Kinsta Banned Plugins (2021): Disallowed & Incompatible Plugins

To optimize their platform for speed, security and stability, Kinsta takes steps to protect its server environment from software that can have a negative impact. As such, Kinsta disallows some plugins from being installed in hosted websites. We list these plugins below depending on their categories, and provide Kinsta’s reasoning for banning them.

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Banned Plugins

Backup Plugins

Kinsta already performs automatic daily backups for all websites hosted, so third party backup plugins are mostly redundant and unnecessary. You’ll also be able to download these backups if you wish. Most backup plugins can then cause performance issues on Kinsta or otherwise impact your bandwidth consumption.

• BackupBuddy
• BackWPup
• Updraftplus
• WP DB Backup
• All-in-One WP Migration
• Snapshot

Note that this is not an exhaustive list, as Kinsta disallows all plugins that create non-incremental backups. If you want to save backups of your website files and databases offsite, Kinsta recommends these four plugins:

• BlogVault
• VaultPress
• ManageWP
• WP Time Capsule

Caching Plugins

Like backups, Kinsta also performs server-level caching already so additional caching functionalities will only interfere. Moreover, both page and object caching are implemented on Kinsta’s servers, which is a step up over PHP-level caching.

• Cache Enabler
• LiteSpeed Cache
• WP Fastest Cache

Previously, WP Rocket was included in this list but they have since worked together to make the plugin compatible on Kinsta. WP Rocket v 3.0 or higher automatically disables caching when on Kinsta so that the plugin’s other optimization functionalities remain available.

Performance Plugins

Certain performance-oriented plugins are disabled at Kinsta due to many reasons, such as high bandwidth consumption, redundant functionality, PHP strain, non-optimizable scripts, etc.

• Better WordPress Minify
• P3 Profiler
• WordPress GZIP Compression
• JCH Optimize
• Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions
• WP-Optimize

Security Plugins

Kinsta only bans one security plugin outright, Login Wall, but numerous security plugins can affect performance due to how Kinsta’s infrastructure is set up and the always-on nature of these plugins. Other features such as GeoIP Blocking will also not work since Kinsta utilizes Google Cloud Load Balancers.

You can configure certain security measures such as IP blocking directly on the MyKinsta dashboard or use other solutions like Sucuri or Cloudflare for an extra layer of defense against malicious traffic.

Image Optimization and Video Conversion Plugins

Server-based image optimization and video conversion or compression is not allowed on Kinsta due to their impact on performance. Packages and other software that implement image optimization or video compression scripts also can’t be installed.

• EWWW Image Optimizer
• FFmpeg packages

Social Media Plugins

Likewise, some social media plugins do not have positive effects on Kinsta’s set up.

• Facebook Instant Articles
• Facebook Open Graph, Google+ and Twitter Card Tags
• Google AMP Pages

Miscellaneous Plugins

Other plugins that Kinsta doesn’t allow include:

• Allow PHP Execute
• Dynamic Widgets
• Exec-PHP
• Inactive User Deleter
• Pipdig Power Pack
• WordPress Popular Posts
• WP RSS Multi-Importer

Nulled and Incompatible Plugins

Nulled plugins are premium WordPress themes and plugins that have been modified maliciously to either cause damage or collect personal information. They are typically found only from third party sites and not the original plugin’s author. While Kinsta provides a free hack fix, sites that use nulled plugins are not covered.

Other plugins are simply incompatible with Kinsta’s server environment. The WooCommerce Amazon and eBay Integration plugin requires a PHP function that’s disabled at Kinsta for security reasons.

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