Web hosting is among the digital industries that have seen a remarkable transformation during the last decades. From green hosting to enhanced security, cloud hosting to enhanced value, hosting service providers are changing the definition of web hosting.
The step-ups mentioned above focus on providing better user experiences (UX) and customer satisfaction, as a lot of factors dictate how to choose the best hosting provider. From speed to support, uptime guarantee to scalability, features, and pricing, among others, are crucial to web hosting.
Our focus today is on Kinsta vs. SiteGround as we look into their offerings, pros & cons, and who they are. On the one hand, SiteGround is an established web host that offers both web hosting and cloud hosting services. Kinsta, on the other hand, offers cloud-based hosting. Are there any similarities? What are their differences?
Table of Contents
About Kinsta Cloud Hosting
Founded in 2013, Kinsta is a managed WordPress hosting provider that helps users achieve all their website needs. Unlike other providers, Kinsta provides cloud-based hosting services and runs its services on avant-garde tech.
Based in Los Angeles, Kinsta is the brainchild of Mark Gavalda (also the CEO) and has offices in Budapest and London. The provider boasts 20 server locations globally, plus a premium tier network of 20 Google Cloud platform datacenters.
Uptime: 99.9%
Cost: Starts at $30/m
Who Kinsta Cloud Hosting is for
Kinsta cloud hosting is a fantastic option for a variety of WordPress website owners such as bloggers, eCommerce store owners, and even developers. If you are looking for excellent hosting services for your high-traffic website, then Kinsta is an attractive choice.
What’s even best, Kinsta provides adequate assistance and features to help learners get started. The hosting provider is a preference for website owners who are prepared to pay the price to get topnotch services and the finest hosting features. While they may not be low-priced hosting service providers, they are still not the costliest. Kinsta is worth the value for your money.
Features
- Daily backups
- Free SSL certificates
- Fully-managed services
- Free DDoS protection & hack fix
- Free site migration
- Google Cloud platform support
- cPanel
Kinsta has an intuitive dashboard that allows for customization, WooCommerce integration, excellent reaction time, and proactive prevention in case of hacks. For security, Kinsta uses several techs, including NGINX, MariaDB, PHP 7.3, and LXD software containers.
Kinsta Users
Kinsta cloud hosting is used by thousands of businesses and well-known clients globally, including universities, Fortune 500 companies, and agencies. Examples of sites that use Kinsta include Enventys Partners, Intuit, Neuralab, SkyrocketWP, Design TLC, and more.
Kinsta Cloud Hosting Pricing
Kinsta understands that different user needs require different pricing, depending on the features they need. Clients can choose between 10 different pricing packages, with the cheapest starting at $30/m up to $1,500/m.
All their pricing plans include free site migration, free CDN, and free SSL certificates.
- Starter plan – costs $30/m, and includes 1 WP install 20k visits, and 10GB disk space.
- Pro plan – costs $60/m, plus 2 WP installs 40k visits and 20GB disk space.
- Business plan – costs $100/m, plus 5 WP installs 100k visits and 30GB disk space.
- Business 2 plan – costs $200/m, plus 10 WP installs 250k visits and 40GB disk space.
- Business 3 plan – costs $300/m, plus 20 WP installs 400k visits and 50GB disk space.
- Business 4 plan – costs $400/m, plus 40 WP installs 600k visits and 60GB disk space.
- Enterprise 1 plan – costs $600/m, plus 60 WP installs 1 million visits, and 100GB disk space.
- Enterprise 2 plan – costs $900/m, plus 80 WP installs, 1.5 million visits, and 150GB disk space.
- Enterprise 3 plan – costs $1,200/m, plus 120 WP installs, 2 million visits, and 200GB disk space.
- Enterprise 4 plan – costs $1,500/m, plus 150 WP installs, 3 million visits, and 250GB disk space.
All the pricing plans include a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Kinsta Pros and Cons
Pros:
- User-friendly interface
- Automatic scalability
- Analytics and reporting
- Fast page-loading speeds for enhanced SEO
- Robust infrastructure
- Expert technical support
- Customizable dashboard
- Sturdy security
- 24/7 expert support
Cons:
- High price tag ($30/m – Basic plan)
- No email hosting
- No phone support
- WordPress only
About SiteGround Web Hosting
Founded in 2004, SiteGround has a reputation for being the most popular web hosting services provider in the market. The provider offers to host services to over 2 million websites globally. The reason behind this status is that they offer hosting options and plans that are suitable for a variety of sites and businesses.
Uptime: 99.99%
Costs: Starts at $6.99/m
Based in Sofia, Bulgaria, SiteGround is the brainchild of Ivo Tzenov, and has other offices in the US, Spain, and the UK. The hosting services provider has 4 data center locations in Iowa (the US), Eemshaven (the Netherlands), and London (the UK).
SiteGround has Google as the main data center partner, which contributes to green-friendly hosting. They also have a Cloudflare CDN network with 194 locations in 90 countries globally.
Who SiteGround Web Hosting is for
Due to its unbeatable offerings, SiteGround is a fantastic option for crucial projects such as online stores, WordPress sites, developers & designers, and expert bloggers. It’s also great for hosting large corporate sites.
However, it is not suitable for sites working on a tight-budget. In a nutshell, SiteGround is an excellent choice for any website that requires high-performance web hosting solutions.
Features
- Free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates
- Free Cloudflare CDN
- Phone & live chat support
- Free website builder
- Free email accounts
- Free HTTPS
- cPanel
SiteGround has an intuitive dashboard with an enhancement that lets users manage sites individually. As such, each site has its separate admin panel that allows for customization. For security, SiteGround uses PHP 7.0 by default (with the latest security fixes), Apache, and HHTPS.
Additional security measures include constant vulnerabilities monitoring, user-friendly auto-updates of plugins, and pre-installed ModSecurity.
SiteGround Users
SiteGround is among the top web hosts recommended by WordPress because of its excellent support, speed, and remarkable features. Examples of sites using SiteGround web hosting include GPressTheme, Black Friday Deals, WP Blogging 101, Theme Examples, and many more.
SiteGround Web Hosting Pricing
SiteGround offers a $14.95 one-time setup fee for all their pricing packages. They are known for offering the best pricing options without compromising performance and speed. All their plans include unmetered traffic, free CDN & SSL, unlimited databases, free email, and managed WP.
The plans include:
- Startup plan – costs $6.99, plus 1 website, 10k monthly visits, and 10GB web space.
- GrowBig plan – costs $9.99/m, plus unlimited websites, 25k monthly visits, and 20GB web space.
- GoGeek plan – costs $14.99/m, plus unlimited websites, 100k monthly visits, and 40GB web space.
All these plans include a 30-day money-back guarantee and a 100% renewable energy match. It is worth noting that SiteGround web hosting has steep renewal rates for its plans, hiking to $11.95/m, $19.95/m, and 434.95/m, simultaneously. That is triple the initial cost. So, go for the long-term plan (36 months).
SiteGround Web Hosting Pros and Cons
Pros:
- High uptimes
- Fast page-load times
- Excellent customer support
- Many free features
- Scalability
- 30-day money-back guarantee
- Free daily backup & restore
- SSDs
Cons:
- High price tag
- High renewal rates
- Limited budget plan
SiteGround Cloud Hosting
SiteGround cloud hosting uses several remote servers, which is a fantastic option for clients who have outgrown the need for a shared hosting plan. The hosting provider offers guaranteed resources to meet your website’s cloud hosting needs, including unshared RAM and CPU.
Uptime: 99.99%
Costs: Starts at $80/m
They come with automatic scalability and on-demand disk space, RAM, and CPU upgrades with less or no downtime. SiteGround cloud hosting comes with rich features (found in shared hosting), cPanel, multi-level caching, and high-end cloud services, among others.
There are four pricing tiers, including:
- Entry – costs $80/m, plus 3 CPU cores, 6GB RAM, 5TB data transfer, and 40GB SSD space.
- Business – costs $120/m, plus 4 CPU cores, 8GB RAM, 5TB data transfer, and 60GB SSD space.
- Business Plus – costs $160/m, plus 5 CPU cores, 10GB RAM, 5TB data transfer, and 80GB SSD space.
- Super Power – costs $240/m, plus 9 CPU cores, 12GB RAM, 5TB data transfer, and 120GB SSD space.
SiteGround Cloud Hosting Pros and Cons
Pros:
- SiteGround shared hosting features plus customizability
- Root server access plus cPanel/WHM website hosting
- Reliable support staff
- Auto-scale server resources option during traffic spikes
- Industry-leading server speed tech
- High-end cloud servers with multi-level caching
- Reduced or no CPU overages
- Reliable uptime, speed, and security
Cons:
- $80/m might be pricey for some clients
- Unlikely but possible CPU overages
Similarities of SiteGround and Kinsta
Although Kinsta is a newbie in the hosting arena compared to the already established SiteGround, there must be several things that they have in common.
Both Kinsta and SiteGround are reputable brands when it comes to WordPress hosting community. They offer high-grade managed WP hosting products. When it comes to features, both hosting providers offer a wide range of crucial and concierge features.
Other notable similarities include a WP installer, automatic WP updates, custom hosting dashboard, on-demand backups, and server-level caching. Both Kinsta and SiteGround give their clients freebies, such as free SSL certificate, free Cloudflare CDN, and PHP 7.3+.
The intuitive dashboards in both hosting providers transform into great user experience and customization capabilities. In terms of customer support, both Kinsta and SiteGround provide 24/7 availability, which means you can have your problems solved quickly, at any time.
As you can see, both Kinsta and SiteGround do not fall far from what many web hosting clients look for when choosing a hosting provider for their websites.
Differences between SiteGround and Kinsta
It is true to say that both hosting providers are reliable. But you can only choose one host at a time. So, there must be some factors, however minor, that make one service better than the other. Now, that is what makes the winner the best web hosting provider for you.
Let’s look into these differences!
Kinsta Cloud vs. SiteGround Cloud
First off, it is worth noting that SiteGround made its official switch to Google Cloud Platform this year (2020), compared to a veteran like Kinsta. That is one difference that might seem irrelevant but important. So, how do the two hosts differentiate in each factor?
- Speed
When it comes to speed, Kinsta has the upper hand by delivering faster speed and performance compared to Siteground’s cloud hosting plans. In my testing, Kinsta loaded a homepage faster (approximately 544 milliseconds), which means it has high and remarkable page load speeds.
SiteGround, on the other hand, loaded a similar homepage in 1.2 seconds, which is pretty fast compared to other providers. But compared to Kinsta, it’s a significant difference.
- Uptime test
Kinsta has an awesome uptime guarantee of 99.99% which means that your site is available almost throughout with little downtime.
SiteGround, on the other hand, promises a 99.9% uptime guarantee which is still exciting but not the best in the market.
- Support
Kinsta constantly adds new articles/documentation that help beginners with their sites. Other options include ticket support and live chat support, but there is no phone support.
SiteGround offers responsive live chat support, phone support, and a detailed knowledge base, but has no ticket support.
- Pricing plans
Kinsta offers 10 pricing tiers that are easily comprehensible, even for beginners, which makes it easy to choose a plan that suits your needs. However, Kinsta’s cheapest plan is twice as costly as SiteGround’s affordable plan but has a 30-day refund policy.
SiteGround offers 4 pricing tiers, with the cheapest costing $80/m. As such, you have access to dedicated cloud hosting and customization. The plan also offers options for adding RAM, CPU cores, and SSD space. It comes with a 14-day money-back guarantee.
- Features
Kinsta automatically scales up your website’s RAM and CPU when site traffic increases with every plan. Everything regarding scaling is handled by Kinsta. It creates daily website backup which is stored for two weeks on their servers.
The only snag is that you must generate a backup once a week whenever you need its copy. Kinsta does not offer an email feature.
SiteGround, on the other hand, offers domain registration services and reinforces security on both apps and server levels. Backups are made daily, but only stored for a week and can be download for a limited number of times.
SiteGround Cloudflare CDN comes with no bandwidth limits, offers an email feature, and a white-labeling feature for designers.
- Scalability (scaling-up)
Kinsta hosting offers high scalability regardless of the plan you choose, and they happen automatically to deal with the new traffic demands of your website. This functionality has been enabled by Kinsta’s partnership with Google Cloud Platform to ensure speed.
SiteGround cloud servers scale up automatically when it reaches the onset of 75% of the available RAM or CPU. This means that the website scales up depending on the needs of your business, it grows with your business or site.
- CDNs
Kinsta’s least expensive package (starter plan) limits the use of CDN to 50GB bandwidth per month. This bandwidth almost doubles with each of its 10 pricing tiers, with an extra fee of 10 cents to your bill per CDN GB.
SiteGround, on the other hand, provides a free basic version of Cloudflare CDN – which is common in most web hosting providers on the market.
- Interface
Kinsta has an intuitive interface and a dashboard that displays crucial statistics like visitor count, data transfer details, resource usage, and invoice info. Unfortunately, the dashboard does not include a search function. An intuitive and neat bar (on the left) should help you find what you want.
The platform makes role assignments easy and gives you full control.
SiteGround swapped cPanel with a customized interface (Client Area and Site Tools) that display large tiles option for ease of navigation. Other notable features include the ability to include Collaborators, site shipping, and have enhanced mobile-friendliness.
Kinsta Cloud vs. SiteGround Web Hosting
- Speed
Kinsta is the fastest provider in terms of speed as it uses Google Cloud Platform’s Premium Tier that ensures low-latency and high-reliable worldwide network. As such, Kinsta uses similar tech as Google Maps, YouTube, and such.
Kinsta has the upper hand due to its 20 available data centers.
SiteGround, on the other hand, uses proprietary QUIC tech that increases page load speeds even with the low-speed connection. Furthermore, SiteGround only has 5 datacenters.
- Uptime test
The factors mentioned above on speed play a major role in uptime. Both providers take uptime very seriously to ensure their customers are satisfied.
The difference in this factor is slight but significant, with Kinsta having a 99.99% uptime guarantee, compared to SiteGround with a 99.9% uptime guarantee.
- Support
Kinsta offers excellent customer support that leaves many of its clients satisfied and happy. While there is no email support, their live chat and ticket support is very responsive. It is available in English, French, Dutch, Germany, and Spanish.
SiteGround offers excellent support as well, with phone support on top of Kinsta. They have a responsive support team that gets back to you in less than a minute. SiteGround’s entire support staff is based in the headquarters, Bulgaria.
- Pricing plans & Features
Kinsta Cloud hosting offers four pricing tiers, with the cheapest costing $80/m, which is surely expensive. But they host your website on the highest software and hardware level and lightning-fast loading speeds, it is worth the investment.
SiteGround web hosting offers three pricing tiers, with the cheapest costing $6.99. it is a fantastic choice if you need a simple web host with reliable performance and many features. When it comes to bandwidth, the number of visitors, and storage, SiteGround offers much at a pocket-friendly price.
- Scalability (scaling-up)
Kinsta offers an auto-scaling tech that helps clients handle rapid increases in web traffic and load. The configuration of their hosting uses the on-demand model to allow virtual machines to auto-scale server resources when the needs arise.
SiteGround shared hosting, on the other hand, does not offer auto-scaling abilities. In case of over usage, your website account can be put on hold. Contacting the support team for an upgrade in your plan is the only way to get back online.
- CDNs
Kinsta understands the needs of site speed, which is why they offer their clients premium Key CDN that includes 34 PoPs globally. That explains why there is a significant difference between the two.
SiteGround, on the other hand, has no premium CDN and instead offers the basic Cloudflare CDN version. The host has reputable speed, but Kinsta is slightly higher.
- Interface
Kinsta offers an intuitive, customizable dashboard that makes managing your WP site straightforward, as well as viewing both usage metrics and key analytics. When you open the dashboard, you can easily navigate through different tasks like backups.
SiteGround has an interactive dashboard that offers customizability and is more user-friendly and with a range of useful tools. The web host provider upgraded (from cPanel) the dashboard that allows you to view a summary of the account for easy navigation.
Wrap Up
That’s it! It’s not easy to choose between two reputable hosting services on the market, especially when they have a lot in common. If you choose any of the hosts for your website, you won’t fall far from the one that meets most of your hosting needs.
Hopefully, our article guided you through the two and you will now be able to choose.
My name is Nate Reiner and I am the editor here at 10Webtools. I have 8 years of experience using 50+ different web tools ranging from podcast, web hosting, email marketing, and much more. I previously managed a team offering support services to a large conglomerate that utilized tens of software solutions. I now run this blog full-time and when I am not reviewing or testing software, I enjoy riding bikes and supporting my clients achieve internet success. You can reach me directly at [email protected]