tl;dr – Website hosting affiliate programs typically pay pretty well with commissions ranging from $65 – $125 per referral. But, the problem is, they are one-time commissions, so you only get that once per referral. Kinsta’s Managed WordPress Hosting affiliate program offers a one-time commission per referral plus monthly, recurring commission for the life of that referral account – making Kinsta the best website hosting affiliate program out there.
I’ll dive into why Kinsta is the best affiliate program for website hosting out there and why it’s also the best choice for hosting your website, making it the perfect hosting company to recommend.
Want to learn more? Check out Kinsta here…
Disclaimer: I am an affiliate of Kinsta so the links on this page are affiliate links. However, I do not recommend Kinsta to you because I am an affiliate. I am an affiliate and user of Kinsta because it’s the best hosting I have found. Also, using an affiliate link on this site helps support us and our mission and we are so, extremely grateful for you! If you have any questions about Kinsta, always feel free to reach out. Thanks!
Kinsta Affiliate Program Details
If you have a website built on WordPress, I would highly recommend Kinsta hosting over cheaper hosting options like GoDaddy, BlueHost, and other similar hosting services. To me, speed, performance, security, and support are invaluable – especially the support.
Over the years of working as a web specialist for so many clients, it always made sense for them to switch. And even saved them money in the long run.
With cheaper hosting, you’re always going to have added costs – which, in the end, doesn’t actually make it cheap hosting. Here are a few examples:
- Security – I have been a part of helping many clients over the years fix their hacked websites. And every single one of them were on cheap hosting (and coincidentally or not, they were all on GoDaddy or GoDaddy reseller hosting). This means, at the very least, on top of your cheap hosting, you’ll need to purchase added security like Sucuri to protect your site or be at high risk for hacking and malware. So you either pay extra for Sucuri or you end up paying $100 – $300 or more for someone to clean up your hacked site. In contrast, I’ve never had to deal with a hacked site using Kinsta hosting.
- Support – I’ve contact many support options of various cheap hosting for clients and always end up frustrated. My favorite excuse when there’s an issue with a site is that it’s a WordPress issue and to contact WordPress. But it never is. There’s always a limitation or issue with the server and there is just simply no support available. You’ll end up spending a developer hundreds of dollars to research and find a solution. In contrast, Kinsta support is available 24/7 and they are WordPress experts. Anytime I have contacted Kinsta support over the years, I’ve connected with someone very quickly and they were able to solve any issue I had – at no extra cost.
- Speed – Cheap hosting will always limit your ability to have a fast website. Not only because cheap hosting is shared by other websites using various amounts of the limited resources available, but also because they are usually on hardware that is older and limited as well. Now that Google has made speed a very high ranking factor over the last year or two, cheap hosting can limit your site’s ability to rank high in search results which could cost you uncalculable amounts of leads and revenue over time.
With Kinsta, you get all of those benefits and more for $300 / year.
With cheap hosting, you can pay around $70 – $90 / year, but then will need:
+ Sucuri at at least $200 / year or pay more if your site gets hacked
+ Possibly an SSL certificate that still doesn’t come free with some cheap hosting. Typically around $99 / year
+ all of the lost business you’ll have because your rankings could suffer from poor speed and performance
In the end, Kinsta is a no brainer!
Okay, so that’s a long tl;dr, but it all needs to be said! To learn more about Kinsta and all of the reasons I recommend it, keep reading!
If you’re ready to check out Kinsta for yourself, click here to get started.
In this Kinsta review, we’re going to take a broad, deep look into the world of managed WordPress hosting.
We’re going to assess all the features that make it the hosting solution of choice for many WordPress website owners. We’re also going to compare it to some of its competitors, illustrating where it really shines and answers the question: “Is Kinsta worth it?”
A Couple of Words on WordPress
WordPress rules the roost when it comes to content management.
While there may be several excellent alternatives, all boasting impressive features, the numbers speak for themselves. Among the ten most popular content management systems, WordPress has a staggering 64% market share of all CMS platforms & makes up 40% of all websites on the internet!
Yes, you read that correctly… 64% of all websites built on the ten most popular content management systems use WordPress and over a third of all websites online use WordPress.
What’s the reason for this remarkable statistic? In an industry as mature as content management, it can’t be anything other than the fact that they offer a superior product with a lower barrier to entry. It also helps that their enormous market share results in massive credibility.
They’ve also done an amazing job of empowering third-party developers to extend their core product. From beautifully designed, powerful themes (which we also review and recommend using Divi as your WordPress theme for any build!), to industry-leading plugins, the community around WordPress is incentivized to continue keeping it ahead of the curve.
By decoupling themselves from the functions and features that extend their usefulness, they have effectively made the entire world their product team.
One of the major benefits this has resulted in is that they now offer functionality that makes them so much more than the simple blogging platform they started out as. Regardless of what you need your site to do, chances are that there will be a configurable theme and plugin combo enabling it.
However, despite the major benefits and ease of use WordPress brings to all its users, one downside to a product or service with such popularity and global reach is that is becomes a target for hackers. That makes security with your hosting even more important, which we’ll talk about in more detail below.
What is Managed WordPress Hosting?
WordPress offers the “building blocks” for your website. It gives you the functions that allow you to create and manage your site’s content.
WordPress also offers a hosting solution. And there are also many other affordable solutions that offer the absolute basics of hosting that are “cheap.”
These basic, cheap options (also referred to as “shared”) web hosts play an important part in internet publishing. There are millions of websites that find bare-bones hosting solutions more than adequate.
Having said that, these services are seldom ideal for serious website owners who need specialized management to run their online businesses successfully. Oftentimes these digital entrepreneurs and business owners opt for stripped-down hosting options purely because they don’t grasp the benefits of choosing a managed hosting option that will typically save them money in the long run.
Essentially, focused, managed hosting results in faster, more stable, more secure sites. In addition, depending on the service you opt for, there are numerous other benefits.
Why Choose Kinsta?
Let’s take a detailed look at the key benefits and features Kinsta offers as a managed WordPress hosting solution…
Kinsta Hosting is Optimized for WordPress
The technical overhead involved in server maintenance is significant. In fact, we’re not going to attempt delving into the details here. Suffice it to say that a massive part of running a web hosting company successfully is ensuring peak performance for the user interacting with the website.
When a shared web host caters to websites built on a myriad of content management systems, this effort increases exponentially.
By optimizing their technical environment for a single platform, Kinsta is able to achieve a peak level of performance for their clients’ sites. And they’re able to do so with much less effort and cost.
I’ve worked with client sites that were using cheap hosting in the past where the settings on their server could not run their site simply because it wasn’t set up to do so. All attempts at receiving help from their support were met by them telling me it was a problem with WordPress and to go elsewhere for help. So frustrating!
Cloud Hosting
With most other hosting services, your site is allocated physical space on a dedicated server. These types of servers have a predefined allocation of processing power.
This means that, should your site see an unexpected spike in activity that cannot be accommodated by its resources, the site’s performance will suffer. Essentially, your site is at its most vulnerable when you least need it to be.
Kinsta makes use of what is becoming an industry-standard approach to solving this issue. It’s called “scale on demand” and it has revolutionized the hosting industry.
Making use of Google’s Cloud Platform, they are able to automatically assess your site’s dependence on processing resources and intelligently allocates additional power when you need it.
Then, as traffic drops below a certain threshold, they automatically reduce the resources allocated to your site.
While some hosts’ billing hinges on the amount of resources consumed, Kinsta keeps things simple by linking the cost to the number of visitors to your site. As you see your site grow in popularity, you are able to accurately predict your hosting costs.
No More Caching Plugins
Caching refers to the automated activity of pre-loading certain activities your website performs regularly. This lessens the load on the server and also reduces page load times. This is especially important for sites running on a CMS like WordPress.
Traditionally, WordPress site owners enabled caching by installing third-party plugins that manage the process for them. While many of these plugins did an excellent job, an even more elegant solution is not needing one entirely.
And this is exactly the solution that they offer their customers. The combination of cloud hosting and four different types of integrated caching functions (Bytecode, Object, Page, and CDN) means that customers no longer need to involve cumbersome and less-effective plugins to ensure maximum response times from their sites.
Increased Security
Focusing on a single platform also allows a web host to ensure maximum protection against malicious activities. The fewer alarm bells to be on the lookout for, the easier it is to spot one. And the easier it is to stop whatever is causing the problem.
Managed WordPress hosts like Kinsta also have to implement and manage fewer security protocols. By focusing only on a single piece of software to keep secure, they ensure greater effectiveness.
Another reason for increased security is regular patching. Applying security updates to a technical environment that runs only WordPress is a comparative cinch. It can happen with minimum disruption to services and is also very unlikely to result in security gaps.
The company also boasts some seriously impressive security features. At the heart of these is their commitment to active monitoring. Custom-developed security software is able to instantly detect downtime as a result of a DDoS attack.
At the same time, server-side monitoring instantly detects whether a hacker has bypassed firewalls to install a backdoor – programs that give them access to your source code. These security features don’t alert engineers when an attack is occurring. They sound the alarms the instant these programs are installed. This is another benefit of working in an environment with a uniform code – foreign presences are extremely easy to detect and destroy.
And since we’ve mentioned firewalls, it’s worth pointing out that Kinsta opts for the hardware variety, as opposed to software firewalls. While the latter is more affordable, hardware firewalls offer unprecedented security. Their proprietary operating systems make them harder to bypass, they cover an entire network as opposed to a single site, and can be maintained at a fraction of the effort.
Another excellent security service is third-party component assessment. With the astonishing amount of externally developed WordPress themes and plugins available, there is always a risk that you could install something that compromises your site’s security. Kinsta continuously monitors the health of not only your site itself but also the add-ons you extend it with.
Focused Customer Support
Since they are dealing with technical issues relating to only one platform, Kinsta is able to provide lightning-fast support. And by lighting-fast, we mean it.
Most hosting companies’ automatic responses promise contact within 24 hours. Kinsta’s text support is available 24/7 and typically respond to queries instantly.
In fact, when viewing their Trustpilot page, it is the quality of their support that receives the most attention. Customers are over the moon with the availability, friendliness, and knowledge of the supports staff.
And I am certainly one of those people. Having dedicated support like Kinsta does makes my life easier as a consultant and contractor, but it also makes the life of my clients easier as well – and saves SO much time and money to not have to rely on outside support or developers.
From installation support to complex configuration and bug resolutions, their support team is always ready to get your site functioning at peak performance.
Ease of Installation
WordPress is known for being easy to install and Kinsta is no different. What’s the point in aligning yourself with the world’s most popular CMS if you’re not going to adopt one of its key selling points: ease of use.
Once you have your account activated, simply navigate to the dashboard’s “Add your first site now” popup and complete the simple form to have your site created on Google Cloud Platform.
With ample documentation to help you through the process and a dedicated support team that’s always available, you’ll have your hosting set up in no time.
Hassle-free Migration
Yes, there are many third-party tools available to facilitate the migration of a WordPress site. The likes of Duplicator, UpdraftPlus, and Vaultpress are very good it at, too. But the absence of a dedicated engineering team to hold your hand throughout the migration process poses a massive risk.
Will you have an absolute guarantee that you won’t lose data, experience downtime, or even have adequate backups to restore to?
Managing a migration without engineering experience is extremely risky. Especially if the site has a very active user-base. Even more so if it’s a site that processes complex functionality or financial transactions.
Kinsta migration is managed by their team of engineers. All you have to do is point them in the right direction and they will do the rest.
For website owners unwilling to hand over the responsibility of migration to an outside party, possibly due to sensitive data being stored on their site, a DIY option with excellent walk-throughs is available.
If this isn’t enough motivation to trust your migration to Kinsta, the company also offers their subscribers at least one free migration from any other hosting platform.
LXD Containerization
Containerization is a technical concept that has recently become a game-changer for hosting companies. And LXD is one of the leading names in containerization.
Essentially, containerization creates a virtual server for each of your sites. So, despite the sites all sitting “alongside” each other, LXD ensures that whatever malicious activity manages to compromise it, the damage is limited to that site only – which is an important distinction from cheap hosting, where your site can be affected from a site that is hacked on the same server you’re sharing.
This technology represents the apex of modern precautionary measures and is another illustration of how seriously this company takes cybersecurity.
Backups, Hacking Recovery, and Recourse
Despite the state-of-the-art security features and protocols that Kinsta offers their customers, they will never be able to fully guarantee that a site will never get hacked. Doing so would be irresponsible and a bad business practice.
What they do offer, however, is daily backups and full recovery from any damage your site has sustained without any additional cost.
Hiring an engineer to repair the damage a hacker has inflicted on your site could break the bank and lead to long periods of downtime. It’s not an exaggeration to say that this service could literally save your business from bankruptcy.
Increased Performance and User Satisfaction
The correlation between user satisfaction and a site’s response time is well established. There are numerous studies proving that an investment in your site’s performance has a significant impact on your site’s profitability. Check out this article by Neil Patel. It breaks down exactly why page speed is important and how it can improve so many things like user experience, page views, conversions, bounce rates, etc.
Fast load speeds improve user engagement and result in increased conversions. This is not speculation. There is black and white data behind this statement.
While the use of cloud hosting and “scale on demand” does play a significant role in increased load times, Kinsta employs additional technologies to ensure optimum speeds.
Faster internet speeds, along with the enhanced capabilities of web browsers have ushered in a new era of web-based functionality. In fact, entire enterprise suites now offer their services as web-based SaaS products.
Aside from connection speeds and browser capabilities, one of the key ingredients to enabling sophisticated functionality is web servers that can cope with the subsequent load.
For more than a decade, Apache was the go-to tech when it came to speed and stability. Times have changed, however, and the demands that modern websites have on their servers outweigh what the old warhorse is capable of.
Enter Nginx.
Nginx operates using an “event-based” model, enabling it to process thousands of simultaneous connections without compromising speed or running the risk of crashing. One of the only drawbacks of using Nginx is the challenges involved in getting it to run WordPress – a platform that was designed to run on Apache.
Fortunately, Kinsta has the expertise necessary to make this technical partnership flourish. There is no need for you to understand the complexities involved in getting these two systems to cooperate. They will take care of it all, giving you the benefit of lighting fast load times.
Solid-State Drives
Regardless of what a server’s processor and memory are capable of, its performance is certain to be throttled by the capabilities of its hard disks. The speed with which a server can write data to and read data from a drive is one of the primary qualities that determines overall performance.
The speed of the drive is also a factor in another aspect of overall site performance. Most operating systems also allocate some portion of a hard drive’s space for virtual RAM – ensuring that a spike in memory consumption doesn’t result in a crash.
Solid-state drives are becoming an industry standard when it comes to dealing with the above issues and Kinsta employs only these storage devices on their servers.
Staging
Staging is the act of creating a clone of your site in order to test new features without affecting your live site. The main reason for doing so is to test new custom-developed features or plugins to see how they affect your site’s core functionality.
It is also an excellent space to run comparative speed tests since the staging area runs in exactly the same technical environment as your live site.
If you are hired to redesign a website or want to redesign your own, have a staging site is immensely valuable! I don’t know how I ever lived without them.
The Competition
There are a number of excellent companies playing in the managed WordPress hosting space. Let’s take a look at where Kinsta outperforms the other big players.
Kinsta vs WP Engine
Kinsta offers the same core technical infrastructure regardless of the hosting plan you sign up for. All plans are cloud-hosted. There are no shared-hosting options at Kinsta. When a WP Engine subscriber needs to switch plans because they need more or less computing power, they may need to move hosting environments.
In a Blitz.io “1-5000 concurrent users over 60 seconds test” performed by Kevin Ohashi (founder of Review Signal) illustrated major differences in performance.
While Kinsta’s performance was not compromised during the test, WP Engine showed a notable decrease in performance, with the following statistics standing out:
- Timeouts: Kinsta 0, WP Engine 1,061
- Average hits per second: Kinsta: 2258, WP Engine: 1803
- Average response time: Kinsta: 85ms, WP Engine: 158
Other key areas where Kinsta offers greater value are:
- Kinsta offers double the amount of hosting plans, catering for more granular needs.
- All Kinsta plans offer custom SSL certificates, detailed performance analytics, and uptime monitoring, while WP Engine only offers these on the higher tiers.
I found WPEngine’s support and ease of use very similar to Kinsta. Both are great in those departments. They also have very similar pricing.
However, if you’re a consultant or contractor and are advising a client which to choose, Kinsta has a far superior affiliate program that offers recurring, monthly commissions that will continue throughout the life of the service. WPEngine only gives a one-time, up-front commission.
Kinsta vs SiteGround
The major difference between Kinsta and SiteGround is scaling at the premium end of the subscription spectrum. Websites that experience extreme traffic and processing need optimum performance and this is where Kinsta excels in comparison.
Another major reason that site owners opt for Kinsta over SiteGround is the amount of consumption limits the latter impose on their clients. SiteGround monitors each site’s number of connections, CPU usage, memory, server processes, database size, database tables, and even database queries. Once these exceed a certain level, they have been known to “limit” the account, which affects its availability.
Kinsta imposes no such limits on their customers.
Kinsta vs FlyWheel
FlyWheel has been acquired by WP Engine and has thus inherited some of the main differences between WP Engine and Kinsta.
However, here are some key differences between the two platforms:
- Flywheel prevents sites from editing their wp-config.php file.
- Flywheel doesn’t allow clients to run a different version of PHP for each site and switching between these requires technical support.
- Kinsta provides full access to phpMyAdmin. This allows the site owner to manage and run queries on their MySQL databases. Flywheel offers a stripped-down instance of this page.
I imagine the support at FlyWheel has improved since it was acquired by WPEngine, but my experience with FlyWheel’s support a few years ago was frustrating and very limited.
Kinsta vs GoDaddy
GoDaddy is a shared WordPress host and offers a fraction of the services and benefits that a managed solution does.
If you are serious about web hosting and want peak performance for your online business, opt for a managed WordPress host. The reasons for making this decision have been discussed at length in the content of this piece.
Also, if you read the tl;dr at the top of this page, you’ll see what horrible experiences I’ve had with GoDaddy hosting for myself and for clients.
There simply is no comparison here. Kinsta is by far the better choice. The cheap hosting GoDaddy offers may look appealing, but will cost you more in the long run. Plus, GoDaddy support is just the worst!
Kinsta vs Bluehost
Bluehost is an excellent hosting option but there are areas where Kinsta outperforms them. Here are the main differences:
- Nginx servers preloaded with PHP 7.3. Bluehost’s adoption of the latest version of PHP is not yet finalized.
- Bluehost does not offer server-based caching. Sites hosted on Bluehost are dependent on caching plugins which are an additional overhead and not as effective.
- LXC containerization is not available at Bluehost.
- From a performance perspective, Kinsta is a comfortable winner. Inlinehosblogger.com found that, under high loads (100 concurrent users at 835 requests per second) Bluehost had an average response time of 79 ms. Kinsta’s response under an even higher load (99 users at 1130 requests per second), was an astonishing 15ms.
I would rate the support from BlueHost a bit above the support from GoDaddy, but consider them quite similar. I’ve not had very much help or support from BlueHost.
Additionally, Kinsta still will provide more value with speed, performance, support, and security – which will ultimately save you a lot of money in the long run.
The Bottom Line
WordPress website owners that are serious about running profitable online businesses need a serious hosting solution. A managed option is without a doubt where the world is going. The benefits of using Kinsta are overwhelming.
Even if you have a website that is not a profitable online business. You need to make sure it runs fast if you want it to rank well, it is safe from hacking, and you have reliable support available if something goes wrong or you have any questions.
Kinsta’s technical environment and software features represent the cutting edge of WordPress hosting. Their products are purpose-built with next-generation tech that offers unparalleled performance, stability, and ease of use.
Kinsta is my go-to host for all of my websites and the top recommendation that I give my clients.
Click here to sign up for their hosting service now.
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