Which is the most powerful managed WordPress hosting platform between Kinsta and WPEngine? Looking for a detailed comparison of these two web hosts? You’re in the right place.
Kinsta is a cloud-based web host offering superfast managed WordPress hosting solutions, whereas WPEngine is a fully managed WordPress platform that’s reliable and affordable.
So which one should you go for?
In this comparison, you’ll discover;
- Their features, along with the interfaces
- Pricing plans offered
- Uptime of both Kinsta and WP Engine
- Pros and cons
- Customer support options and much more
Are you ready to find out the RIGHT managed WordPress host in 2023? Let’s jump into the details.
Kinsta vs WPEngine: Which is the Ultimate Web Host?
| Features | Kinsta | WP Engine |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Starts at $35/mo | Starts at $20/mo |
| Free Backups | Yes | Yes |
| 24/7 support | Yes | Yes |
| Money back guarantee | 30 days | 60 days |
| Data Centers | 35 | 11 |
| Uptime guarantee | 99.99% uptime | 99.95% uptime |
| Sign Up Link |
Features: Kinsta vs WP Engine
Kinsta Features:
Here are some of the fantastic hosting features offered by Kinsta;
- Daily automatic backups
- Free SSL certificates
- Free website migrations
- 29 global data center locations
- One-click staging
- 24/7 network monitoring
- DDoS attack detection
- Cloudflare firewall
- Offers a 30-day money-back guarantee
- Built-in Application Performance Monitoring
- 24/7/265 WordPress support
What are you waiting for?
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Looking for more details on Kinsta? Check out this unbiased Kinsta review to find all the details.
WPEngine Features:
WPEngine powers 1.5 million WordPress websites in 150+ countries. Here are some of the incredible hosting features offered by WP Engine;
- Free SSL
- Automated updates
- Access to Global CDN
- Proactive threat blocking & security
- Automated WordPress & PHP updates
- Free access to customizable WordPress themes
- Daily backups
- One-click staging
- Auto-plugin updates for site safety
- 99.99% uptime SLA
- Comes with a 60-day money-back guarantee
- 24/7/365 Expert WordPress Support
So what are you waiting for?
Want to learn more about WPEngine? Here’s the honest WPEngine review, where you’ll find all its details.
User Interface of Kinsta & WPEngine
Here’s what the interface of Kinsta looks like;
As you can see above, from the Kinsta control panel, you can do almost everything including;
- Managing your websites along with their analytics and bandwidth
- Billing details
- Actively log
- Migrations and more
Here’s what the interface of WP Engine looks like;
WP Engine also offers an intuitive interface where you can find all the details of your website including;
- CDN
- Domains
- Backup options
- Site migration and more
Verdict: When it comes to ease of use, Kinsta is better as it has a clean and elegant interface.
Pricing: Kinsta vs WPEngine
Kinsta offers FOUR pricing packages in managed WordPress hosting, which are listed below.
- Starter
- Pro
- Business
- Enterprise
Let’s briefly talk about these pricing plans now.
1. Starter: This is the cheapest plan from Kinsta, which costs $35 per month (if paid monthly) or $350 per year (i.e $30 per month) and offers the following features.
- 1 WordPress install
- 25,000 visits
- 10 GB disk space
- Free SSL, CDN, and Staging
- Free Migrations
2. Pro: If you want to install more than 1 website, Pro is a great choice, as you can install 2 websites. This plan costs $70 per month (if paid monthly) or $700 per year (i.e $58 per month) and you’ll get the following things.
- 2 WordPress installs
- 50,000 visits
- 20 GB disk space
- Free SSL, CDN, and Staging
- Free Migrations
3. Business: If you’re running an agency or looking to manage many websites under a single hosting account, go with the Business plan from Kinsta.
You’ll get access to four different pricing options in the Business plan and the pricing starts at $115 per month and goes up to $450 per month. You’ll get the following list of features.
- Up to 40 WordPress installs
- Up to 600,000 visits
- Up to 60 GB disk space
- Free SSL, CDN and Staging
- Free Migrations
4. Enterprise: This plan is perfect for large agencies. It also offers four different pricing packages in the Enterprise plan and the pricing starts at $675 per month and goes up to $1650 per month.
- Up to 150 WordPress installs
- Up to 2,500,000 visits
- Up to 250 GB disk space
- Free SSL, CDN, and Staging
- Free Migrations
So what are you waiting for? Grab their annual plans and get 2 months of free hosting using the following link.
All the Kinsta plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
WPEngine offers the following hosting packages.
1. Startup: This is the cheapest plan from WPEngine, as it costs only $20 per month ($24/mo if paid monthly) and offers the following features.
- Install 1 website
- Handles up to 25,000 visits
- Up to 10 GB of local storage
- Up to 50 GB of bandwidth
2. Professional: This plan lets you install multiple sites, costs you $39 per month ($47/mo if paid monthly), and offers the following features.
- Install up to 3 websites
- Up to 75,000 visits
- Up to 15 GB of local storage
- Up to 125 GB of bandwidth
3. Growth: This plan is great for growing small business owners and professionals as it lets you install up to 10 sites. It costs you $77 per month ($92/mo if paid monthly) and offers the following features.
- Install up to 10 websites
- Up to 100,000 visits
- Up to 20 GB of local storage
- Up to 200 GB of bandwidth
4. Scale: This plan is perfect for agencies and teams. It costs you $193 per month ($232/mo if paid monthly) and offers the following features.
- Install up to 30 websites
- Up to 500,000 visits per month
- Up to 50 GB of local storage
- Up to 500 GB of bandwidth
Apart from these plans, WP Engine also offers a “Dedicated Custom” plan with the following features.
- Install 30+ websites
- Handles 400,000+ visits/mo
- 50+ GB storage
- 500+ GB bandwidth/mo
This is a custom plan, so you need to contact their support team to know the exact pricing.
So what else are you waiting for?
WP Engine offers a 60-day money-back guarantee.
Verdict: WP Engine is the winner as it’s cheaper than Kinsta. Also, WP Engine offers a better money-back guarantee of 60 days when compared to Kinsta’s 30-day money-back guarantee.
Uptime: Kinsta vs WPEngine
Uptime is one of the major things to consider when choosing a web hosting platform.
Uptime is the amount of time that the server hosting your website is up and running. Uptime rates are typically listed as a percentage, such as 99.9%, 99.5%, 99%, etc.
Here’s the uptime of Kinsta hosting;
As you can see above, Kinsta offers a solid 99.9% uptime.
Kinsta also offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee. Otherwise, it adds “SLA Credits” to your hosting account, which is applied to subsequent invoices.
Here’s the uptime of WPEngine hosting;
As you can see, WP Engine is available and operating normally most of the time (99.9%).
Similar to Kinsta, WP Engine also offers a WP Engine 99.95% uptime guarantee. In case it fails, you’ll get an SLA credit of 5% of the applicable monthly fees for each full hour of downtime.
Verdict: Both Kinsta and WPEngine offer similar uptime along with an SLA guarantee. So it’s a tie when it comes to uptime.
What About the Backups?
Your website backups are critical.
Your WordPress updates can go wrong, or you can make mistakes while customizing your website design.
No matter the reason, having FULL backups of your website is mandatory. Backups are like having insurance for your website.
The best part about using these web hosts is they both offer free backups to all their users.
Both Kinsta and WP Engine offer various types of backups, including;
- Automated backups
- System-generated backups
- Manual backups
WP Engine stores the 40 most recent checkpoints for up to 60 days that you can use to restore your website backups in case of data loss.
If you want to restore the previous backups (older than 60 days), you can simply connect with their support team and they’ll help.
Kinsta creates a backup automatically every day. You can also create up to 5 manual backups, which are stored for a minimum of 14 days.
Depending on your plan, you’ll get appropriate backup retention, which is listed below.
- Starter through Business 2 plans include 14 days of backups
- Business 3 and Business 4 plans come equipped with 20 days of backups
- Enterprise 1 and higher plans include 30 days of backups
Verdict: When it comes to backups, Kinsta goes a step ahead as it offers hourly backups.
Pros & Cons: WP Engine vs Kinsta
WP Engine Pros:
- WP Engine is affordable as its Starter plan costs only $20 per month ($24 per month if paid monthly)
- Offers you LIVE WordPress expert customer support 24/7
- Free daily automated backups
- Offers one-click staging that you can use to create a staging website with just one click quickly and safely test new plugins, themes, website customizations, etc
- Free access to premium themes
- Provides automated website maintenance as you’ll get WordPress auto-core updates, auto-plugin updates, etc
- It offers you a 60-day money-back guarantee, which is better than Kinsta’s 30-day refund policy.
- It offers premium WordPress themes including Genesis Framework and 30+ StudioPress Themes so you don’t have to spend money on website design (if you’re okay with premium SEO-friendly themes)
- Offers a platform-level protection to block most of the cyber attacks
- Automated WordPress & PHP updates
- Eliminate Cart Fragments with Live Cart
- Auto-plugin updates for site safety
- Provides you 99.99% uptime SLA
- Advanced DDOS mitigation
WP Engine Cons:
- There are a few WordPress plugins and themes that don’t work with WP Engine (for security purposes)
Kinsta Pros:
- Kinsta is blazing fast as it uses the fastest CPUs in the industry
- Offers free daily backups with ALL plans, so you don’t have to worry in case of data loss
- Free website migrations, so you don’t have to pay anything while migrating from your existing web host
- It comes with a free CDN, enabling faster loading times
- Automatic MySQL database optimizations, which help you with better page performance
- Cloudflare enterprise-grade protection
- Weekly automatic database optimization
- Offers the fastest server-level caching, so you don’t have to install any caching plugins
- You can easily enable authenticator-based 2FA in MyKinsta to secure your websites
- Uses state-of-the-art technology with Nginx, PHP 8.1
- Provides you with 24/7 customer support from WordPress experts and chat support in 5 languages
- Kinsta has flexible pricing plans, and you can increase the storage space in your plan with the click of a button
- Offers a 30-day money-back guarantee
Kinsta Cons:
- Kinsta is expensive (starts at $20 per month) when compared to WP Engine (starts at $20 per month)
Customer Support: WP Engine vs Kinsta
WP Engine offers 24/7 customer support from WordPress experts.
To contact customer support, you can log into your account and open a chat with their team.
You can also contact them via phone call:
- US: (877) 973-6446
- UK: +44 808 501 5895
- AU: +61 1800 531 769
You can also browse articles in their Support Center.
Kinsta also offers 24/7/365 support assistance from WordPress experts.
You can log into your MyKinsta hosting account to get help from their support team.
Alternatively, you can call on: (+61) 1800 952 470
For any support-related queries, you can visit their support center.
Verdict: When it comes to customer support, both these web hosts offer similar support options. So it’s a tie.
Who Should Go for Which Hosting?
So which web host should you go for: Kinsta or WPEngine?
If you’re looking for an affordable hosting choice, go with WPEngine, as its pricing starts just at $20 per month, which is much cheaper than Kinsta (as its pricing starts at $35 per month).
If you’re looking for a blazing-fast hosting platform, Kinsta should be your choice and it also has 35 data centers worldwide.
We HIGHLY recommend Kinsta over WPEngine for two reasons: it’s really fast and it is extremely secure (when compared to WP Engine).
Yes, Kinsta costs slightly more than WPEngine but you get what you pay for!
If you don’t mind paying a few extra bucks, choose Kinsta because of its simpler, faster, and more reliable cloud hosting.
In a nutshell, you can’t go wrong with either Kinsta or WP Engine hosting platforms, as they both are exceptional. But make sure to take a closer look at their performance and features before making your choice.
FAQs | WPEngine vs Kinsta
Here are some of the most frequently asked questions about Kinsta and WP Engine.
Is Kinsta better than WP Engine?
Yes, in most cases, Kinsta outperforms WP Engine regarding speed and reliability. Kinsta also offers an SLA-backed 99.9% uptime guarantee and its pricing starts at
Is Kinsta faster than Bluehost?
Yes, Kinsta is far better than Bluehost in terms of speed, maintenance, reliability, uptime, security and more. But Kinsta pricing plans start at $35 per month, whereas Bluehost’s WordPress plans start only at $2.95 per month.
Which hosting is best for WordPress?
If you’re using WordPress, you should consider managed WordPress hosting, as it offers automatic updates, WordPress expert support, better security, and more. Here are a few web hosts that offer managed WordPress hosting.
– Kinsta
– WP Engine
– WPX
Is Kinsta any good?
One of the significant benefits of Kinsta hosting is it is a super fast and highly secure hosting platform. It also offers a clean and easy-to-use interface to manage all your files, databases, and websites in one place.
What are the best Kinsta alternatives?
Here are some of the alternatives to Kinsta;
– WPX
– Cloudways
– Pressable
What are the best WP Engine alternatives?
Here are some of the alternatives to WP Engine;
– WPX
– Kinsta
– Bluehost (WP Pro plan)
Is WP Engine the best?
WP Engine is the best choice if you’re looking for a fast and reliable hosting service. WP Engine offers the best-in-class security with 24/7 expert customer support and is used by over 1.5 million websites worldwide.
Related Resources:
Final thoughts on WP Engine vs Kinsta
Both WP Engine and Kinsta web hosts offer highly reliable and faster web hosting solutions.
These two web hosts offer managed WordPress hosting solutions with superior features such as 24/7 expert support, WordPress migrations, reliable servers, SSD storage, free backups, and more.
So what are your thoughts on WPEngine vs Kinsta? Did you find this comparison post helpful? Have any questions? Let us know in the comments.
