Kinsta vs WP Engine [2024]: An In-Depth Side-By-Side Comparison

In this Kinsta vs WP Engine comparative guide, we compare both hosts based on these 7 essential factors:

1. Features
2. User Interface
3. Pricing
4. Performance & Uptime
5. Backups
6. Security
7. Customer Support

We’ve done hours of review and testing to help you make the best hosting choice for your website out of the two.

Keep reading to find out how they stack up against each other and who comes out as the top winner.

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Kinsta vs WPEngine: Which is the Ultimate Web Host?

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Comparison:	Kinsta:	WP Engine:
Our Overall Score	8/10	8.5/10
Pricing	Starts at $30/month	Starts at $20/month
Uptime	99.99%	99.95%
Storage	Starts from 10 GB	Starts from 10 GB
Free Domain	❌	❌
Free Themes	❌	✅
Phone Support	❌	✅
Staging Feature	✅	✅
Free Site Migration	✅	✅
Free SSL	✅	✅
Live Chat Support	✅	✅
Automatic Backups	✅	✅

1. Features: Kinsta vs WP Engine 

Kinsta Features:

Here are some of the fantastic hosting features offered by Kinsta;

Looking for more details on Kinsta? Check out this unbiased Kinsta review to find all the details.

WP Engine Features:

WP Engine powers 1.5 million WordPress websites in 150+ countries. Here are some of the incredible hosting features offered by WP Engine;

Want to learn more about WPEngine? Here’s the honest WPEngine review, where you’ll find all its details. 

Who’s The Winner?

WP Engine 🏆

With WP Engine, you get the following features that are not present in Kinsta:

• Free Studiopress premium themes
• Git integrations

Now, here are the features that Kinsta offers but you don’t get with WP Engine:

• Free Premium site migration (in which Kinsta’s migration experts help in the whole site migration process)

Just features-wise, WP Engine is slightly ahead of Kinsta. However, I REALLY like the Premium site migration feature on Kinsta. In all their plans, you get this feature starting with 1 premium migration in their “Starter” plan.

Most free migrations are handled by automated plugins, which are quite efficient. But the benefit of this premium migration feature is real people – the migration experts handle all the tech stuff for you. 

You don’t have to worry about all the technical process and glitches that can happen while you’re handling it on your own.

This makes the whole process a complete, hassle-free experience.

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2. User Interface: Kinsta vs WP Engine

Kinsta’s User Interface:

Kinsta’s user interface feels modern and clean. The left sidebar neatly organizes everything you need, such as managing WordPress sites, migrations, Kinsta DNS, and more.

The main dashboard displays all your sites with important information and all the stats. Whenever I had to explore any new option or set up additional features, it didn’t take much time to do it. Everything looks pretty well-organized.

WP Engine’s User Interface:

WP Engine’s interface is also well-designed and has a similar interface.

I found it was much easier to set up staging sites and do backups in the WP Engine’s dashboard. (Staging simply means creating a copy of your site for testing purposes – a useful feature for professional SEOs, bloggers, and agency owners)

Also, the overall user interface on the WP engine is minimal and doesn’t use bold colors, making it easier for the eyes while you’re using it.

Who’s The Winner?

🏆 (Tie)

In my opinion, both offer great premium-level user interfaces. If you prefer a more modern look with well-organized menus and options, you’ll like Kinsta. But if you prefer a minimalist design, then WP Engine is better.

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3. Pricing: Kinsta vs WP Engine

Kinsta’s Pricing:

Kinsta offers three plan categories: The Starter, Businesses, And Enterprise. Its Starter plan starts at $30/month with a cap of 25,000 visits. And you get 10 GB storage, plus 1 premium migration.

Its business plans start at $96/month with 30GB storage and a cap of 100K visits. The enterprise plan, starting at $563/month, has a capacity of 1 million+ visits and comes with 100+ GB storage.

WP Engine’s Pricing:

WP Engine offers three plan categories: the Essential, Core, and the Enterprise.

The Essential plan category starts at a relatively affordable rate of just $20/month (Startup Plan). It comes with the same specifications as Kinsta’s Starter plan: a 25,000–visit limit and a 10 GB storage space.

The Core plan starts at $400/month, whereas the Enterprise plan starts at $2000/month.

Who’s The Winner?

WP Engine 🏆

Both hosts have similar pricing structures. But if you’re looking for a better value-for-money pick, WP Engine is a clear winner.

For instance, here’s a quick comparison of the starter plan of both hosts. Notice how WP Engine mostly offers similar features but at a relatively affordable price.

Starter Plans:	Kinsta Starter Plan	WP Engine Startup Plan
Pricing	$30/month	$20/month
Visits	25K	25K
Storage	10 GB	10 GB
Phone Support	❌	❌ (available on higher plans)
DDoS protection	✅	❌ (available on higher plans)

But remember, in the starter plan of WP Engine, you don’t get phone support. All customer support options are available in their higher-tier plans.

Also, WP Engine’s starter plan only offers basic security features. To access DDoS protection and Firewall protection, you need to upgrade to their Core and Enterprise plans.

When we compare that with Kinsta, you get DDoS protection, a firewall, and all the security features from their starter plans.

Overall, WP Engine wins in the pricing aspect due to affordability.

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4. Performance & Uptime: Kinsta vs WP Engine

Kinsta’s Performance & Uptime:

⚡ Average Speed: 1.9 seconds

📈 Uptime: 100%

In our speed test results, we tested different types of sites like heavy-loaded e-commerce sites, websites with lots of plugins, plain content-based WordPress sites, and even new, lightweight websites.

On average, we found our sites to be loading in less than 1.9 seconds on Kinsta servers – which is GREAT!

Now, Kinsta delivers you an uptime of 99.99%. But as we checked the latest uptime stats, we were amazed to see 100% in the last 90 days. So in short, it completely delivers on speed and performance.

WP Engine’s Performance & Uptime:

⚡ Speed: 1.5 seconds

📈 Uptime: 100%

With WP Engine, we did similar tests on different-sized websites, and it actually performed slightly better. We averaged at around 1.5 seconds loading speed.

Uptime stats were also outstanding, as you’d expect from any premium hosting provider. We got a full 100% uptime!

Who’s The Winner?

WP Engine 🏆

Although uptime and overall performance are quite similar, we got slightly better performance results with WP Engine. Plus, WP Engine’s staging server offered more resources and better loading speed than Kinsta.

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5. Backups: Kinsta vs WP Engine

Kinsta’s Backups

Both Manual and automatic backups are available with Kinsta. That means, anytime your site crashes, you’ll be able to quickly restore it from the backups without any worries.

The automatic backups are taken daily and included in all plans. How long your backups are stored depends on the plans you select.

For instance, with a Starter plan (starting $30/month) you get up to 14 days backup storage. The Business plan (starting at $96/month) gives 20 days of backup storage. Whereas, the Enterprise plan ($563/month) offers a bit more – 30 days worth backup storage.

Now, why is all this important?

Well, imagine a day when you had to restore your website to the version it was 14 days ago. (This could be because all versions of your site after that day had some technical or site level issues.)

And that’s when having old backups of your site comes in handy.

Having an extensive library of backups helps you stay worry-free.

Also, guess what? With Kinsta, you also get an option for hourly backup – although that’s a paid add on. So, there are many backup options available!

WP Engine’s Backups

WP Engine also offers manual and automated daily backup options for each plan. And your backups are available for up to 60 days, which is GREAT.

But note this:

At any given time, you can only restore up to 40 backups from the dashboard. For extra days backups, you’d have to reach out to their support team.

Who’s The Winner?

Kinsta 🏆

Although WP Engine stores your backup for a longer time, you don’t get the flexibility of having more frequent backup options – like an hourly backup option as with Kinsta. That’s why Kinsta takes the lead in this backup comparison.

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6. Security: Kinsta vs WP Engine

Kinsta’s Security:

✅ SSL

✅ Cloudflare CDN

✅ Firewall

✅ DDoS

✅ Direct Cloudflare Integration

Kinsta offers all premium enterprise level security features as you’d expect. From SSL to DDoS protection – everything’s covered.

But what really sets Kinsta apart from most other WordPress hosting providers in the market is its direct integration with Cloudflare. You get the benefit of solid Cloudflare DDoS protection and firewall. This means your site will be more secure than ever.

WP Engine’s Security:

✅ SSL

✅ Cloudflare CDN

✅ Firewall

✅ DDoS

❌ Direct Cloudflare Integration

WP Engine also offers rock-solid security features like Kinsta. However, it doesn’t come with an in-built, direct integration with Cloudflare.

Who’s The Winner?

🏆 Kinsta

Both hosts offer solid security features, however, Kinsta takes the lead in the security aspect. Here’s why: 

Firstly, you get top-notch security features in all plans – right from the Starter to Businesses and Enterprise plan in Kinsta.

On the other hand, WP Engine’s DDoS protection and advanced security features like WAF (Web Application Firewall) are not available in their basic – Essential plans.

You get those features ONLY when you go with their top tier plans like the Core or Enterprise plans.

Secondly, WP Engine doesn’t have a direct Cloudflare integration. So overall, Kinsta is the best choice if you want top-level security features.

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7. Customer Support: Kinsta vs WP Engine

Kinsta’s Customer Support:

✅ 24/7 Live Chat

❌ Phone support

Kinsta offers great customer service. They offer 24/7 live chat support with an average response time of just 2 minutes.

The only potential downside is you get just the live chat option. No phone support is available. But with that said, their support team is made up of experienced developers and experts who know the platform quite well.

Whenever I had any issues, my problems were quickly resolved through their live chat. Also, over the years, I’ve noticed that their customer has consistently improved.

WP Engine’s Customer Support:

✅ 24/7 Live Chat

✅ Phone support

✅ Ticket system

WP Engine actually has the best customer support of all of the premium hosting providers.

You get all popular modes of customer support, like live chat, phone, and ticket system.

The support staff are quite knowledgeable. Whenever I contacted their customer support, my issues were almost always resolved in less than 5-10 minutes.

Who’s The Winner?

WP Engine 🏆

While both Kinsta and WP Engine offer excellent customer support, WP Engine takes the lead because they include all support options.

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Pros & Cons: Kinsta vs WP Engine

Kinsta Pros:

• Kinsta is blazing fast as it uses one of the fastest CPUs in the industry
• Offers free daily backups with ALL plans, so you don’t have to worry in case of data loss
• Free website migrations, so you don’t have to pay anything while migrating from your existing web host
• It comes with a free CDN, enabling faster loading times 
• Automatic MySQL database optimizations, which help you with better page performance
• Cloudflare enterprise-grade protection
• Weekly automatic database optimization
• Offers the fastest server-level caching, so you don’t have to install any caching plugins
• You can easily enable authenticator-based 2FA in MyKinsta to secure your websites
• Uses state-of-the-art technology with Nginx, PHP 8.1
• Provides you with 24/7 customer support from WordPress experts and chat support in 5 languages
• Kinsta has flexible pricing plans, and you can increase the storage space in your plan with the click of a button
• Offers a 30-day money-back guarantee 

Kinsta Cons:

• Kinsta is expensive (starts at $30 per month) when compared to WP Engine (starts at $20 per month)
• Offers backup only up to 14-30 days at maximum.

WP Engine Pros:

• WP Engine is affordable as its Starter plan costs only $20 per month ($24 per month if paid monthly)
• Offers you LIVE WordPress expert customer support 24/7
• Free daily automated backups
• Offers one-click staging that you can use to create a staging website with just one click quickly and safely test new plugins, themes, website customizations, etc
• Free access to premium themes 
• Provides automated website maintenance as you’ll get WordPress auto-core updates, auto-plugin updates, etc
• It offers you a 60-day money-back guarantee, which is better than Kinsta’s 30-day refund policy.  
• It offers premium WordPress themes including Genesis Framework and 30+ StudioPress Themes so you don’t have to spend money on website design (if you’re okay with premium SEO-friendly themes)
• Offers a platform-level protection to block most of the cyber attacks
• Automated WordPress & PHP updates
• Eliminate Cart Fragments with Live Cart
• Auto-plugin updates for site safety
• Provides you 99.99% uptime SLA
• Advanced DDOS mitigation

WP Engine Cons:

• Its most basic Startup plan comes with limited customer support and security features.

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Final Thoughts – Who Should Go For Which Hosting?

Comparison:	Kinsta	WP Engine
Features	–	🏆
User Interface	🏆 (Tie)	🏆 (Tie)
Pricing	–	🏆
Performance And Uptime	–	🏆
Backups	🏆	–
Security	🏆	–
Customer Support	–	🏆

WP Engine is a clear winner for developers, agency owners, and professional businesses. Here’s why:

With its Git integrations and better staging features, WP Engine offers a developer-friendly environment that Kinsta simply can’t match. Plus, WP Engine’s longer backup storage makes it a GREAT choice for agencies managing multiple client sites.

On the other hand, Kinsta is the better choice for those who prioritize frequent backups, want better website-security features and the flexibility of hourly backup options. It’s also a great fit for users who prefer a more modern, visually appealing dashboard interface.

Both hosts deliver outstanding results regarding performance and uptime, but WP Engine slightly edges out Kinsta in our tests. However, the difference is minimal, and both hosts provide reliable, fast-loading websites.

Ultimately, the decision between Kinsta and WP Engine comes down to your specific needs, pricing, and preferences.

So here’s a quick recap:

• Kinsta – Starts at $30/month (better security, user interface, and backup features)
• WP Engine – Starts at $20/month (better performance, customer support, pricing, and overall features)

In short, if you’re a developer or agency owner looking for the most feature-packed, developer-friendly platform – go with WP Engine.

But if you prefer a modern, well-designed dashboard, frequent backups, and solid security features right from the starter plans, Kinsta is a better option.

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FAQs

Here are some of the most frequently asked questions about Kinsta and WP Engine.

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