WordPress has many managed hosting plans to choose from to handle larger websites with higher traffic flows. Determine if Kinsta or WP Engine is the best option for your business.
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WordPress can be used for anything from a single page blog to a massive website with hundreds of pages, but the latter requires a managed hosting plan to provide the security and speed you need to support constant website traffic. WP Engine is the biggest name in WordPress hosting, but Kinsta is quickly establishing itself as a worthy competitor. Today we compare Kinsta and WP Engine to help you make the right choice for your website.
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What is WP engine?
WP engine is the No. 1 WordPress platform and offers managed WordPress hosting, among other things. It supports more than 1.5 million websites and more than 185,000 customers in 150 countries, making it one of the most popular and trusted WordPress hosting options.
What is Kinsta?
Kinsta is a managed WordPress hosting service that offers 34 data centers around the world and guarantees 99.9% uptime. The starter plan supports 25,000 visits per month, which is suitable for the average website and WP Engine is quickly catching up when it comes to managed WordPress hosting.
Kinsta vs. WP Engine: Feature Comparison
Kinsta is a growing competitor to WP Engine as a WordPress hosting platform. While WP Engine offers more options and flexibility, Kinsta offers more convenience and support for new users.
| Feature | Kinsta | WP engine |
|---|---|---|
| Daily backups | Yes | Yes |
| Development, stage and production environments | no | Yes |
| Free Cloudflare Integration | Yes | no |
| SFTP Connections | Yes | Yes |
| StudioPress themes included | no | Yes |
Development Workflow
WP Engine offers three environments in its development workflow: development, staging, and production. When you’re ready to move things over to the production environment, WP Engine just copies the files, as opposed to the content stored in the WordPress database. It does, however, give you the option to copy the tables of your choice from the staging site database if that’s something you want to do.
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Meanwhile, Kinsta only offers two environments in its development workflow: staging and production. When you’re ready to move things over to the production environment, Kinsta lets you copy the entire site and also pushes just the files or database, so you have full control over what gets transferred between environments.
Migration
Both Kinsta and WP Engine offer migration support, but they do it differently. With any Kinsta plan, you can migrate one site to their hosting with the help of their expert technicians. You may have to wait a while depending on the availability of the technical team, but it also guarantees that you have an expert overseeing every step of the process in case something goes wrong.
WP Engine relies on a free plugin, Automated Migration, to move sites to their hosting. This provides more flexibility regarding how many sites you can move and how many sites you can migrate, but it also means that there is no expert technician available if something goes wrong in the process. If something goes wrong, you have to contact WP Engine technical support and wait for a response, just like with any other issue
Backups and Security
Both Kinsta and WP Engine offer four types of backups: automatic, system-generated, manual, and downloadable. WP Engine stores the 40 most recent checkpoints for up to 60 days. If you need to access an older checkpoint within that 60-day period, their support team can help. As for other security measures, WP Engine has a dedicated security team that creates WordPress-specific security features to scan for malware and detect threats. WP Engine has also partnered with Cloudflare to create the Global Edge Security add-on plan, which offers more protection for an additional monthly fee.
Meanwhile, Kinsta offers two additional types of backups: optional hourly backups and remote backups that are automatically sent to your Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage. However, it only stores backups for between 14 and 30 days, depending on which plan you have. It’s up to you whether it’s worth the trade-off to get the extra types of backups but to store your files for less time. All Kinsta plans also get access to a free Cloudflare integration that offers an enterprise-level firewall and DDoS protection for peace of mind.
Choosing between Kinsta and WP Engine
Both Kinsta and WP Engine are reliable, powerful options for hosting your WordPress site(s); it really comes down to your specific needs and the exact features you want. Kinsta is slightly more aimed at beginners with its dedicated migration support, while WP Engine offers more options for staging and development. You can’t go wrong with Kinsta or WP Engine, but before making a choice, research your unique hosting needs carefully to make sure you’ve chosen the platform that covers most of those needs.
