WordPress is versatile enough to handle anything from a single-page blog to a sprawling website with hundreds of pages. For larger sites, a managed hosting plan is essential to ensure the necessary security and speed to handle continuous traffic. WP Engine is the leading name in WordPress hosting, while Kinsta is rapidly emerging as a strong competitor.
In this guide, we will compare Kinsta and WP Engine, providing you with the information needed to choose the best solution for your website development.
What is WP Engine?
WP Engine is a WordPress platform that provides managed hosting services, including automated updates, daily backups, support, migration, and SEO tools.
With over 1.5 million websites and more than 185,000 customers in 150 countries, it stands as one of the most popular and trusted WordPress hosting solutions.
What is Kinsta?
Kinsta is a managed WordPress hosting service featuring 34 data centers worldwide and a 99.9% uptime guarantee.
Its Starter plan accommodates 25,000 visits per month, making it suitable for most websites. Kinsta is quickly becoming a strong contender against WP Engine in the managed WordPress hosting market.
Kinsta Vs WP Engine: Features
Both Kinsta and WP Engine excel in providing robust features with their hosting plans. They offer automatic backups, website staging, CDNs, and proactive security measures, ensuring all essential managed hosting functionalities for serious WordPress websites.
However, Kinsta holds an edge in this category due to its Edge Caching, a broader selection of data centers, and DevKinsta for local development.
Kinsta Vs WP Engine: Speed and Performance
Kinsta and WP Engine deliver outstanding website speed and performance. Our tests and personal experience using both hosts show similar results, with excellent website speeds and page loading times.
Despite the close competition, Kinsta has a slight advantage. Its Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and fully loaded page times are marginally better, giving Kinsta a slight edge in this category.
Kinsta Vs WP Engine: Website Staging
Both hosts excel in website staging, offering one-click operations across all hosting plans.
This allows easy creation of a staging environment and seamless transfer of changes to the live site. This category is a tie, as both Kinsta and WP Engine perform equally well.
Kinsta Vs WP Engine: Data Backup
WP Engine provides daily automatic backups, with restoration options from the last 30 backup copies, and allows unlimited manual snapshot backups.
Kinsta also offers daily automated backups but limits restoration to the last 14 copies (unless additional backup services are purchased). Kinsta permits only five manual backup copies without additional services.
Kinsta does have an advantage with automatic system backups during tasks like theme and plugin upgrades. However, WP Engine's greater data retention capacity gives it a slight edge in this category.
Kinsta Vs WP Engine: Customer Support
Both WP Engine and Kinsta offer 24/7 expert WordPress customer support. My experience with both has been positive, with quick live chat response times and knowledgeable staff capable of resolving issues promptly.
While the customer support comparison is extremely close, Kinsta gets a slight edge due to marginally faster live chat response times.
Conclusion on Kinsta Vs WPEngine
Kinsta and WP Engine are both reliable, high-performance options for hosting WordPress sites. The choice between them depends on your specific needs and desired features.
Kinsta, with its dedicated migration support, is slightly more beginner-friendly, while WP Engine offers more advanced options for staging and development.
Both hosts are excellent choices, but it's important to carefully evaluate your unique hosting requirements to ensure you select the platform that best meets your needs.
