Kinsta vs Liquid Web
Kinsta and Liquid Web 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
7.9 out of 10
KinstaWins overall
Managed WordPress hosting from $30 a month with flat renewals, 30 data centers, edge caching and 14-day backups
7.7 out of 10
Lansing's managed host since 1997: WordPress plans from $9 with Cloudflare edge CDN and a 100% network SLA, no refunds
Kinsta wins 3 of the six sub-scores and comes out ahead overall (7.9 vs 7.7).
How do the scores compare?
Kinsta leads on 3 sub-scores, Liquid Web on 1. Higher is better.
| Kinsta | Liquid Web | |
|---|---|---|
| Performance | 8.0 (better) | 7.5 |
| Uptime | 8.5 (better) | 8.0 |
| Support | 8.0 | 8.0 |
| Features | 8.5 | 8.5 |
| Value | 6.0 | 7.0 (better) |
| Ease of use | 8.5 (better) | 7.5 |
Which one is faster and more reliable?
| Kinsta | Liquid Web | |
|---|---|---|
| Overall score | 7.9 (better) | 7.7 |
| Uptime (published)HostingStep 366 d vs HostingStep 365 d; methods differ | 100.00% (better) | 99.99% |
| Response time (published)HostingStep vs HostingStep; methods differ | 525 ms | 496 ms (better) |
Which one costs less?
On renewal, Liquid Web is cheaper ($9.00/mo vs $30.00/mo). Intro prices need the listed term.
| Kinsta | Liquid Web | |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest plan | Single 20GB | Essentials WordPress |
| Intro price | $30.00/mo | $9.00/mo (better) |
| Renewal price | $30.00/mo | $9.00/mo (better) |
| Required term | 12 months | 1 months (better) |
| Websites | 1 | 1 |
| Storage | 10 GB | 15 GB |
| Money back | 30 days (better) | 0 days |
What does each include?
| Kinsta | Liquid Web | |
|---|---|---|
| Free domain | No | No |
| Free SSL | Wildcard certificates through Cloudflare on every plan | Free SSL certificates on the WordPress plans |
| 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 backups kept 7, 14 or 30 days by tier; Acronis backup storage on managed VPS |
| Free migration | Unlimited migrations by Kinsta's team | A self-serve migration tool and migration by a person on every WordPress plan |
| 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 | Edge CDN powered by Cloudflare on every WordPress plan; CDN overage is usage-billed |
| Caching | Server-level caching and edge caching through Cloudflare | Object Cache Pro on every WordPress plan |
| Staging | Free one-click staging environments on every plan | Staging sites with visual comparison on Pro and Elite; not on Essentials |
| No | Not stated | |
| 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 | WordPress plans are sized by visitors (50,000 a month on the entry tiers), shared storage and bandwidth; managed VPS plans state vCPU, RAM, SSD and bandwidth |
| Data center choice | 30 locations chosen per site at creation | Lansing, Phoenix, Ashburn and Amsterdam, selected on the purchase screen where a plan offers it |
| 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 | 100% network uptime in the SLA with credits up to the monthly charge, claimed within days of an outage; the managed VPS page states 99.9% server uptime |
| Security | Fully managed WAF with DDoS protection, bot protection, free malware removal, SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 | DDoS protection, WAF, Kadence Security Pro and daily malware scans on every plan; Patchstack virtual patching on Elite |
| Developer tools | SSH, WP-CLI, Git, DevKinsta local environment, Kinsta API, built-in APM | Not stated |
| Phone support | No | 24/7 by phone, chat and ticket |
| Windows hosting | No | On VPS and dedicated servers |
| Managed VPS | Not stated | Fully managed from $72 a month for 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 80 GB SSD and 3 TB; cPanel, InterWorx or Plesk; Windows available |
Company facts
| Kinsta | Liquid Web | |
|---|---|---|
| Control panel | MyKinsta (Kinsta's own dashboard); no cPanel | Liquid Web's own platform for WordPress plans; cPanel, InterWorx or Plesk on VPS |
| Data centers | 1 | 4 (better) |
| Support channels | chat, ticket, knowledge-base | chat, phone, ticket, knowledge-base |
| Founded | 2013 | 1997 |