Kinsta vs KnownHost
Kinsta and KnownHost compared on measured uptime, response time, pricing and features from our own tests. Kinsta scores higher overall.
By Jennifer T. · Updated
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Verdict
KinstaWins overall
Managed WordPress hosting from $30 a month with flat renewals, 30 data centers, edge caching and 14-day backups
Managed cPanel hosting since 2006 on LiteSpeed and NVMe with stated cores and RAM, daily backups and three locations
Kinsta wins 5 of the six sub-scores and comes out ahead overall (7.9 vs 7.4).
How do the scores compare?
Kinsta leads on 5 sub-scores, KnownHost on 1. Higher is better.
Which one is faster and more reliable?
Which one costs less?
On renewal, KnownHost is cheaper ($7.16/mo vs $30.00/mo). Intro prices need the listed term.
What does each include?
| Kinsta | KnownHost | |
|---|---|---|
| Free domain | No | No |
| Free SSL | Wildcard certificates through Cloudflare on every plan | Every plan, every domain |
| Backups | Daily automatic backups kept 14 days on the entry plans (20 or 30 days higher up), plus manual, downloadable and hourly add-on backups | Daily JetBackup with 2-day and 1-week retention on every plan; extended retention sold as an add-on |
| Free migration | Unlimited migrations by Kinsta's team | Migration team copies files, databases and email and tests the site |
| Free CDN | Cloudflare CDN with edge caching, 260+ points of presence per the pricing page; 125 GB of CDN bandwidth a month on the entry plans | No |
| Caching | Server-level caching and edge caching through Cloudflare | LiteSpeed Web Server with LSCache on every plan; Redis and Memcached optional |
| Staging | Free one-click staging environments on every plan | No |
| No | 5, 25 or unlimited mailboxes by plan, with webmail | |
| Resource limits | Each site runs in its own container; plans are sized by server bandwidth or visits, storage and CDN bandwidth, with PHP worker counts in the compare table | CloudLinux isolation with 1, 2, 4 and 6 cores and 1, 2, 4 and 6 GB memory limits by plan |
| Data center choice | 30 locations chosen per site at creation | Atlanta, Seattle or Amsterdam at checkout |
| Uptime guarantee | 99.9% per month in the SLA updated 25 September 2025, with credits as a percentage of the monthly value once downtime passes 43 minutes; up to 99.99% on custom plans | The network page claims a 99.999% availability SLA and 99.99+% uptimes; the terms of service contain no uptime clause or credit schedule |
| Security | Fully managed WAF with DDoS protection, bot protection, free malware removal, SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 | Imunify360 with real-time malware scanning and a web application firewall; Patchman optional on Basic and Standard, included above |
| Developer tools | SSH, WP-CLI, Git, DevKinsta local environment, Kinsta API, built-in APM | Not stated |
| Phone support | No | A US toll-free number on every page, with 24/7 ticket support |
| Windows hosting | No | No |
| SSH, Git and cron | Not stated | Every plan, with current PHP versions |