WordPress VIP Alternative: The Benefits of Choosing Kinsta
If you’re looking for a WordPress VIP alternative for hosting, you’re in the right place. Kinsta offers a unique, innovative WordPress hosting solution powered by the Google Cloud Platform. With Kinsta, you get full freedom over how to maintain and run your website. Let’s find out why Kinsta is so superior!
Introduction
WordPress VIP is an enterprise-level hosting solution offered by Automattic. It promises high-performance WordPress hosting, but it’s only accessible for enterprise-level websites.
Kinsta, on the other hand, is all about providing you with the best hosting solution for WordPress. The underlying infrastructure is optimized to provide an ideal hosting experience for every website, from small blogs to enterprise customers.
Managed WordPress hosting solutions aren’t all the same. That’s what you’ll learn throughout the rest of this page. We’ll dig deeper into what distinguishes Kinsta from WordPress VIP, and go over the benefits of choosing us as your managed WordPress host.
How Kinsta Compares to WordPress VIP in a Nutshell
Before we start talking about the different technology powering Kinsta and WordPress VIP respectively, let’s take a look at the main differences between these services.
WordPress VIP is not an open platform. If you want to sign up for it, you have to fill out an application and wait for someone from its team to reach out to you.
Although this enables WordPress VIP to provide custom plans to each customer, it also means you have no way of knowing how much hosting might cost you at a glance. This enterprise-focused approach only works if you’re a big company that wants to rely entirely on a third-party hosting service to handle everything involving development and optimization.
With WordPress VIP, every line of code that you add to your website gets scanned before it goes live, to ensure that it meets their standards and that updates are safe. Unfortunately, this means you sacrifice a lot of freedom for the sake of optimization. Moreover, some popular and frequently-used plugins and themes are not compatible with this platform’s infrastructure, which means you won’t be able to use them.
Kinsta also offers hosting solutions geared towards enterprise-level customers that are both performance-oriented and user-friendly. In fact, we’re the highest-rated managed WordPress host on G2, with many of our awards stemming from ease of use:
Enjoy a 20% Faster Website Simply by Moving From WordPress VIP to Kinsta
We measured 3,200+ migrations over the course of a three-month span. On average, client sites experienced 20% faster load times just by moving to Kinsta.
How is this possible? Our customers enjoy:
- The fastest C2 and C3D VMs and Google Cloud servers
- A stack that’s been fine-tuned for WordPress over the past 8 years
- Google’s Premium Tier Network to deliver website data faster
- Free CDN powered by Cloudflare’s global network of 260+ locations
- Built-in Edge Caching that cuts the time needed to serve cached WordPress HTML by an average of more than 50%!
Migrate from WordPress VIP to Kinsta hassle free with our free expert migration service. With our 30-day money-back guarantee, you can test out the service and improved speeds completely risk-free. You only lose if you don’t give this a try!
At Kinsta, we allow customers to have full control over their WordPress projects. Simultaneously, we work in the background to ensure that you get the best possible performance, website monitoring, and support system.
If you run into problems, we can jump in at a moment’s notice to help you solve them. We also don’t limit your access to critical components or features, such as your database or error logs.
Some additional differences between Kinsta vs WordPress VIP include:
- Kinsta’s stack works for businesses of all sizes, whether you have a tech background or not. WordPress VIP is primarily geared towards enterprises with in-house development teams.
- Kinsta’s plans highlight everything that’s included in detail. With WordPress VIP, you’re not able to get full details about the potential costs upfront..
- Kinsta has 37 data centers across the globe. WordPress VIP offers 28 data centers worldwide.
- All sites on Kinsta are protected by our free Cloudflare integration. In addition to an enterprise-level firewall that’s tailored for WordPress, Kinsta customers also benefit from free DDoS protection and HTTP/3 support.
- Kinsta offers six types of backups: free automatic/daily, optional hourly, manual, system-generated, downloadable, and external backups sent automatically to Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage. We also offer one-click backup and restore features. WordPress VIP offers an hourly backup subscription service through VaultPress.
- All of our plans include a free Content Delivery Network (CDN) and free premium Domain Name System (DNS). WordPress VIP offers free CDN integration, but no DNS.
- Kinsta support, composed of WordPress experts and Linux engineers, is available 24/7 for every customer regardless of their plan. WordPress VIP relies on Zendesk to provide ticketing support, but you pay extra for each support ‘seat’ or account that can submit requests.
- Kinsta monitors your website for uptime every three minutes, 480 times a day.
- Kinsta provides free, human-performed migrations with all of our plans. WordPress VIP can also perform migrations for you, but you’ll be asked to prepare files for them and commit your plugins and themes to GitHub before moving you to its platform.
- All Kinsta customers can take advantage of the custom-built, WordPress-specific and intuitive MyKinsta dashboard. WordPress VIP uses its own custom platform called VIP Dashboard.
- On-click staging environment functionality is available with all Kinsta plans. WordPress VIP doesn’t offer staging functionality. Instead, you push every update to a GitHub repository and wait for its team to review the code before it goes live.
- Kinsta offers simple, straightforward hosting plans and packages, which can be easily integrated with add-on solutions. WordPress VIP doesn’t offer public information about pricing, except that plans start at $5,000 per month. However, it deals with each customer on a case-by-case basis.
- Kinsta has a 30-day money-back guarantee, while WordPress VIP does not.
- Kinsta and MyKinsta seamlessly integrate with local development tools like DevKinsta.
- Kinsta provides multilingual support.
- We offer a very popular affiliate program.
Kinsta is Built for Performance and Scalability
Thanks to Kinsta’s cloud infrastructure, we’re able to offer plans for projects of all scope and size. In fact, Kinsta’s entry-level plans start at just $35 per month.
Also, for each site hosted on our platform, we use compute-optimized C2 and compute engine general-purpose C3D Google Cloud machines, LXD-managed hosts, and orchestrated LXC software containers. This means that every site has its own isolated container equipped with all the necessary resources, including MySQL, PHP, Linux, and Nginx.
Kinsta’s scalable infrastructure also enables you to upgrade or downgrade with ease. We have custom-compiled Linux packages and Nginx rulesets that enable us to maximize the performance of your WordPress sites, as well as more than 30 different software packages and PHP extensions.
For that price, you’re getting far superior performance to what most other WordPress hosting solutions can offer.
WordPress VIP uses a mix of cloud and dedicated servers, and prices start at about $5,000 per month with a minimum $5,000 setup fee per-site.This means that WordPress VIP is not suitable for the majority of WordPress sites, due to the high monthly cost and setup fee.
Moreover, the way that WordPress VIP works requires you to be responsible for several tasks, including:
- Vetting and reviewing the code of plugins and themes to ensure that they meet WordPress VIP standards
- Updating your code if it’s sent back for review after you push it to your repository
- Opening tickets every time you run into issues with your website, since you don’t have direct access to the back end
Although managed WordPress hosting is all about taking work off your hands, most users need a certain degree of control as well as access to their websites. And you probably don’t want to wait days before you can add a specific plugin to your website. At Kinsta we understand that. Using our MyKinsta dashboard, you get access to all the tools you need to update, maintain, and troubleshoot your website.
Another benefit of using Kinsta is our unique caching system, which helps to optimize speed and performance. Kinsta eliminates the need for any caching plugins or add-ons.
As part of our Cloudflare integration, Edge Caching saves your Kinsta site/page cache to any of Cloudflare’s global network of 260+ data centers.
Edge Caching is included free with all Kinsta plans and cuts the time needed to serve cached WordPress HTML by an average of more than 50%!
Kinsta is reliable and makes shipping changes easy. The support team was exceedingly helpful when we needed to migrate our blog. A+ on their support team.
Bottom line: Using Kinsta as your managed WordPress hosting provider gives you full freedom over your projects, but you still get access to expert-level help at a moment’s notice. That’s what a fantastic managed WordPress experience should be like.
Uncover your WordPress Site’s Performance Bottlenecks.
Our experts will run a free performance audit of your website and send you a detailed action plan.
MyKinsta: A Custom-Built Dashboard for Powerful Site Management
WordPress VIP offers a custom dashboard for simple project management. While it gives you access to several configuration settings, you don’t get full entry into your site’s back end.
At Kinsta, our mission is to make managing your WordPress site as simple and straightforward as possible. This is why we custom-built our own user portal, MyKinsta, with WordPress developers and enthusiasts in mind:
Let’s take a look at some of the powerful features that make our MyKinsta dashboard so useful:
- One-click staging environments, and an option to restore backups to production or staging. WordPress VIP doesn’t offer staging functionality, as every update goes through your GitHub repository.
- Quick phpMyAdmin access.
- Premium Amazon Route 53 DNS, to manage your DNS records directly in the dashboard. To set up a DNS with WordPress VIP, you must contact support.
- A built-in Cloudflare integration with optimized settings to secure and boost the performance of your site without the need for a separate Cloudflare subscription.
- Detailed analytics and insights, including bandwidth and visitor data, performance analysis data, CDN usage and insights, and cache HIT and MISS ratio.
- One-click CDN setup.
- Access to Kinsta APM.
- A search and replace tool to make performing bulk updates easy.
- One-click PHP version switching, and the option to restart PHP when needed. This feature isn’t available with WordPress VIP.
- A dashboard tool to purge the site’s cache. Flushing the cache with WordPress VIP requires a VIP-CLI setup.
- Simple redirect management.
- The ability to quickly block IP addresses via the IP Deny tool.
- New Relic integration (license required)
- Unlike WordPress.com, Kinsta offers automatic Cloudflare SSL certificates with wildcard domain support, and the option to import your own.
- A WordPress debugging tool.
- Full integration with DevKinsta, Kinsta’s local development tool
- Simple password protection for your environment, and the option to strengthen login security by adding your SSH keys to the dashboard.
- Multilingual dashboard that’s available in 10 languages: English, Italian, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Japanese, Swedish, Danish, and Dutch.
Kinsta has allowed us to offer a bulletproof service to our top tier clients and keep them happy. Especially those who have traffic spikes with sudden server demand.
At Kinsta, we value our clients’ feedback. We’re always looking for opportunities to improve, and we regularly incorporate the requests and feedback we receive to enhance our offerings. If you have a suggestion for how to make our solutions better, we want to hear about it!
Kinsta is Developer-Friendly
WordPress VIP focuses on enterprise-level customers, meaning companies that tend to have in-house developers. Due to the way WordPress VIP works, there’s a constant back and forth between in- house team members and WordPress VIP’s staff to get each project and update working perfectly.
Although that’s a valid approach, it means that you can’t push updates to your projects out quickly. Moreover, due to the platform’s strict code requirements, you’re limited when it comes to using plugins, extensions, and themes that might make your life easier.
Kinsta tools are built with developers in mind. Many of our team members are developers and engineers themselves, so we understand what it means to create a ‘developer-friendly’ product. At the same time, we believe that you know what you’re doing and what you need from us.
As your managed WordPress host, Kinsta provides you with an extensive collection of tools and features to help streamline your workflow efficiency. Some of the developer-friendly features you’ll have access to at Kinsta, which you won’t necessarily get with WordPress VIP, include:
- One-click staging environments for all plans. WordPress VIP doesn’t include staging functionality.
- Git, WP-CLI, and SSH access included, regardless of your plan.
- Six types of backups available: free automatic/daily, optional hourly, manual, system-generated, downloadable, and external backups sent automatically to Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage. With WordPress VIP, you get hourly backups powered by Jetpack.
- The option to load your site over reverse proxy.
- The ability to use custom setups such as Bedrock and Trellis. WordPress VIP doesn’t make mention of either.
- Access to the Kinsta APM (Application Performance Monitoring) tool.
- An option to run a different version of PHP for each live and staging site, and the ability to switch your PHP version with one click, which isn’t available with WordPress VIP.
- Default enabled post and page revisions.
- The ability to restore backups to staging as well as production.
- Access to our local WordPress development tool, DevKinsta.
Staging environments are critical for testing plugins, themes, and core updates to ensure they’re compatible with your website and won’t cause anything to break. They’re also an important feature for debugging code and developing projects before pushing them live.
That’s why, unlike WordPress VIP, we offer one-click staging with every WordPress site hosted at Kinsta. You can create a new staging environment directly from your MyKinsta dashboard. You can push changes live with a single click, as well as restore backups to a production or staging site.
Free Performance Monitoring Tool
WordPress is a dynamic CMS, which means it’s constantly executing PHP code in the background. Depending on your theme and plugin configuration, it’s possible for your site to get bogged down with bloated and inefficient code.
That’s where APM (Application Performance Monitoring) tools can help. An APM monitors requests to your site, and tracks various metrics like external API requests, database queries, PHP execution time, and more. This information allows you to quickly debug and troubleshoot performance bottlenecks.
All Kinsta plans come with a free custom-built APM tool that can be easily accessed right in the MyKinsta dashboard. Kinsta APM provides you with key WordPress performance insights without the need for expensive third-party subscriptions to other APM services.
With Kinsta APM, you can debug the following and more:
- Slow WordPress plugins and themes.
- Long calls to external APIs and domains.
- Unoptimized MySQL database queries.
WordPress VIP plans come with free access to New Relic APM, but their hosting plans start at $2,000/month.
Develop Locally with DevKinsta
For developers and agencies, Kinsta offers a simple to use (but powerful) local development tool called DevKinsta. With DevKinsta, you can launch WordPress sites with a full hosting stack and SSL support on your local computer with just a few clicks.
DevKinsta is fully integrated with MyKinsta and Kinsta’s hosting platform, which means you can develop locally and push updates directly to a staging environment on Kinsta! WordPress VIP doesn’t have an integration with a local WordPress development tool, which means there is no way to clone and push WordPress sites for their customers. If you’re a busy freelance or agency developer, DevKinsta’s advanced features and MyKinsta integration can be a huge time saver.
Optimized for WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads
We appreciate that ecommerce is vital for many businesses, and that these websites come with particularly challenging and complicated demands. This is why the Kinsta platform is optimized for ecommerce stores.
We take care of caching for you at the server level, to deliver fast page loading times. Plus, our solution is configured to work out of the box for WordPress, WooCommerce, and Easy Digital Download sites.
To optimize the speed and performance of your online store, we offer automatic purging of cache and archive pages. We also:
- Exclude ‘My Account’, checkout, cart, and other pages that shouldn’t be cached
- Ensure a smooth checkout process by automatically bypassing the cache for users when “woocommerce_items_in_cart” or “edit_items_in_cart” are detected
- Put specific rules in place to allow EDD and WooCommerce functionality during server-level page caching
With WordPress VIP, you also get access to enterprise ecommerce solutions through its WooCommerce Paid Services add-on.
Web Performance at Kinsta
Each year, Review Signal conducts a performance test and review for the top hosting companies in the industry. For the past five years, Kinsta has scored top-tier status.
WordPress VIP also participates in these tests, but only at the enterprise level, which is for plans starting at $500 and above. WordPress VIP plans actually start in the thousands. At that price point, you have many other options for top-level managed WordPress hosts that don’t place restrictions on what you can and can’t do with your website.
With Kinsta, performance and scalability are never issues. We use the Google Cloud Platform and optimize it for WordPress. Our scalable infrastructure makes it so that server resources can be easily scaled up or down as needed.
If you apply for WordPress VIP, what you end up paying will depend on how much traffic you expect to get per month, how many websites you want to host, and Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Plus, prices can vary depending on what type of project you want to launch.
Safe and Secure
At Kinsta, we take both active and passive measures to safeguard your site, including:
- Monitoring your sites every three minutes for uptime, equaling 480 times a day
- Implementing strict software-based restrictions
- Free Cloudflare integration with a secure firewall and DDoS protection.
- Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) support
- Automated backups for all plans
- Isolated LXC containers
- Self-healing PHP
- Only support for encrypted SFTP and SSH connections (no FTP)
Kinsta provides premium uptime monitoring for all of your WordPress sites via our in-house developed monitoring system. The status of the sites hosted on our platform are checked every three minutes, meaning up to 480 times a day.
All sites on Kinsta are automatically protected by Cloudflare’s firewall, which includes free DDoS protection. With our Cloudflare integration, you’ll get the benefits of enhanced security and performance without having to configure your own Cloudflare account.
On the off-chance that something were to happen to your site, we offer a free 100% hack-fix guarantee. We’ll also get in touch with you immediately to discuss next steps.
With WordPress VIP, security is largely out of your hands, as its team reviews all of your site’s code as well as the plugins and themes that you use. However, the service does include basic security features, primarily through Jetpack.
Feature Comparison Overview
Now that we’ve made it this far, let’s take a look at some of the biggest differences between Kinsta vs WordPress VIP:
| Kinsta | WordPress VIP | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Plans start at $35/month | Plans start at $2,000/month |
| Money-Back Guarantee | 30 days on all plans | X |
| Premium 24×7 Support | All plans | Tiered support/SLAs |
| Core Infrastructure | Same across all plans (GCP) | Cloud and dedicated servers |
| Free Cloudflare Integration | ✓ | X |
| Built-in Edge Caching | 260+ data centers | Not specified |
| SSH Access | All plans | No |
| Global Data Centers | 37 locations | ~20 |
| Continent Locations | 5 | 5 |
| Bandwidth Limits | No limits (within AUP) | No limit |
| Container Technology | 100% resource isolation on all plans | 100% resource isolation on all plans |
| Free Migrations | All plans | Yes, but it requires preparations on your end |
| Free DDoS Protection | ✓ | X |
| Staging Environment | All plans | X |
| One-Click Backup and Restore | ✓ | X |
| PHP Versions | PHP 8.1, 8.2, 8.3 | Not specified |
| Switch PHP Engine | One-click change in dashboard | X |
| Free CDN | 200+ PoPs (All regions) | Yes |
| Free Premium DNS | Amazon R53 | X |
| Free SSL Certificates | All plans | All plans |
| Uptime Monitoring | All plans | All plans |
| Multisite Support | Pro plans and higher | ✓ |
| Free APM Tool | Kinsta APM | X |
| IP Geolocation | ✓ | ✓ |
| Reverse Proxy Support | ✓ | ✓ |
| Redis Add-on | ✓ | ✓ |
| New Relic (license required) | ✓ | ✓ |
| DevKinsta Support | ✓ | X |
| Multilingual Dashboard | English, Spanish, German, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, French, Swedish, Danish, Japan | Not specified |
Expert Support for WordPress
Kinsta gives you full access to your website’s backend using the MyKinsta dashboard. However, if you need help troubleshooting any issue, we offer 24/7 premium support for each of our plans. Our WordPress experts are always ready to provide quick, concise answers to your questions and concerns.
In addition to multilingual support and resources that are available in over 10 languages, we also have an initial ticket response time of under two minutes. If you don’t believe us, just ask some of our clients!
For the past two years, more than 97 percent of our customers closed a chat support session happy or satisfied with the support they received:
Kinsta is the best WordPress host I’ve had so far. They are quick to help, easy to deal with, and really know their stuff. Plus their servers are super fast!
We use the Intercom customer messaging platform to ensure that our support is quick and convenient. All communications are logged, so you won’t ever need to repeat yourself to multiple support agents.
WordPress VIP offers 24/7 support as well through the Zendesk platform. However, you have to pay for each account that you want to be able to submit support requests. Also, if you run into errors with your website, you have to wait for support to address them, rather than having the option to troubleshoot them yourself.
Kinsta Has a Global Presence
Kinsta has a global presence, with 37 data centers (and counting) spanning five continents. Our massive footprint enables you to pick a different data center for each of your websites, with no extra fees or hidden charges!
Our locations include:
- Test, PH
- Johannesburg, Africa
- Changhua County, Taiwan
- Hong Kong
- Tokyo, Japan
- Osaka, Japan
- Seoul, South Korea
- Mumbai, India
- Delhi, India
- Jurong West, Singapore
- Jakarta, Indonesia
- Sydney, Australia
- Melbourne, Australia
- Warsaw, Poland
- Hamina, Finland
- Madrid, Spain
- St. Ghislain, Belgium
- London, United Kingdom
- Frankfurt, Germany
- Eemshaven, Netherlands
- Zurich, Switzerland
- Milan, Italy
- Paris, France
- Dammam, Saudi Arabia
- Tel Aviv, Israel
- Montréal, Canada
- Toronto, Canada
- São Paulo, Brazil
- Santiago, Chile
- Council Bluffs, Iowa, USA
- Moncks Corner, South Carolina, USA
- Ashburn, Virginia, USA
- Columbus, Ohio, USA
- Dallas, Texas, USA
- The Dalles, Oregon, USA
- Los Angeles, California, USA
- Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
- Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
Static Sites for Free
Are you an agency creating static WordPress sites for your clients? Or do you create landing pages for high-traffic campaigns? We got you covered!
Static site hosting is 100% free at Kinsta. You can create a static or Jamstack site or use a static site generator. We can run the build process for you and deploy your site directly to the edge.
Benefits of hosting Static sites with Kinsta include:
- Your site is directly pushed to our edge network with 260+ locations globally, powered by the security and speed of Cloudflare
- Use a static site generator, and we handle the build process, which is also included free of charge
- Add custom domains, and we deliver the security (SSL certificates automatically issued and updated)
Sign up, connect your git account, and start deploying your static site from your repo.
Free WordPress Migrations
Whether you want to move one site or 100, our hassle-free migrations make doing so quick and easy. Our experts handle the entire process for you, so you won’t have to deal with complex technology or risk losing critical data.
To get started, all you need to do is fill out our site migration request form, and a member from our team will contact you to schedule the best time for the migration. You’ll also be able to track the migration status directly from your MyKinsta dashboard.
I am pleasantly surprised at the ease and speed of setting up WordPress with Kinsta. I love the staging environment and the deployment to production!
WordPress VIP can also take care of migrations for you. However, the process is much more involved. If you want its migration team to help you move your website, you need to provide them with database and media files separately. Moreover, it requires you to upload the code of all the plugins and themes that you use to a GitHub repository for review by that team.
Turbocharging Your Content Delivery with Kinsta CDN
All Kinsta plans include a free Content Delivery Network (CDN) via our Cloudflare integration. This is a premium HTTP/3-enabled CDN, to deliver your content lightning-fast across the globe.
As part of our Cloudflare integration, our built-in Edge Caching saves your Kinsta site/page cache to any of Cloudflare’s global network of 260+ data centers.
When site visitors load your website in their browser, cached responses will be delivered from the location closest to them. Edge Caching is included free with all Kinsta plans and doesn’t require a separate plugin.
Our content delivery architecture was tailor-made for high throughput and low latency. You can enable Kinsta CDN directly from your MyKinsta dashboard.
WordPress VIP offers a custom CDN solution on all plans, but the website offers limited information beyond that.
Best Affiliate Program in the Industry
Kinsta always goes above and beyond to exceed our clients’ expectations, which is one of the reasons many of our happy customers are often eager to help spread the word about our WordPress hosting solutions. This has helped us become one of the fastest-growing hosts out there.
We’re proud to offer an affiliate program, one of the highest paying in the industry, to provide the opportunity for true profit-sharing and to earn a passive income!
As a Kinsta affiliate partner, you can earn as much as $500 (depending on the plan) for every signup referred to us. In addition, for the lifetime of the customers referred, you’ll receive a 10% monthly recurring commission.
Another advantage of our affiliate program is that we use a custom-built dashboard. This means you won’t ever have to deal with confusing third-party platforms. Everything is accessible and straightforward.
WordPress VIP doesn’t offer an affiliate program, since the service isn’t open to the public. To launch a project on WordPress VIP, you need to receive an invitation or apply.
Join Others Making the Switch to Kinsta
At Kinsta, our mission is to offer the fastest, latest technology possible. We’re always evolving and adapting to utilize the most innovative solutions available. When you check out our many Changelog entries, you can see that no other hosting provider releases the amount of new features, tools, and integrations at the same rate and frequency that we do.
We are proud of our solutions, and we want you to be completely satisfied with your hosting. This is why, unlike WordPress VIP, we offer a 30-day money-back guarantee. If you’re ready to make the move to Kinsta, you can try our plans risk-free for 30 days!
Contact us!
Talk to Sales to discuss your hosting needs and find the Kinsta plan that’s right for you.
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