WPEngine and Kinsta are two reputable brands for managed WordPress hosting solutions.
I was fortunate enough to have both of them host my
websites. Based on my experience with both hosting settings, I'll provide a
detailed comparison of WPEngine vs. Kinsta in this article.
I'll share my information and expertise to help you
decide between Kinsta and WPEngine.
The ultimate selection should be yours, depending on your
location and requirements, but I will also make a pointless recommendation.
While they are both managed WordPress hosts (hosting
environments created particularly for WordPress), Kinsta and WPEngine are
distinct from one another in many respects.
An overview of WPEngine's and Kinsta's past:
WPEngine is the disruptor since they were among the first
to enter the managed WordPress hosting market in 2010. They performed well when
they debuted, and their service was comparable to traveling in business class.
Yet, since they were the first and only, they had a
monopoly, and as a result, the price and support were discriminatory. However,
they were making up for it by providing a top-notch WordPress hosting
environment. Something that was required at the time by many companies and
WordPress websites.
Conversely, Mark Gavalda founded Kinsta in Budapest three
years after WPEngine. It is a bootstrapped business that upended the managed WordPress
hosting industry.
It was the first viable option to WPEngine that offered
better hosting, more affordable prices, and, most importantly, top-rate support.
By 2023, both businesses will have reached a point where
they compete for the same pie. The intense marketing staff, VC backing, and
emphasis on Enterprise customers all support WPEngine.
On the other side, Kinsta is expanding thanks to its
content staff, private hosting environment, and first-rate customer service
quickly.
That is a difficult choice for end users like you and me,
and scalability is sometimes more important than the cost of hosting.
I've compared both hosting businesses in the following
sentences based on several factors. While choosing between Kinsta and WPEngine,
you must pay particular attention to ensure your choice is well-informed.
Due to the high cost of managed WordPress hosting, you
must be sure that you have a solid justification before choosing one over
other, often more appropriate, less expensive solutions. Selecting the proper
choice now will guarantee that your WordPress site has the necessary growth
infrastructure.
A Comprehensive Comparison of Kinsta vs.
WPEngine
Before we continue, let's briefly go over some of the
features that Kinsta hosting and WPEngine both offer:
• Complimentary SSL certificate; managed WordPress
hosting environment; overage fees
Support for custom SSL certificates, a staging site
function, and PHP 7 compatibility
However, there are a lot of variances in addition to
these fundamentals...
Support Quality
The quality of assistance is the first factor with a
managed WordPress server. We anticipate finding a knowledgeable person on the
other side who can make things right as a genie.
This is one of the reasons users like you, and I have to
pay such a large sum of money each month to host our websites.
Both WPEngine and Kinsta provide 24/7 customer service.
However, the quality of that service varies.
• The WPEngine support staff is split between entry-level
technicians and WordPress professionals. In contrast, the entire Kinsta support
team comprises WordPress specialists who will address your problems immediately.
Fundamental difficulties are often resolved quickly with
WPEngine. However, a resolution will take time and include a lot of back and
forth for any complex problems. This is a problem if you manage a high-end
WordPress website, and an urgent issue must be resolved immediately.
Price for Kinsta vs. WPEngine
Both WPEngine and Kinsta provide various options to
accommodate different WordPress customers' requirements. Whereas Kinsta
provides up to 10 other options, WPEngine only offers 5.For the
consumer, this means having more options and having the opportunity to switch
to a more expensive plan at any time.
Let's
examine the starting prices for both types of hosting:
|
Features |
Kinsta |
WPEngine |
|
Price |
$35/month |
$20/month |
|
Visits / month |
25,000 |
25,000 |
|
Disk space |
10
GB |
10
GB |
|
Sites included |
1 |
1 |
|
Datacenter |
20+ |
3 |
WPEngine and Kinsta provide an entry-level,
low-cost service for $30 monthly if you want to start with managed WordPress
hosting.
For instance, sophisticated
functionality (like CDN) is excluded, and support is much more constrained.
This plan is more of a marketing gimmick to gain users of WPEngine so that they
may subsequently be upsold to a more costly procedure.
The comparison is more accurate when
we compare the Managed WordPress Scale plan from WPEngine ($193/month) with the
Business 3 plan from Kinsta ($340/month).
|
Features |
Kinsta (Business 3) |
WPEngine (Managed WP Scale) |
|
WP Installs |
20 |
30+ |
|
Monthly Visits |
400,000 |
400,000 |
|
Local Storage |
50
GB |
50GB |
|
PHP Worker Per site |
6 |
– |
|
Phone support |
No |
Yes |
|
24*7 support |
Yes |
Yes |
These are WPEngine's price tiers:
The GeoIP function of WPEngine, which enables you to
tailor content depending on geographic location, is one very cutting-edge tool.
However, only customers of the Business plan and above are eligible for this.
Below are the price ranges for Kinsta's entry-level packages:
Consider Kinsta's Enterprise services if you want to host
more than 20 WordPress sites and need more PHP workers.
According to their definition of a "visit," the
WPEngine $77 plan's 100K monthly visits are likely to be exceeded. You will be
required to pay a high "overage" cost when you do.
Similar to this, Kinsta's $115/month package includes 100k
visitors. While it's free to begin, I suggest utilizing Cloudflare when using
Kinsta or WPEngine hosting.
Moreover, the $77 WPEngine plan allows hosting 10
WordPress sites, compared to the five allowed by the $115 Kinsta plan.
Free migration is another significant distinction between
WPEngine and Kinsta.
Depending on your plan, you may only get a certain amount
of free premium migrations from Kinsta; beyond that, each extra migration costs
$100. The Kinsta staff will handle the migration, and they typically do it
within 24 to 48 hours of receiving your ticket for migration. With Kinsta,
requesting a migration is a simple and expert procedure.
WPEngine costs $99 for each site migration and does not
provide free migrations. If you are technically savvy, they have a DIY solution
you can utilize; otherwise, you will need to pay them to move your site.