Deciding between Cloudways vs. Kinsta?
Cloudways hosts this blog. They were actually faster than Kinsta as shown in multiple speed tests and have an excellent reputation in the WordPress Hosting Facebook Group. Their support used to be just okay, but they made major improvements to not only their support, but also added Vultr High Frequency servers which have similar speeds as DigitalOcean. They’re cheaper (starting at $10/month for DigitalOcean) with Varnish, memcached, and Redis caching. Most Cloudways complaints are about their Breeze plugin, no email hosting, and okay support.
Kinsta is still very fast, but typically not as fast as Cloudways. They use Google Cloud C2 with KeyCDN and server side caching. Kinstya’s support is arguably better than Cloudways but they’re more expensive starting at $30/month. Kinsta is also very innovative. You will notice many high traffic bloggers like Matthew Woodward use Kinsta (one of the reasons is because they’re great for handling many simultaneous visitors). For this, Kinsta is likely your best bet.
1. Speed – Cloudways vs. Kinsta Performance Tests
I tested Kinsta’s Starter Plan versus a $10/month DigitalOcean plan on Cloudways while using the same Astra Starter Site and plugins. Then I measured key metrics like TTFB and load times across various speed tools. Both Cloudways and Kinsta are fast, but Cloudways is slightly faster.
Cloudways Reports
Kinsta Reports
In the Pingdom test, you can see Cloudways DigitalOcean (cwdoserver.com) had an average load time of 340ms while Kinsta (knstaserver.com) averaged 628ms (a difference of 288ms). Each site had 336 individual Pingdom tests done – 7 day period at 30 minute check intervals.
When you put all the speed tests together, here’s what it looks like:
People who migrated to Cloudways:
People who migrated to Kinsta:
2. Speed Features – What Technology Do They Use?
Cloudways gives you a choice between 5 cloud hosting providers while Kinsta uses Google Cloud C2. Both have different types of caching, although both are server-side caching which is faster than any cache plugin. For CDNs, Cloudways has a set price of $1/25GB which uses StackPath’s CDN, while Kinsta provides a certain amount of GB free with each plan (higher plans come with more GBs) and uses KeyCDN. Cloudways has a Breeze plugin, but it doesn’t have good reviews and I would use WP Rocket instead (as well as on Kinsta) with these settings.
3. Simultaneous Visitor Handling – Can They Handle Lots Of Visitors?
Disclaimer: I haven’t done an official test on Cloudways vs. Kinsta for simultaneous visitors.
Butmany high traffic bloggers like Matthew Woodward use Kinsta. Kinsta also prides themselves in this… they posted multiple screenshots on Twitter showing how their client’s site was able to handle hundreds and sometimes thousands of simultaneous visitors. I haven’t seen much of this on Cloudways, so just by the sheer proof on Twitter, I have to say that Kinsta wins.
4. Resource Limits – Cloudways CPU vs. Kinsta PHP Worker Limits
Both Cloudways and Kinsta have resource limits.
On Cloudways, you can view CPU usage inside your dashboard (this doesn’t appear to be a huge problem like on SiteGround and other hosts). It’s straightforward – the more you optimize your website, avoid resource-intensive plugins, and have lower visitors, the lower your CPU will be.
Kinsta has PHP worker limits and count visits which is one of the main reasons people leave Kinsta. Each Kinsta plan only comes with a certain amount of PHP workers and monthly visits (shown on their plans page). As Kinsta says, PHP workers ” “determine how many simultaneous uncached requests your site can handle at any given time.” This is especially important for WooCommerce sites. Redis can help, but costs money on Kinsta while it’s free on Cloudways.
Look out for PHP worker limits.
5. Support – Better Support At Kinsta
Support is where Kinsta wins the most.
This is the main reason you’re paying for higher prices at Kinsta. Their support is phenomenal and consistent. This is best reflected if you dig through their TrustPilot reviews, you will constantly see great reviews about their support. They are fast, are US-based, and very helpful.
Cloudways support used to be terrible, but it’s much better now. Recently, most people are happy. However for others, it can be hit or miss. I recommend reaching out to Muhammed Moeez (Cloudways community manager) if you have questions since he’s always been great.
6. Features – Who Has More?
Take a look at Cloudways’ features page as well as Kinsta’s.
A few unique things about Cloudways is their bot protection, MariaDB 10.3, Redis, Breeze plugin, server level caching, scaling, GIT, SSH, cloning, Elastic Email, and cron job management.
A few unique things about Kinsta is their premium DNS, search and replace, IonCube Loader, redirects, and IP Deny. But one of the most unique features is their built-in analytics where you can see information on visitors, bandwidth usage, CDN usage, Geo and IP, and cache analytics.
7. Dashboard – Both Use A Custom, User-Friendly Dashboard
Kinsta uses the MyKinsta dashboard while Cloudways also uses a custom dashboard.
Both are user-friendly, but Kinsta is a bit easier to work around. You really should request a demo from Cloudways and Kinsta so you can navigate them yourself and try their dashboards.
8. Email Hosting – Neither Cloudways Or Kinsta Have It
Cloudways doesn’t support email hosting and neither does Kinsta.
Cloudways recommends their free Gmail SMTP addon or if you need mailboxes for your domain, you can buy a $1/month per mailbox through Rackspace. Kinsta recommends G Suite.
9. Migrations – Cloudways Is Cheaper And Has A Plugin
Cloudways offers 1 free migration then $25 per site and also has a Migrator plugin.
Kinsta offers unlimited free migrations from many hosts. Otherwise, it’s considered a premium migration and each plan includes a certain number of these premium migrations (shown on the plans page). If you want to move more websites to Kinsta than your plan includes, it’s $100/site.
10. Security – How Do They Protect Your Site?
You can read up on Cloudways’ and Kinsta’s security pages.
While both Cloudways and Kinsta have great security, Kinsta wins this one.
They offer a hack fix guarantee which means there is very little chance your website will get hacked. However, both hosts provide firewalls, account isolation, 2FA, and ongoing security patches. Cloudways uses Kyup while Kinsta uses LXCs and LXDs to isolate their containers. The bot protection from Cloudways can provide an additional security layer while saving resources.
11. Data Centers – Where Are They Located?
Cloudways has 38 data centers while Kinsta has 24 data centers.
Cloudways’ data centers depend on which cloud provider you choose. (e.g. DigitalOcean).
Cloudways Data Centers:
Kinsta Data Centers:
12. Pricing – Kinsta Is More Expensive Than Cloudways
Kinsta and Cloudways are monthly pricing with no higher renewals.
Kinsta starts at $30/month while Cloudways starts at $10/month for their entry level DigitalOcean plan. With Kinsta, you can get 4 months free when you sign up for 1 year.
If you want to compare Google Cloud hosting (since that’s what Kinsta uses), Cloudways is slightly more expensive starting $33.18/month. It depends on which cloud provider you choose (I typically recommend DigitalOcean or Vultr High Frequency). But it depends on your needs.
Cloudways Pricing:
Kinsta Pricing:
13. TrustPilot – Both Have 4.7+ Star TrustPilot Reviews
Cloudways and Kinsta both have around 4.8/5 star reviews on TrustPilot.
TrustPilot is typically a solid source for reviews (except Hostinger who writes fake reviews). Cloudways and Kinsta support likely ask their customers to leave reviews, but that’s all good.
14. Facebook Group Feedback – What Are People Saying?
Here are a few threads from the WordPress Hosting Facebook Group, the group I recommend joining to get real, unbiased opinions from usually knowledgeable people. WP Speed Matters and WordPress Speed Up are also good. Just know that Hristo (the SiteGround community manager) is an admin of the WordPress Speed Up Group and the “opinions” are more biased.
Happy customers using Cloudways:
Happy customers using Kinsta:
15. Summary – The Winner Of Cloudways vs. Kinsta
Cloudways for pure speed and affordability. Kinsta if you’re willing to pay more for exceptional support with slightly slower speeds (but still fast) and limits to visitor counts and PHP workers.
I’ve been using Cloudways DigitalOcean since 2019 and couldn’t be happier. They’re highly recommend in the WordPress Hosting Facebook and rated #1 in numerous Facebook polls.
If you decide to use Cloudways, here are a few steps/optimizations I recommend:
Step 1: Sign up for a Cloudways free trial.
Step 2: Use promo code OMM25 to get 25% off your first 2 months.
Step 3: Add a server.
Step 4: Name your app/server name, select a server (I recommend DigitalOcean or Vultr HF), then select your server size data center closest to your visitors. When done, click Launch Now.
Step 5: In Cloudways, go Servers → Manage Services, then enable the following:
Step 6: Go to Settings & Packages and upgrade to PHP 7.4, MariaDB 10.3, and install Redis.
Step 7: Request a free migration or use their Migrator plugin to move your site(s).
Enjoy the faster load times.
Any questions? Hit me up in the comments.
Cheers,
Tom
Keep reading the article at Tom Dupuis. The article was originally written by Tom Dupuis on 2020-10-20 04:14:25.
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