Kinsta Hosting – My New Favorite WordPress hosting provider

A quick post to get the word out about my new b.h.f – Best host Forever! Kinsta Managed WordPress hosting. As a web developer, I am in and out of all kinds of hosting on a daily basis, so I experience first hand the good, the bad and the ugly of hosting.

Kinsta  – is it better than WPEngine?

I stumbled across Kinsta hosting during a site speed talk at WordCamp Vancouver. I signed up and started testing and on the 3 sites I moved over I found an average decrease in page load speed of approx 30%. Better than that, the owners of the 3 sites I move all said… wow.. that is faster.
(Score 1 for Kinsta… happy clients)

Now, those of you that know me, will know that I have been a big WPEngine fan. I currently host approximately 40 sites with them. I have recommended other clients to do the same. However, over the last couple of months, a few niggles have crept in.

• • Slower support response times (… the support chat was excellent when I started with WPEngine a couple of years ago. Once the agent was there, you got the feeling they were focused on you, and solved the problems quickly. I am sad to say that this is no longer the case. Longer waits for the support agent to chime in, and then wait for a couple of mins for the answer to each comment. Maybe I am being unfair, but the support times seem longer. The response times I have had from Kinsta have been good.
  • Staging Site Errors. Three times in a week when I created different install staging sites, there were server errors.
  • Cache Problems. Clearing the cache multiple times still failed to bring the new resources down.
  • Price Increases. WPEngine pushed their prices up in September. Sadly it was just after I started perceiving a decline in value, so the increased spend stung little more than it should.

So.. WPEngine are still a good host, and I would still recommend them over many others. But, for the price they are now charging, I now believe Kinsta is better.

Why do I think Kinsta WordPress Hosting is better

• 1. Speed. As mentioned above, the page loads faster
  2. Convenience. I took advantage of their free migration from WPEngine this afternoon. This is how it went:
     1. Requested move by contacting support with:
        • WPengine Username and password (I created a new user on my WPEngine account just for this move)
        • WPEngine install name for the site I wanted moving
        • Information on which data center to use
        • Confirmed that it was SSL
     2. Let my desk to run an errand
     3. Back at my desk 30mins later – and it was complete
     4. Checked the site over using the test url to mimic my domain name
     5. All looked good so I updated my A record in my DNS
     6. The DNS change had flushed through – I requested the free SSL certificate via the dashboard tools
     7. 10 mins after returning to my desk, SSL installed. Cleared the cache via Kinsta dashboard.. and site move complete

40mins start to finish with minimal input from me!

(Score 2 for Kinsta – Happy developer- site move done for me)

So, to sum up. Kinsta is a super fast host, using Google Cloud Platform. It offers state of the art security, fully automated backup and staging site and free SSL. The icing on the cake for me, today, is their free migration from WPengine service. It was wonderful. From today, all my new hosting and WordPress Care clients will be offered Kinsta for their hosting

NB: Kinsta offers a very good affiliate scheme, but I am not part of it. I want to make sure I am completely objective so customers can trust my advice.