Kinsta vs Cloudways

Cloudways is the Kinsta alternative that puts control back in your hands

With Kinsta, you can only host your sites on Google Cloud. Cloudways lets you choose from 3 of the world’s top server providers and 30+ data centers, for total performance control.

3-day trial without credit card

Cloudways users know exactly what they want and how they want it

“The entry prices are low, but you get much better performance and control than on shared hosting.”

Marius Ghitulescu

Growth Hacker, VLU

Kinsta thinks it knows what’s best for your websites

Every website owner deserves to choose how and where their sites are hosted. Nobody knows your business better than you. The more control you have over your sites, the harder they’ll work for you.

Kinsta:

  • Is a WordPress-only platform. Forget about using any other PHP-based application.
  • Only hosts sites on Google Cloud. You don’t get to evaluate any other cloud service providers.

Users say they “lose control of their websites” on Kinsta

“I wish they didn’t artificially limit PHP workers. I run a membership site and worry that I’ll have to migrate once we really start to grow.”

Verified Kinsta review on G2

“They allow you no control of your server”

Verified Kinsta review on G2

“I contacted customer support several times and was basically told to figure it out myself.”

Verified Kinsta review on G2

“They are forcing all sites that use Cloudflare to continue to use their service AND requiring every single site hosted with them to make an IP change to Cloudflare.”

Trust Pilot
Verified Kinsta review on Trustpilot

“I wasn’t overly impressed and didn’t like the inability to have granular control of my server.”

Trust Pilot
Verified Kinsta review on Trustpilot

“They have arbitrary limitations on things like PHP workers and are absolutely unwilling to budge if you need extra headroom for your server.”

Trust Pilot
Verified Kinsta review on Trustpilot
Cloudways vs Kinsta

Cloudways gives you the same features for 1/3 of the price

  • Lowest available plan
  • Sites included
  • Visits/month
  • Storage
  • Bandwidth
  • RAM
  • Processor
  • $30/moSTARTER
  • 1
  • 25,000
  • 10GB
  • Undisclosed
  • Undisclosed
  • Undisclosed
  • $14/moDigitalOcean
  • Unlimited
  • Unlimited
  • 25GB
  • 1TB
  • 1GB
  • 1 Core
Businesses who want control and flexibility choose Cloudways

Cloudways helps you set up — and grow — your website on your own terms

More than just WordPress

Host other popular PHP-based apps such as Drupal, Magento, Laravel, and Joomla.

Pick your cloud server

Cloudways offers 3 different providers: Digital Ocean, AWS, and Google Cloud.

Host unlimited websites

Why pay for every single website? Launch as many as you want — all under the same account.

Customize your servers without compromising speed and performance

Don’t use WordPress? Choose any other PHP CMS

Our PHP 7.4 servers running on PHP-FPM (Fast Process Management) will optimize your website for fast, reliable load times.

“The optimizations Cloudways offers make even the smallest servers perform very well with apps like WordPress and Magento.”
Arda Burak Sepici

Choose the best cloud provider for your unique situation

Kinsta only offers Google Cloud Platform (still a great choice). But maybe one of our other cloud providers fit your budget more or give you higher performance. With Cloudways, you’ve got hosting options.

“Speed, security and customer service. Working with AWS is a dream come true.”
Pedro Flores

Handle more traffic with unlimited PHP workers

Kinsta provides up to 4 PHP workers per site. Cloudways dynamically adds PHP workers based on your server limits and your PHP settings, which you can customize for extended performance.

“The user interface on Cloudways is very easy to use. I needed to extend the php maximum execution time for my website and this was very easy to do.”
Paul Clarke

Automated backups that stay affordable

With Cloudways, you get free hourly backups while Kinsta charges $100/mo, per site. And if you need off-site backups, Kinsta starts at $2/mo for each site + $1 per GB. Cloudways gives you off-site backups at $0.033/GB per server, no matter how many sites you’re hosting.

“If you want an affordable and easy-to-manage web hosting platform, Cloudways it is.”
Richard Williams

Expert support that’s available on your preferred channels

Kinsta only provides support via their messaging system. Cloudways gives you free, 24/7/365 support, including access to Live Chat. For mission-critical sites, you can get priority support via phone, email, and Slack.

“I like their customer service the most. Whenever I have a problem of any kind, their support team always goes above and beyond to solve our query, even if it’s outside of Cloudways domain.
Sanjit Chakrabarti

Grow your traffic, not your billing

Kinsta puts a limit to your monthly visitors on each plan. If you want more visitors, you’re forced to upgrade. Your Cloudways plan is uncapped. Get as many visitors as you can and only upgrade if you exhaust your server resources.

“Cloudways is demonstrating to people that they can start their own website with great quality at affordable pricing.”
Rubén Castellanos
Kinsta VS Cloudways

Cloudways websites can serve as many visitors as you can drive to them

Results based on loader.io, comparing hosting plans at three levels.

Bar Graph Comparasion
Cloudways vs Kinsta

Cloudways blows past Kinsta’s response time

Results based on loader.io, comparing similar sites and hosting plans for speed optimizations.

Plan BUSINESS 1 4GB DIGITAL OCEAN
Average 5,000 ms
3,439 ms
Min 50 ms
1,039 ms
Max 50,000 ms
9,296 ms

Estimate what you would pay with Cloudways

Select your options above to reveal your rates

CALCULATE NOW

The following are the estimated server requirement based on the data you provided earlier.

Your Application:

Magento

Number of Visitors:

50000 to 1000000

Your Provider:

Amazon

2GB
2GB / 1 Core Server Size
Calculate Again

Numbers don’t lie — See how Cloudways customer support performs

Cloudways customer support performance
Q3 2020 – Q1 2021

  • 2.1Minutes

    Initial response time

  • 30Minutes

    Average time to solve and close a support inquiry

  • 90%

    Percentage of support inquiries closed with a happy and satisfied customer

Partner Program comparison

Agencies get exclusive perks and swag at Cloudways

  cloudways performance test
Entry Level $300 As low as $100
Sites Included 20, 40 or 60 WordPress installs, depending on your plan Unlimited sites on any plan (not just WordPress)
Monthly visits 400K, 600K or 1MM, depending on your plan Unlimited visits on any plan
Dedicated Partnership Manager Undisclosed For Gold and Platinum partners
Agency Perks Free site migrations + Free hosting for your agency site Get 10% OFF for 6-12 months
Plan perks 3 months free on annual plans paid upfront Pay as you go model — never pay anything upfront
Co-marketing
  • Partner listing
  • Partner badge
  • Social media campaigns
  • Partner listing
  • Agency Spotlight article in Cloudways blog
  • Customer case study
  • Cloudways blog guest post
  • Cloudways partner badge
  • Co-branded video ad
  • Agency founder interview
  • Free event tickets
  • Social media ad campaigns
Early Feature Access Yes Offered for Gold and Platinum partners
Swag Box No For Gold and Platinum partners
Learn more about our Agency Partnership Program here.

Migrating to Cloudways is free and hands-off

Your 1st site migration is on us. Tell our team about your app and the traffic it gets. We’ll take care of the entire process of moving your current site.

No Bugs Guaranteed! Our migration experts work closely with you to ensure that your Cloudways site is up and running in tip-top shape.

“Cloudways makes it really easy for you to keep full control over what you are doing and paying for.”

John Heatz

Kinsta VS Cloudways

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes and no. Kinsta does not offer a free trial on any of its pricing plans, but they do offer a 30-day money back guarantee. Keep in mind, however, overages and one-time fees are non-refundable. All Cloudways plans, on the other hand, are 100% free to start. No credit card needed. We’ll even cover the costs of migrating your first site.

No, Kinsta only does WordPress hosting. You can’t pick your own server either, as Google is the only cloud hosting provider they offer. As you can see, Kinsta gives you very little control over the tools you use to set up your website.

Cloudways supports WordPress, plus any website that’s based on a PHP Content Management System such as Drupal, Magento, Laravel, and Joomla. In addition to Google Cloud, you can choose from 4 other cloud providers: Digital Ocean, Linode, Vultr, AWS.

Cloudways even gives you twice as many global data centers (65+) to choose from. The closer they are to your customer base, the faster load times they’ll experience.

Security is our #1 priority at Cloudways, forming the very foundation of our cloud hosting experience. No matter which hosting plan you’re on, your dedicated Cloudways server comes security features such as:

  • Firewalls
  • Bot Protection
  • DDos Protection
  • SSL Certificates
  • Operating System’s Security & Patching
  • GDPR Compliance
  • Two-Factor Authentication
  • End-to-end Encryption
  • Suspicious Device Login Control