Item: Kinsta
Rating: 8
Author: David R Munson

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I’m an independent creative doing photography and writing, and I build and maintain the websites for my projects. I originally switched one of my sites to Kinsta after endless poor performance and abysmal customer service from other service providers. I was fed up with what I’d been using and my research led me to give Kinsta a try. What attracted me most initially were the good reviews of customer service, high performance, and the availability of a staging environment.

Pros and Cons

Fantastic customer service.
Extremely reliable and speedy site performance.
Very intuitive user interface.
Logical, easy to use staging environments.

Integrated email hosting would be more convenient than needing a different provider.

Most Important Features

Responsive, helpful customer service that never makes me feel stupid when I have what feels like a stupid question.
Staging environment is very easy to use.
Managing DNS, etc is very easy.
Migration was absolutely painless.
Intuitive dashboard.

Return on Investment

Kinsta has removed a great deal of stress and frustration I used to have with my old hosting, which allows me to better focus on more important things.

Alternatives Considered

GoDaddy and Hostinger

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.

Key Insights

Do you think Kinsta delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Kinsta's feature set?

Yes

Did Kinsta live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Kinsta go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Kinsta again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Adobe Illustrator CC, Adobe PhotoShop, Adobe Audition

Likelihood to Recommend

Everyone can benefit from good customer service and reliable, fast hosting. Compared to basic shared hosting, though, Kinsta is more expensive. This is going to be more of a consideration for individuals, less so for companies. It’s nothing crazy, in fact, I think it’s reasonable for what you get, but it may not be a justifiable cost for individuals who don’t necessarily need that level of service for a given project. It’s worth it to me for the sites that I have on Kinsta because they’re my most important projects, and I want the best performance for them. But as much as I would like to use Kinsta for everything, as just some guy for whom these are largely personal projects and who still needs to buy groceries, I try to keep hosting costs balanced.

Products Replaced

Yes - Kinsta replaced GoDaddy for me for hosting. Wanted to find a different service because GoDaddy had been letting me down more and more over a period of years and it was absolutely driving me nuts. Switching to Kinsta was an excellent move.

Key Differentiators

Price
Product Features
Product Usability
Product Reputation

I did a lot of research and found that Kinsta hit a sweet spot for me in terms of performance, support, features, and pricing. I’m not a company and I’m not building stuff for a company, I’m just an independent freelance creative and I don’t have a ton of budget, but Kinsta offers great everything for a price that I can still swing, which I appreciate.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

Nothing comes to mind. I’m still as satisfied as I’ve ever been, and happily recommend Kinsta to people on a regular basis.

Hands-down the best hosting I’ve found for my needs

Overall Satisfaction with Kinsta