We are reader supported. When you buy through our links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Kinsta vs Pagely (2021): Managed WordPress Hosting Comparison

For a truly premium managed WordPress hosting, Pagely definitely takes the cake when it comes to price. Designed specially for big brands and large enterprises, Pagely doesn’t skimp on features or performance, making it a standard for WordPress hosting. However, how does its pricy services really compare to a more affordable solution, such as Kinsta? We take a look at each of their pros and cons below to determine the best recommendation for your managed WordPress hosting needs.

Kinsta vs Pagely Web Hosting Comparison Chart

NameKinstaPagely
 Pagely logo
PricingCheck Pricing at Kinsta.comCheck Pricing at Pagely.com
Traffic TiersStarter: 20,000/mo
Pro: 40,000/mo
Business: 100k to 600k/mo
Enterprise: 1m to 3m/mo
Developer: n/a
Performance: n/a
Performance+: n/a
Scale: n/a
Storage TiersStarter: 10 GB
Pro: 20 GB
Business: 30-60 GB
Enterprise: 100-250 GB
Developer: 30 GB
Performance: 50 GB
Performance+: 50 GB
Scale: Custom
Monthly BandwidthStarter: 50 GB
Pro: 100 GB
Business: 200-500 GB
Enterprise: 500-1000 GB
Developer: 20-50 GB
Performance: 200 GB
Performance+: 300 GB
Scale: Custom
WebsitesStarter: 1
Pro: 2
Business: 5-40
Enterprise: 60-150
Developer: 5-15
Performance: 35
Performance+: 60
Scale: Custom
Hosting InterfaceMyKinstaAtomic
Content Delivery NetworkKeyCDNPressCDN
Free SSL CertificatesYesYes
Staging AreaYesYes
Free Site BackupYesYes
Free Site RestoreYesYes
Backup Retention14-30 days14 days
Free Site MigrationYesLimited
Multisite SupportPro and upAll
Customer Support24/7 live chat and ticket24/7 live chat, ticket, phone
Money Back Guarantee30 days30 days

Features

Kinsta has more consumer-friendly offerings while Pagely only targets larger enterprises.

Pagely published this infographic illustrating who its services and Kinsta’s generally target.

While both brand themselves as managed WordPress hosting providers, Kinsta and Pagely have different targeting when it comes to their services. According to Pagely themselves, they’re not for everyone. Their hosting plans are focused for large enterprises who need complex scaling and tough security. Meanwhile, Kinsta has a broader range of solutions, catering to sites of all sizes. You’ll find their pricing schemes reflect this fairly clearly.

See also  Kinsta vs GoDaddy (2021): Which Web Hosting Is Better?

Kinsta has built their infrastructure solely on the Google Cloud Platform, while Pagely partnered with Amazon Web Services. You can choose which of Kinsta’s 24 data centers to host your site in, free of charge, while Pagely divides their 14 data centers into Tier 1 US locations and Tier 2 non-US locations, which require an extra fee. You get free website migrations from Kinsta’s expert team while Pagely only includes two free migrations, and it can also take up to 5 business days.

For developers, Kinsta’s plans include one-click staging environments as well as SSH access. On Pagely, partial SSH is only accessible in its higher tier plans. You’ll get access to a custom-built user portal on Kinsta, called MyKinsta, which includes nearly all of the basic and advanced features you can configure for each site. Pagely also has a custom dashboard called Atomic, though there are some site management tools not present in it.

Speed

Kinsta is slightly faster than Pagely.

Kinsta has a slightly wider global reach with its data centers and CDN PoPs.

As you can expect, Kinsta and Pagely offer topnotch site loading speeds due to their Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services infrastructures, respectively, as well as server optimizations and CDNs. Kinsta pulls a bit ahead with 24 data centers in 5 continents that you can choose from, letting you be closer to your site’s visitors, and their KeyCDN has 34 points of presence (PoP) around the world too.

However, Pagely’s PressCDN service uses AWS CloudFront to serve customer content, which further deepens Pagely’s partnership with Amazon. CloudFront has over 200 PoPs that can deliver site assets. CDN allotment per month is roughly half that of Kinsta’s KeyCDN’s monthly bandwidth allocation though, when comparing similar priced tiers.

See also  Bluehost vs Squarespace (2021): Comparing Popular Website Platforms

Loading times are a bit faster on Kinsta in general, as shown by tests conducted on WebPageTest.org and Pingdom. While Kinsta wasn’t faster in every geographical location tested, it outran Pagely in 7 out of 11 locations and with considerable margins in non-US and European cities.

Load storm testing, which simulates real time traffic by scaling concurrent visitors over 30 minutes, also confirm Kinsta’s advantage over Pagely. Kinsta received fewer errors, handled more requests per second, and had a higher average response time.

Reliability

Kinsta and Pagely guarantee impressive uptime and 24/7 customer support.

Site uptime on Kinsta is guaranteed at 99.9% on their SLA.

Downtime is an inescapable situation that can happen even to the best hosting providers with top-level servers and performance. However, it’s the mark of the truly excellent hosts that they can guarantee a 99.9% availability on their SLAs. Such is the case with Kinsta and Pagely, so you can pretty much expect your site to be up 24/7/365. Pagely takes it further though, with a 99.99% guarantee along with an Enhanced SLA that features 100% uptime and heightened support response times. Moreover, Pagely has a high availability configuration that can reinforce these, for an added cost.

Uptime testing conducted on Uptime Robot showed 100% availability on both hosts. Kinsta performs site monitoring every 2 minutes to stay on top of possible issues. This is part of every plan while it’s only available on higher tiers on Pagely. Backups are done automatically daily on both, though you need to manually download backup files on Pagely if you want to store them outside of Amazon S3. If you need dedicated IP addresses, Pagely includes them even on the lowest tier, while it’s a paid add-on for Kinsta.

See also  Kinsta Managed WordPress Hosting Review (2021): The Best WordPress Host?

Customer support is very important since issues will inevitably come up. In terms of response times, Kinsta is well ahead of Pagely. Kinsta’s average initial ticket response time is 2 minutes while Pagely’s median is under 12 minutes. Pagely primarily uses a ticket-based system to address customer concerns and its live-chat is only available during business hours and non-holidays. Meanwhile, Kinsta has 24/7 live chat all year. Customer satisfaction with support received is higher on Pagely though, at 99.3% compared to Kinsta’s 97%.

Plans and Pricing

Kinsta offers more affordable hosting than Pagely.

Pagely’s pricing is definitely not feasible for most small businesses and agencies.

As you can see, Pagely is easily one of the most expensive hosting services you can get. This reflects Pagely’s focus on only providing hosting for big enterprises, agency resellers and established developers. If you’re only just starting a new website or only have a small business site, Kinsta’s more affordable pricing should be more cost-effective for what you can get. Kinsta also scales up their plans to answer enterprise needs, up to a Custom tier where you can discuss what you need with their team and figure out a solution.

For many website owners, these pricing numbers should make it easy to choose between the Kinsta and Pagely. Kinsta has numerous optional add-ons that can further customize plans according to your needs. These add-ons include Elasticsearch, Redis, Nginx, and more. Note also that Kinsta charges overage if you go over monthly visit limits, CDN limits, and disk space. You’ll want to examine your site’s metrics to determine if Kinsta’s numbers will match your expected resource consumption.

Verdict

Kinsta is better for smaller websites while Pagely is only for bigger enterprises.

Kinsta

Better for small businesses

Kinsta logo

Pagely

Better for large enterprises

Pagely logo

Because of the different ranges of their pricing, deciding between Kinsta and Pagely is easy for the large majority of website owners looking for managed WordPress hosting. We recommend Kinsta for all but the largest enterprises who can take advantage of Pagely’s specialization in large scale hosting. Kinsta’s page loading speeds, site performance, and customer support are all slightly better than Pagely, especially considering the difference in monthly costs.

FAQs

📌 Is Kinsta better than Pagely for beginners?

Yes, Kinsta’s pricing and lower tier plans make it better suited for new sites and developers.

📌 What is the difference between Kinsta and Pagely?

The biggest difference between Kinsta and Pagely is their target customers. Kinsta offers managed WordPress hosting to a wider audience, from small businesses to large scale enterprises while Pagely only caters to the latter.

📌 Does Pagely provide 24/7 support?

Yes, Pagely provides 24/7 live chat and ticket based customer support. However, Pagely follows a holiday schedule.

📌 Does Kinsta and Pagely offer free migrations?

Yes, Kinsta and Pagely both provide site migrations performed by their teams, for free. However, Kinsta offers unlimited free migrations while Pagely only offers up to two.

Avatar photo
Derick Bondoc