When researching a product or service, asking questions is great; the more, the merrier. This is a roundup of Kinsta WordPress, Application & Database hosting FAQs. If you’re looking for more specifics and details, check out: Kinsta – Modern hosting for sites and apps
Is Kinsta worth the price?
It depends on who you ask… If you find value in rocket-like speeds, packed with tons of features, and the best support in the world, it’s worth it.
Does Kinsta use cPanel or WHM?
You won’t find any cPanel/WHM products with Kinsta. Sites are managed through their custom control panel.
Does Kinsta offer protection from attacks, and DDoS?
Yes, every site on the platform is covered by Enterprise-grade Web Application Firewall (WAF) provided by industry leader, Cloudflare.
Does Kinsta include SSL?
Yes, free SSL is provided via Cloudflare integration. Free certificates include wildcard and non-wildcard certs. You can also upload any certificate you have purchased for your domain.
Do Kinsta plans include free CDN bandwidth?
Yes, each plan comes with a set amount of CDN bandwidth to make your static assets blazing fast. 1 site plans start at 100GB per month, though the limit goes as far as 6000 GB per month, not including custom plans.
Does Kinsta offer support?
Absolutely, 24/7 even including holidays. The preferred method is to use live chat, is accessible after signing in to my.kinsta.com. You can also send an email to [email protected] to create a slower-paced email conversation.
Does Kinsta offer unlimited visits or an unlimited bandwidth plan?
No, Kinsta plans are designed to count visits by default, though you can sometimes switch to bandwidth-based instead.
Nothing is unlimited, if you see an offer for unlimited bandwidth, I’d be cautious.
Do you have a coupon I can use for a discount?
No, Kinsta does not provide coupons. You can take advantage of getting 2 months of hosting for free if you pay your plan annually.
Does Kinsta provide website customization or maintenance?
Kinsta handles everything on the server/infrastructure side, though anything relating to WordPress or Application maintenance would need to be accommodated on your side.
Does Kinsta provide themes or plugins?
Kinsta does not develop plugins or themes at this time, minus their must-use (MU) plugin which simply allows a better connection to the server technology via WordPress.
What version of PHP does Kinsta use?
As of writing, PHP 8.0 and PHP 8.1 are available. Old versions are regularly deprecated, meaning that if you have a very old website, you could see deprecation issues.
Does Kinsta offer a file manager like cPanel?
Kinsta does not offer a file manager user interface like cPanel. Access to SSH/SFTP is provided which is the most secure practice. WordPress plugins and third-party scripts can provide this but are extremely discouraged due to security risks.
Does Kinsta offer a tool to modify the database?
Yes, phpMyAdmin is offered for every environment.
Does Kinsta support reverse proxies?
Yes, though if you need to add custom nginx rules, it will be charged as a $50 per site / per month add-on.
Does Kinsta support Redis?
Yes, though Redis requires a $100 per month / per site addon, you would be responsible for maintaining the plugin and configuration required to interact with the Redis CLI.
Does Kinsta allow custom server config?
Yes, all Managed WordPress sites support custom nginx rules. Some basic rules can be crafted and added by the Support team, though advanced rules must be provided by you or your developer. Support will not convert rules from Apache to nginx or similar.
Does Kinsta provide root access?
Root access is not provided for WordPress hosting, since it’s a managed provider.
How about nginx, PHP, MariaDB, or other server config?
No, customizations to the above must be requested via Support.
Is SSH access included?
Yes, every WordPress site includes SSH/SFTP access. You can perform any actions that do not require root/sudo privileges.
Can I install WP CLI?
No need, WP CLI is installed by default.
What OS does Kinsta use?
Ubuntu, currently 20.04 Focal
Can I host videos at Kinsta?
Kinsta does not allow videos to stream from their servers, though you can pay for CDN bandwidth or use a different CDN service to serve the assets.
Can Kinsta migrate my website for me?
Yes, Kinsta has an entire team dedicated to migrating websites from other hosts. Each plan will give you at least 1 free migration, though you may qualify for more depending on where your sites are hosted.
Does Kinsta really provide free malware cleanups?
Yes, excluding sites that were infected at the time of migration to Kinsta (unless you are on an Agency plan). You’ll be expected to perform some basic actions like updating all WP software and resetting passwords when your site is cleaned.
Does Kinsta provide staging/dev environments?
Yes, each WordPress site includes a free basic staging environment which is meant for basic testing, troubleshooting, etc meaning that resources are limited.
If you need a staging/dev environment that has the same resources as your live site, you can purchase a premium environment addon.
How long are backups kept?
It depends on the plan. By default, backups are triggered daily and stay on the server for 14 days.
You can purchase additional add-ons to create backups more often and retain them longer.
Downloadable backups which contain a zip of the site files and database can be requested once per week.
What are PHP workers and how many do I need?
PHP workers determine how many simultaneous PHP requests a site can make per second.
