Kinsta vs. WP Engine

I currently haven't found any scenarios whereby Kinsta is not well suited. Kinsta is suited to a variety of WordPress websites from business brochures to eCommerce. Kinsta's support is second to none, so if you lack technical knowledge, this is a great host to be with, especially if you need Managed WordPress hosting.

Incentivized

I am an enterprise user of WordPress and host over 7000 sites with WPEngine. Areas that I think they are well suited for include customers that need enterprise-level support and uptime and have more complex needs than a simple blog. They also manage scale well with a variety of isolated install options that you can scale up or down depending on your contract needs. They also provide premier support for enterprises and have highly knowledgable Technical Account Managers that provide a significant value add. If I were to look at where it isn't as appropriate for usage I would focus on the low-end needs and say while they do support small sites, there are options out there for cheaper hosting that lack the support a WPEngine gives you.

Incentivized

• Developer friendly; WP-CLI; SSH access
• Amazing support - I never have to wait more than a minute or two to get a response!
• Kinsta is also willing to troubleshoot issues that are not their own. They don't just say "It's not our problem" without helping to debug the issue.

Incentivized

• I love the database backups and how quickly & easy it is to restore from an old backup point. This gives me & my clients confidence that any change can be rolled back.
• The built in caching & CDN mean that I have to spend less time worrying about the speed of the server & site. The caching has some side-effects that take getting used to (on-page dynamic PHP code sometimes needs to be moved to API endpoints), but this is true for most caching systems.
• They have really good support for multiple environments. It's very easy to have separate production & staging environments. It's also very simple to deploy from staging to production, making product launches and large scale website copy changes much easier to coordinate.

Incentivized

• No email solution provide resulting in having to find some other solution
• Some clients find the price point difficult
• Some clients find the lack of phone support difficult (although we find their online support great)

Incentivized

• I'd like to see WP Engine offer their own monitoring solution. When I say monitoring, I mean specific use cases that may end up being something you could script. This would keep customers from having to pay for additional services like Pingdom, New Relic, etc.
• I would like to see some proactive analysis done by WP Engine on their customer sites - at least on their home pages, and offer up suggestions. This kind of goes along with the other example.
• Finally, it would be nice to see a "lighter" offering, perhaps a plan that costs $49 for those who want to host only a few sites, or even 1 site.

Incentivized

This is an extremely solid hosting product that I have yet to find clients who use it disappointed. I have had clients move from other competitors several times in search of something more reliable and scalable but not after they moved to Kinsta.

Incentivized

I was in a situation where I had to bolt Wordpress on to an existing infrastructure that could not support it. If I ever end up in that situation again, please kill me. Other than that reasonably common use case, I don't think it offers a lot of value over robust shared hosting, virtual private server (VPS) or dedicated servers.

Their dashboard is really well layed out and simple to use for most users. I also really appreciate the fact that our clients are able to collaborate with us by granting us access. Their site migration tool is straightforward and painless to use as well!

Incentivized

It took very little time to learn their dashboard for managing WordPress sites. Their built-in tools are really well done, and the addition of security and CDN tools is great.

Incentivized

We never had any major downtimes with our service, and I believe that's because it's based in a cloud-based network so therefore our system is being shared amongst multiple points.

Incentivized

As mentioned before the performance was amazing and pages were loading quickly. They also provide other tools to help you improve further.

Incentivized

They are quick to respond, very knowledgeable and I don't have to be escalated to get my problems resolved quickly. They have an efficient chat system that allows for support requests to be handled quickly and easily picked up by another specialist if the need arises. They are always there when I need them.

Incentivized

Support is generally great. Enterprise support is fantastic, with little to no wait times. I find that chat support can almost always take care of the problem without escalating to a ticket for a higher level of troubleshooting. The chat support for many other hosting providers can only handle basic issues. This is a big bonus for us to get quick and helpful answers.

Incentivized

Not really it's a really easy to use system and straightforward!

Incentivized

GoDaddy is the one that drove me nuts. Downtime, poor performance, abysmal customer service. I switched to Kinsta because they looked like they’d do right everything GoDaddy did wrong (and they have). Hostinger is a company whose services I still use and am pleased with them. Their shared WordPress hosting is a good value and where I put experimental sites and low-traffic things that don’t justify the purchase of better hosting at this time. They also provide good email hosting and customer service has been good. My second-favorite service provider.

Incentivized

While we still use GoDaddy for some services, WP Engine definitely has been a major upgrade for our WordPress hosting. In addition to faster load speeds, WP Engine has been more adept at allowing us to manage a high number of websites without straining the system. We have never used Network Solutions for our own hosting needs, but when we do interact with them on behalf of our clients, their systems always seem to be clunky and hard to use, and they often overcharge customers by selling them products they do not need.

Incentivized

We worked with clients who have major surges of visitor hits on a Buddhist website, and Kinsta was definitely up to the job. They were able to handle this and still provide excellent performance. As well, it was easy to track down other barriers for Google Ratings using their system to further improve the performance of these clients.

Incentivized

• Our website was up and running in less than a day
• Despite not doing a huge advertising drive yet (we're still not ready at the moment), we've noticed a steady increase of organic visitors to the site, at least by 30%, which still isn't a lot in overall numbers at the moment, but that is expected
• Cost is higher, so we've had to separate a budget just for Kinsta

Incentivized

• WP Engine reduces our time investment and upkeep costs which increases our margins.
• WP Engine simplifies site management with a built-in development server, which saves us headaches.
• WP Engine itself is positioned as a premium service, which allows us to use their branding as a tool to close sales.

Incentivized