Kinsta vs GreenGeeks – Hard to Choose, but I Did 2023

Putting two powerful hosts against each other is tough as old boots, but not impossible. Both Kinsta and GreenGeeks are among the most recommended web hosting services. GreenGeeks offers an array of affordable hosting options for small to medium-sized websites. Kinsta provides a truckload of WordPress hosting packages.

To make a proper comparison between these two hosting services, I thoroughly tested them in five categories; pricing, features, performance, security, and support. GreenGeeks put up a great fight but lost in three out of five rounds.

Click here to see Kinsta’s latest plans or keep reading to find out what makes Kinsta the winner of this comparison.

1. Plans and Pricing

You Get Cheaper Prices with GreenGeeks Even Without Discounts

Unlike Kinsta (which specializes in managed WordPress hosting and WooCommerce), GreenGeeks covers more hosting services, including; shared, reseller, VPS, WordPress hosting, dedicated servers, and application (CMS) hosting.

I’ll compare Kinsta and GreenGeeks’ WordPress hosting packages.

Kinsta offers ten managed WordPress hosting plans from simple to enterprise-level WordPress hosting. GreenGeeks only has three WordPress hosting packages.

With GreenGeeks, you can choose to subscribe monthly, annually, biennially, or triennially. Kinsta allows you to sign up on a monthly or annual basis. You get two months for free when you choose the annual subscription.

GreenGeeks offers much cheaper rates for WordPress hosting than Kinsta. For example, the most expensive GreenGeeks package costs less than Kinsta’s Starter plan. In saying that, Kinsta provides more WordPress-optimized services (details in the Features section).

Both hosts provide free website migration and a 30-day money-back guarantee. GreenGeeks also gives you a free domain name, but Kinsta doesn’t.

The winner? GreenGeeks wins the pricing round by offering discounted rates and cheaper package renewal costs than Kinsta.

2. Features

Kinsta Is Designed for WordPress Hosting – GreenGeeks Sticks to the Basics

A couple of common features come as standard with Kinsta and GreenGeeks’ WordPress hosting plans. These include a free SSL certificate, free CDN, SSD-based storage, daily backups (nightly backups with GreenGeeks), and a staging environment.

Now, for the differences. With Kinsta, you get from 1 to 150 hosted websites, 10 GB to 250 GB disk space, and 20,000 to 3 million monthly visits. GreenGeeks gives you from 1 to unlimited hosted websites, unlimited webspace, and unlimited email accounts.

Kinsta has the edge over GreenGeeks by hosting its WordPress packages on the Google Cloud Platform. It also offers a multi-user environment that lets you assign and manage users by giving them access to your websites and billing.

Using Kinsta’s 1-click site cloning feature, you can clone any of your live websites or staging environments to build a template for a client.

Use the detailed table below to compare Kinsta and GreenGeeks further:

The winner? Kinsta. While GreenGeeks has all the essentials for a functioning WordPress site, Kinsta provides more high-end features and tools for serious WordPress users and demanding businesses.

3. Performance

GreenGeeks Can’t Catch Up with Kinsta’s Impressively Fast Speeds

Kinsta has a global network of servers spanning more than 20 locations. These include the U.S.A., Canada, Brazil, the U.K., Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Finland, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, Taiwan, and Switzerland. GreenGeeks, on the other hand, only has servers in the U.S.A, Canada, and the Netherlands.

Both Kinsta and GreenGeeks use SSD storage with all plans. SSD storage performs much faster than regular HDD storage. In return, this reflects directly on your website’s stability, loading speeds, and overall performance.

You’ll get free CDN with all plans from both hosts. However, Kinsta uses KeyCDN and GreenGeeks uses Cloudflare. A CDN, or Content Delivery Network, places your website on a global network of cloud servers. Among other benefits, this boosts the loading speeds of your website from anywhere in the world.

Both hosts have an uptime guarantee of 99.9%. Neither host reported downtimes, and both exceeded the uptime promise.

In Kinsta’s full review, the loading speed tests showed no slow locations at all, resulting in a perfect global score.

When testing GreenGeeks, like Kinsta, the global score was perfect, but it had one slow location, the New York server. GreenGeeks’ review shows the detailed results.

Both hosts have a wide range of performance-boosting features, perfect uptimes, and great loading speeds. However, Kinsta wins this one by a small margin.

4. Security

You Get More Security Features with Kinsta

Both Kinsta and GreenGeeks implement 24/7 server monitoring, DDoS/Brute-Force protection, spam protection, antivirus, antimalware, strong firewalls, and hack protection.

Kinsta also has a two-factor authentication, GeoIP blocking, and automatically bans IPs with more than six failed login attempts in a minute (IPs with suspicious behavior).

Both hosts use container technology on all plans. Kinsta uses LXC containers, while GreenGeeks uses Hosting Account Isolation. These systems securely isolate your account from others on the same server to protect it against threats targeting those accounts.

Another benefit of the free CDN is its DDoS/Brute-Force protection to protect the entire network, including your website, against such attacks.

Free SSL certificates come as standard with both hosts, in addition to free automatic daily backups.

Both hosts take security seriously, but Kinsta offers more features to secure your website, making it the winner.

5. Support

It’s Easier to Get Help from GreenGeeks

Both hosts have comprehensive and well-organized knowledgebases that are easy to navigate.

Kinsta has 24/7 customer support via live chat, email, and an integrated ticketing system. However, the live chat is only available from the dashboard to subscribed customers.

The live chat agents are well-trained and helpful. They were able to answer all my questions promptly and professionally.

The GreenGeeks support is also available 24/7, but through more channels than Kinsta. You can contact them via live chat, phone, email, and support ticket. However, the phone channel is only available during working hours (Mon-Sun: 9 AM – 12 AM EST.).

Unlike Kinsta, the live chat is available from anywhere on the website, even if you’re not a customer (pre-sales chat). I was instantly connected, and the agent was quite helpful in answering all my questions.

Both hosts have highly responsive customer support. However, GreenGeeks offer more communication channels, and all are available pre-sale, making it slightly more reliable than Kinsta.

Kinsta Outperforms GreenGeeks

Kinsta and GreenGeeks are both listed among the best web hosting services and for all the good reasons. GreenGeeks is great for shared hosting, but when it comes to WordPress hosting, GreenGeeks falls behind Kinsta’s robust managed WordPress hosting packages. As you can see, Kinsta won the features, performance, and security challenges.

On the other hand, GreenGeeks remains a more budget-friendly option for small website owners or less demanding businesses.

FAQ

Is Kinsta better than GreenGeeks?

Kinsta is definitely a better option for WordPress hosting than GreenGeeks if you’re a developer or own a heavily trafficked website. However, I’d recommend GreenGeeks for casual WordPress users or SMBs that get light to moderate traffic. Both Kinsta and GreenGeeks are featured in our expert list of the top 10 web hosting services.

Does Kinsta offer VPS hosting?

No. Kinsta specializes in managed WordPress hosting. It also sells WooCommerce hosting solutions. If you need VPS, take a look at my top recommended VPS services.

Does GreenGeeks offer a free domain?

Yes. GreenGeeks offers a free domain name with its shared and application hosting packages, but only for the first year and with annual subscription terms. If you need help choosing a domain name, don’t miss this ultimate guide to choosing and buying a domain name.