Fast WordPress hosting. That’s what everybody wants. It’s also what everybody needs in order to rank better in Google, though far too many people do not know this. Speed is a ranking factor. And for speed, you need premium WordPress hosting.
WP Engine and Kinsta are the fastest WordPress hosts on the planet right now; that’s why they top our Best WordPress Hosting Guide. Both Kinsta and WP Engine run on The Google Cloud. Both are incredibly fast. And both have excellent, 24/7 customer support. But which is the best WordPress hosting for your website, blog, and/or store? Let’s find out, shall we…
Entry Level Hosting Plans
Whether you’re running a small blog out of your bedroom or a multi-national corporation, both Kinsta and WP Engine have plans and support for your exact needs. The key thing both WordPress hosts deliver is scalability — it doesn’t matter if you need support for 1000 visitors a month or 10 million, both platforms are ideal.
However, since you’re reading this, I’m going to assume that you’re not in charge of hosting for a multi-national company. What’s more likely is that you’re looking for fast WordPress hosting for your blog or e-commerce website. If that’s the case, Kinsta and WP Engine both have excellent entry-level plans, which are detailed below:
Kinsta Starter Plan — $30 Per Month | 1x WordPress Install | 5GB of Storage | 20,000 Visitors Per Month | 50GB of CDN Usage
WP Engine Starter Plan — £35 Per Month | 1x WordPress Install | 10GB of Storage | 20,000 Visitors Per Month | 50GB of CDN Usage
As you can see, the packages from Kinsta and WP Engine are pretty evenly matched. Kinsta is $5 cheaper, however, so over the course of 12 months, going with Kinsta will save you $60. Plus, as you’ll find out later on in this comparison, in terms of raw performance there really isn’t much to separate the two WordPress hosts — both are excellent.
Also, Kinsta does NOT have a server bandwidth limit, whereas WP Engine’s is limited to 50GB. Kinsta does have an acceptable usage policy, but in order to get on the wrong side of this, you would need a monumental amount of content and traffic.
Overage Charges
Overage charges are applied when traffic to your site exceeds the agreed limit of your package with either Kinsta or WP Engine. For instance, say you have a 20,000 visitor limit on your entry-level plan, but you get 24,000 visitors. Overage charges will be applied to the 4,000 additional visitors you had.
Both Kinsta and WP Engine have overage charges, and they look a little something like this:
# Kinsta — $1 for every 1000 additional visitors over your limit + $0.10 for each additional GB usage over your agreed CDN limit.
# WP Engine — $2 for every additional 1000 visitors over your agreed limit.
WP Engine will never take your site offline if you go over your agreed traffic limits. Instead, it will apply the charges and then, politely, ask that you increase your plan to a more suitable package to support higher levels of traffic.
Kinsta is more or less the same, although there have been reports of Kinsta taking sites offline that consistently get more traffic than they’re paying for. This is extremely rare, however, and normal policy is to ask for you to increase your package to a more suitable level for your volume of traffic.
Both WP Engine and Kinsta make it easy to keep track of your traffic, CDN usage, and bandwidth inside their respective dashboards. Inside these hubs, you can view ALL information about your site’s performance and make assessments about whether or not you need to increase your package.
Main Features Compared
As premium WordPress hosts, WP Engine and Kinsta are remarkably similar. They both run on the Google Cloud, they both feature full CDN-support, they will both handle the migration of your existing site to their respective servers, and they’re both lightning quick.
And it is this fact that makes choosing one so very difficult. Personally, I use Kinsta on all my sites. And the reason? It’s slightly cheaper and, in my experience, just as fast as WP Engine. However, I do not think there is any downside with going with WP Engine, despite it being slightly more expensive.
We Recommended WPengine Hosting Plan For WordPress