8 of 52 providers reward us when you sign up through our links. It never changes a ranking. Which ones
Cloudways vs Kinsta
Cloudways starts $21 per month cheaper at the entry tier.
Cloudways
$14/mo entry
Cloudways pricingFreelancers and small agencies hosting several client sites on one managed server.
Kinsta
$35/mo entry
Kinsta pricingRevenue-generating WordPress sites where an hour of downtime costs more than the hosting bill.
Kinsta lists more regions, which matters if latency to a specific city is your constraint. Kinsta is the better pick for revenue-generating WordPress sites where an hour of downtime costs more than the hosting bill.
Specification differences
Entry plans compared line by line. Rows marked with a dash are preferences rather than measurable wins, so we do not pick a side on them.
| Attribute | Cloudways | Kinsta | Better |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry plan price / month | $14 | $35 | Cloudways |
| Entry plan storage | 25 GB | 10 GB | Cloudways |
| Listed regions | 25 | 37 | Kinsta |
| Management model | Managed | Managed | |
| Support | 24/7 live chat and tickets; premium support tiers cost extra. | 24/7 chat support from WordPress engineers, included on all plans. | |
| Billing | Hourly metering billed monthly, pay-as-you-go. | Fixed monthly or annual plan; overage charges apply above visit limits. | |
| Free tier | Free trial available for new accounts; no permanent free tier. | No free tier. Migrations are included instead. |
Where each one wins and loses
Cloudways
Cloudways does not own data centers. It provisions servers on underlying clouds such as DigitalOcean and Vultr and adds the managed layer on top: stack configuration, caching, staging, automated backups and one-click server maintenance. You pay a premium over the raw instance for not having to be a sysadmin, while keeping the ability to move up in size.
Strengths
- Managed stack, caching and staging without full agency pricing
- Choice of underlying cloud provider and region
- Unlimited sites per server within the resources you buy
- Vertical scaling without rebuilding the server
Weaknesses
- Clear markup over provisioning the same instance yourself
- You are dependent on two vendors rather than one
- Email hosting is a paid add-on, not included
Support: 24/7 live chat and tickets; premium support tiers cost extra.
Billing: Hourly metering billed monthly, pay-as-you-go.
Free tier: Free trial available for new accounts; no permanent free tier.
Kinsta
Kinsta sits at the top of the managed WordPress market and prices on monthly visits and storage rather than on vCPU. The offer is that performance tuning, caching, staging, backups and support are handled for you, and that when something breaks the person answering knows WordPress specifically. It is straightforwardly expensive next to a self-managed instance, and that is the point.
Strengths
- Fully managed WordPress: caching, staging, backups and updates included
- Support staffed by WordPress specialists rather than generalists
- Free CDN and edge caching bundled into the plan
- Large region list for a managed host
Weaknesses
- Highest cost per unit of compute in this comparison, by a wide margin
- Visit and storage caps mean traffic spikes can force a plan upgrade
- WordPress-focused: not a general-purpose host for arbitrary stacks
Support: 24/7 chat support from WordPress engineers, included on all plans.
Billing: Fixed monthly or annual plan; overage charges apply above visit limits.
Free tier: No free tier. Migrations are included instead.
The full cost stack
What a server costs beyond its sticker price. Only figures read from each provider's own documentation appear; a gap says “not captured yet”.
| Item | Cloudways | Kinsta |
|---|---|---|
| Plan | n/a | n/a |
| Automatic backups | not captured yet | not captured yet |
| Outbound traffic beyond the allowance | not captured yet | not captured yet |
| Smallest managed load balancer | not captured yet | not captured yet |
Sources: none captured yet for this pair.
Price changes we have logged
No tracked price change for either provider yet.
Full record at the change log.
Every plan
The complete plan ladders, with the date and source of every price, are on each provider's page: Cloudways and Kinsta.
These are the providers' own list prices, shown in US dollars and last updated 23 Oct 2026. Where a provider bills a public IPv4 address on top, it is added to the monthly price, the ranking and every cost per vCPU or per GB, and the row shows the parts: the server, any disk priced apart, and the IPv4 charge. Each row says when we read its price, and whether it excludes VAT or needs a term. Check the provider's page before you buy.
Related comparisons
Cloudways vs Kinsta — frequently asked
Every answer is computed from this pair's own prices and costs.
- How many data center locations do Cloudways and Kinsta have?
- Cloudways lists 25 and Kinsta lists 37.