ve already mentioned the pricing for Kinsta’s basic managed WordPress hosting plan, here’s a quick rundown of some of their other plans:
| Starter | Pro | Business 1 | Business 2 | Business 3 | Business 4 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress Installs: | 1 | 2 | 5 | 10 | 20 | 40 |
| Monthly Visits: | 25,000 | 50,000 | 1000,000 | 250,000 | 400,000 | 600,000 |
| Storage: | 10 GB | 20 GB | 30 GB | 40 GB | 50 GB | 60 GB |
| Monthly CDN Bandwidth: | 100 GB CDN | 200 GB CDN | 400 GB CDN | 600 GB CDN | 800 GB CDN | 1200 GB CDN |
| Premium Migrations: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 4 |
| PHP Workers: | 2 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 6 | 6 |
| Price Starting From: | $35/month | $70/month | $115/month | $225/month | $340/month | $450/month |
All plans have a 30-day full money-back guarantee, so you can try Kinsta without financial risk.
As mentioned above, each plan has access to the same infrastructure powered by Google Cloud Platform. This means that, unlike other providers (Bluehost and SiteGround, for example), you don’t have to pay more for faster hosting. With Kinsta, the upgrade mainly increases the number of allowed WordPress installations and allowed visits and storage.
However, if you’re running a dynamic site, such as an e-commerce store, membership site or forum, you’ll get better performance from a plan with more PHP workers, such as Business 1 and above.
In fact, Kinsta does not recommend hosting a dynamic site on their Starter and Pro plans (which only have two PHP workers).
What About Overage Fees?
In most cases, if you exceed your plan’s allowed storage or visits, your site will not be disconnected, but you will be charged overage fees.
However, in the case of what Kinsta calls extreme overages, it reserves the right to temporarily limit access to your site until the problem has been resolved.
As far as Kinsta’s overage fees are concerned, there are three main types:
Full pricing details can be found on the Kinsta plans page.
Final Thoughts
Kinsta is highly recommended. It is fast and reliable, as well as easy to use. However, it is not the cheapest premium WordPress hosting.
Our tests show that Kinsta is fast, reliable and stable.
If you want your WordPress site to be available to your audience, even during high-traffic periods, and you want to achieve fast load times, Kinsta is up to the task.
The 35 data centers and a number of CDN locations mean that your audience should experience fast load times no matter where they are.
Kinsta is also easy to use, whether it’s setting up a new WordPress site, creating and restoring backups, or monitoring your usage levels and analytics.
However, it is a bit more expensive than its main rivals, such as WP Engine (at least for the first year) – another premium managed host that also offers a great service.
The 30-day money-back guarantee and free site migration mean you can try Kinsta risk-free. You can see for yourself how well it handles your site, and then make an informed decision on whether or not you want to remain a Kinsta customer.
Who Should Choose Kinsta?
Kinsta’s pricing is the only real hurdle. If you can afford it, Kinsta hosting is a great option.
While Kinsta’s plans are not overly expensive for premium managed WordPress hosting, if you can’t afford or justify around $30 a month, then it’s not the hosting for you.
Cheaper Alternatives to Kinsta?
If Kinsta’s price is too much, but you don’t want to compromise by choosing low-cost shared hosting, there are a few other options out there.
Flywheel is one of Kinsta’s main competitors. Their $13/month Tiny plan (if paid annually) has all the best WordPress-managed hosting features but has relatively small allocations, such as less storage and bandwidth and fewer monthly visitors. Their $25/month Starter plan has similar specs to Kinsta’s Starter plan but is about $5/month cheaper.
You can learn more in our hands-on review of Flywheel.
At the time of writing, you could get four months of free hosting if you paid for a year in advance with WP Engine, making their Startup plan equivalent to just $20 per month for the first year. Considering this plan has the same features as Kinsta and similar features, and includes some premium themes, it’s an excellent low-cost alternative. However, after the first year, you’ll pay full price, which is $30 a month – the same as Kinsta.
Check out our in-depth review of WP Engine to find out if this is a better option for you.
Liquid Web’s Nexcess WordPress-managed hosting is another affordable alternative to Kinsta. Their basic plan starts at just under $16 per month (if you pay annually), and you get access to all the core WordPress-managed hosting features. It also performed very well in the speed tests in our Liquid Web hosting review. For all of these reasons, it’s worth a try.
Read our Liquid Web review if you want to learn more about this hosting.
If you feel you don’t need premium WordPress hosting, you can find some good low-cost options in our guide to the best cheap WordPress hosting options.
FAQ’s
What servers does Kinsta use?
Kinsta’s infrastructure is based on Google Cloud and Cloudflare and is different from traditional shared, VPS or dedicated infrastructure. Each site hosted on its platform runs in an isolated software container that contains all the software resources needed to run the site (Linux, NGINX, PHP, MySQL).
You can learn more on Kinsta’s hosting servers and infrastructure page on their website.
Is Kinsta shared hosting?
No, Kinsta does not offer shared hosting. Their core packages are best described as managed WordPress hosting. Their website says they “maintain a custom, containerized hosting stack that doesn’t compromise on quality.”
What are the best alternatives to Kinsta?
WP Engine, Flywheel, LiquidWeb and WordPress.com are some of the best alternatives to Kinsta if you are looking for managed WordPress hosting and have a budget of around $30 a month. Our Kinsta vs WP Engine comparison can help you choose between these two popular managed hosts.
Many consider SiteGround a good alternative to Kinsta for cheaper options. You can find more information in our Kinsta vs SiteGround comparison.
Is Kinsta faster than Bluehost?
Yes, Kinsta is much faster than Bluehost. As you can see in our Bluehost vs DreamHost comparison, sites hosted on Kinsta are much faster than those hosted on Bluehost.
Where is Kinsta based?
Kinsta is headquartered in California, USA. However, they have data centers all over the world and have a global workforce.
Is Kinsta GDPR compliant?
Yes, Kinsta is fully GDPR compliant. But as with any host, you will need to carry out a few steps to ensure your website is GDPR compliant.
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Harry Banks is a tech blogger who concentrates on the interplay between technology and society. His writings reflect on the effects of technology on our daily lives, including work, leisure, communication, and social interaction. Harry’s blog offers a discerning standpoint on the role of technology in our society, scrutinizing both its advantages and potential pitfalls. He also provides commentary on the most recent technology news and trends, contextualizing them and evaluating their potential consequences. Harry’s reflective and thought-provoking perspectives on the world of tech and its impact on society have established him as an esteemed influencer in the tech community.
