I have been using Kinsta for almost a year and a half now and I love the fact that this hosting server is constantly evolving. They're one of the fastest web hosting providers and offer new outstanding features and their team of experts offers great customer service to each individual, 24/7 for 365 days. Obviously, everything comes with a price and they aren't the cheapest but it's totally worth a try. Let us understand what Kinsta is and what all things they offer.
WHAT IS KINSTA?
Kinsta is a premium quality web hosting platform. It is known to offer WordPress hosting services that are powered by Google Cloud hosting and it comes with some fantastic features. They also offer a high-performance hosting service on Google App servers – which means that your site runs on the same configuration as of Google. Their hosting services are designed for everyone, from startup lines to settled companies. They provide hosting facilities to some of the biggest sites on the web, like Ubisoft, Mint, ASOS, Ricoh, SparkPost, etc. In this blog, I will be covering all the features one should know about Kinsta, to judge which of them will be better than others for him/her. We'll discuss the pros and cons as well as different plans offered by Kinsta in detail.
Pros & Cons
I moved my blog's hosting provider from a few not-so-good and production servers to Kinsta about a year ago. I opted for the Kinsta WordPress platform because my blog had been facing a lot of problems at that time and had outgrown its previous platform facilities. Kinsta, at that time, offered new features. These were the features I was looking for at that time: Excellent and everyday server-level backup Staging area High uptime Kinsta is one of the fastest WordPress web hosts available right now. Here are some of its recent and developing features that I have discussed in detail. Let's not delay further and dive in-
Pros
Highly skilled security experts, for both the WordPress setup and the hosting environment, to ensure that your sensitive information is secured with them. Better global data centers to host your site closest to your viewers or customers. Premium cloud-based DNS service is provided to almost all plans with no extra pocket-pinch. High and fast uptime checks, thanks to a guaranteed scalable infrastructure. A quick yet simple front end saves you from the complexity of managing the deployment of the cloud computing system. The outstanding 24/7 support team is always at your service. This is offered by the real WordPress experts. Uber fast page loading speed. Free migrations start from the Pro Plan and are done by the WordPress experts. SSL and CDN are offered in every plan at no extra cost. Kinsta, unlike very few, provides free repairs for your sites if they ever get hacked. Daily backups also ensure no data is lost, even in the worst-case scenario. You get to avail of the monthly billing pattern. So, you pay for the month you wish to continue. Pricing is solely based on the number of views you get on your website. This keeps the pricing method transparent and fair to all. Much like SSL and CDN, the staging area is also included in all plans, for free. The blazingly fast performance is boosted by the introduction of PHP 7 and HHVM. Kinsta is ideal for high traffic websites.
Cons
No other domain can be registered through Kinsta. You'll have to use a separate registrar for that. New startups and small businesses find it difficult to avail of this expensive web hosting service. It is thus ideal for settled and large business with a lot of capital. Kinsta offers a limited number of sites per plan. For getting more than the mentioned number of sites, you require to upgrade the hosting platform. Below, I have discussed in more detail regarding some of the important features.
FREE CDN AVAILABLE
Unlike so many other hosting services, Kinsta provides a free CDN. They have partnered with KeyCDN, which is an HTTP/2 and IPv6-enabled content delivery network. This is how you can boost your assets around the surface of the world. Though you will be hosting your website with a specific data center, the viewers or your clients will be able to see your blog from their respective local server locations and rather fast. FREE SSL Kinsta provides its users with free SSL hosting as well as certificates for all of your managed WordPress sites. You don't need to pay extra for getting free SSL certificates with 2 clicks.
24/7 CUSTOMER SUPPORT
Kinsta has a support team of excellent expert individuals who will help you out under any circumstances. Previously I had some problems with it and every individual I approached, with my problems, was very polite and considerate and did not give up till my problems got resolved. Kinsta's customer support individuals are: Adequately knowledgeable in their fields Easy communication access through emails, calls or texts Available 24/7 for 365 days
DAILY BACKUP FACILITY
Kinsta gives you the option for daily automatic backups. They also provide you with system-generated backups for all your Kinsta account sites. They are available as restore points on your Kinsta Dashboard. A backup contains files for your site's: Site-environment Files Database Redirects Nginx Configuration There are three separate sections to the backup option: Daily: Kinsta will generate a backup automatically every day and it gets stored for 14 days. Manual: You can generate manual backups (5 is the limit). They are stored for 14 days System Generated: Kinsta creates a system backup on certain events. Each system-generated backup gets stored for 14 days. The best part is that this hosting provides the fastest backup system that I have ever used. And it takes less than 15 seconds to take a complete glance at my site.
MALWARE SCANNING & OTHER FIXES
Kinsta scans and removes the malware from your infected sites within seconds of detection. It monitors your websites every minute for uptime. Immediately after detecting, they stop the malicious code from entering your network and they work for free. But if you come to Kinsta from another web provider and Kinsta detects the malware, you will have to pay $100 to remove it. They have hardware firewalls and secured restrictions to protect your WordPress website.
HIGH UPTIME CHECKS
Uptime is one of the keys and determining factors while choosing a web hosting service. Every site under Kinsta includes around 720 daily uptime checks and they guarantee an uptime reliability rate of 99.9%. If they fail to correct error response codes in 30 minutes, Kinsta will credit your account. Kinsta is a great tool for instantly pointing out the issues that may cause performance problems with: Third-party plugins Theme template Database issues External calls Various coding errors
DDOS PROTECTION METHOD
Kinsta provides protection against DDOS attacks. But Kinsta does it in a different manner. Kinsta web hosting company has an extremely large network but it does not directly offer you advanced DDOS protection on their different sorts of monthly plans. It states that kinsta, being the host, will be able to protect your sites by fending off DDOS attacks better than a low-quality web hosting company. Thus, Kinsta can protect you to a certain extent but not 'directly'. This is where other hosting services might outrun Kinsta, but it is not entirely possible. With a lot more new features, this one won't look dull due to this method being an average one indeed.
STAGING AREA
Test environments are important, keeping in mind a lot of situations. This, in fact, was one of the primary reasons why I kept switching from one hosting service provider to another until I came across the Kinsta WordPress hosting. Their staging area and valuable environments really helped me to test the following: Emerging WordPress Versions New plugins All codes Developmental work
DATA CENTER LOCATIONS
Kinsta's Google Cloud Data Center Locations are my weakness and one of the major reasons to settle for this one. You get to choose from a diverse and full collection of 20 data centers for your WordPress Website. It might become hard for you to choose from a wide variety of over 20 different options as there is no one best data center over the other. You could either use specific tools or work my way. For that, you need to make a list of your current visitors and places from where you get most of your views. Then you could look up for the nearest centers to accelerate the performance of your WordPress site and you are good to go!
EASY TO USE DASHBOARD
The dashboard offered by Kinsta is easy to use. You can have several options to select from by viewing your dashboard. You also get to manage all your personal and billing information. It will track and analyze your performance and will show a scope of improvement. From your dashboard, you can access your: Sites: currently active websites Resource Usage: Monitor the resources used by your websites Kinsta DNS: Add Domain, DNS records, and management Users: Add new users or change permissions for them Activity Log: List of activities inserted with the date and time Knowledge Base: Help Section It is easy-to-use than other web hosting companies and they are visually attractive with beautiful design and layout, especially because of the admin area.
KINSTA HOSTING PLANS
Kinsta currently provides eight WordPress hosting plans. They comprise of a Starter and a Pro plan, along with four business plans and Enterprise ones. They are as follows: Starter plan: One WordPress install, with 20,000 visits, and 10 GB disk space. Available at $30 per month. Pro plan: Two WordPress installs, along with 40,000 visits, and 20 GB disk space. Available at $60 per month. Business plans (4 of them): Three WordPress installs, with 100,000 visits, and 30 GB disk space. The plans would start from $100 per month. Enterprise plans (2 of them): Sixty WordPress installs, 1,000,000 visits, and 100 GB disk space. The enterprise plans are huge, and they start from $600 per month. You can try out Kinsta without thinking of any financial loss as there is a scheme of "30-day money-back" guarantee on all plans. Though there is a benefit of paying monthly, availing the offer of paying annually will get you two months of a free trial. Since each plan has access to the same configuration, powered by the Google Cloud Platform, upgrading Kinsta will lead to an increase in the number of WordPress installations, and the visits and storage allowances, then only improving the website performance, unlike some other hosts. WHAT HAPPENS WITH OVERAGE FEES? When it comes to the method of overage fees, we come across two main types. The overage fees for the visit are $1 for every 1,000 visits, while the CDN overages cost around $0.10 per GB. Once availed, the charges are immediately applied and you'll be able to view it in your account.
CONCLUSION
I feel Kinsta with its premium quality management of WordPress hosting and a large worker base to control several visitors at the same time is an excellent service for all your needs. Kinsta offers you some innovative and developing features like an intuitive staging environment, automatic backups, etc. However, Kinsta is quite an expensive hosting platform, unlike several other competitors who would provide comparatively cheaper plans. But I feel the tight pocket is worth it. I say this because I have had a fair share of experiences in the past. This blog I have written is hosted just to help out new users so feel free to analyze it for yourself before trusting any one of them in particular. I can now fully concentrate on my work without living in the constant fear that my live website would go down any minute now. Overall, I am satisfied and have benefitted from the performance of Kinsta.