Amazon AWS and Kinsta are both great choices for hosting your WordPress website, but they offer very different service models. AWS requires significant technical knowledge to set up and maintain use while Kinsta makes it extremely hands-off for website managers, but it comes at a much higher price in most situations.
There’s a lot of debate in the WordPress community over which hosting provider is best – AWS or Kinsta? Both providers have their pros and cons, but which one is right for you?
In this article, we’ll compare AWS and Kinsta and help you decide which is the best option for your website.
For some other detailed comparisons of hosting companies, check out our articles on Kinsta vs Siteground, and Kinsta vs Rocket.net.
Contents
AWS vs Kinsta Hosting: What are the Main Differences?
When deciding which provider is best for you, there are several key factors to consider, including price, performance, features, and support. Let’s take a closer look at each of these factors to see how AWS and Kinsta compare.
Performance
Performance is one of the most important factors to consider when choosing a WordPress host. After all, you want your website to be fast and reliable.
Both AWS and Kinsta offer high-performance hosting, but Kinsta is the winner in this category simply due to its out-of-the-box performance without having to configure settings. Kinsta’s WordPress-specific architecture is optimized for speed, and its servers are some of the fastest in the industry.
Kinsta plans are actually based on the Google Cloud Platform, which is a main competitor to AWS in terms of cloud services.
Kinsta also offers a free CDN with all plans based on Cloudflare, which can further improve website performance. In contrast, AWS is more of a generic architecture optimized for various workloads, not just WordPress. So, of course you can set up a CDN on AWS, but it will take a bit more effort to get online.
Additionally, Kinsta’s caching and database management features are top-notch, and they can further improve website performance. So overall, Kinsta is the better choice for performance.
Ease of Use
Another essential factor to consider is the ease of use. If you’re not familiar with AWS, you might find it difficult to use. While AWS offers many features and flexibility, it can be complex and overwhelming for beginners.
Kinsta, on the other hand, is much easier to use. Kinsta’s platform is designed specifically for WordPress, so it’s easy to use and navigate. Additionally, Kinsta offers 24/7 live chat support to help you with any issues.
Scalability
Both AWS and Kinsta offer scalable hosting solutions, so you can easily upgrade your plan as your website grows. However, AWS is more scalable than Kinsta since it provides a broader range of services that can be scaled up or down as needed.
For example, with AWS, you can add more EC2 instances or S3 storage as your website grows. Kinsta, on the other hand, is limited to WordPress hosting. However, you can still scale your Kinsta plan up or down as needed, as their infrastructure is set to automatically scale as needed.
However, this is going to cost you more in the long run as your website traffic increases. But, if you’re looking for a scalable WordPress host, then Kinsta is still a good choice.
Price
AWS is far cheaper than Kinsta for most use cases. For example, the Amazon Lightstail VM costs $3.5 per month, while the most affordable Kinsta plan costs $30 per month.
Check out the latest Kinsta pricing plans and AWS pricing plans.
However, it’s important to note that AWS charges for additional services, such as storage and bandwidth, while Kinsta includes these features in all plans. So, while AWS may be cheaper upfront, you’ll end up paying more in the long run.
Additionally, Kinsta offers a free CDN with all plans, while AWS charges for CloudFront. Overall, Kinsta is more expensive than AWS, but it’s still a competitively priced WordPress host.
Features
Both AWS and Kinsta offer a wide range of features, but Kinsta is the better choice for WordPress-specific features. For example, Kinsta offers automatic backups, free SSL certificates, 24/7 live chat support, etc.
AWS also offers a wide range of features, and the features vary depending on the service you choose. However, AWS is more of a general-purpose cloud platform, while Kinsta is focused on WordPress hosting.
So, if you’re looking for a WordPress host with all the bells and whistles, then Kinsta is the better choice.
Support
Kinsta offers significantly better customer service than AWS when it comes to WordPress website management. Kinsta will be able offer advice on a wide variety of issues, whereas AWS only provides technical platform support that would be outside the scope of most basic WordPress support queries.
Therefore, with AWS you would be expected to set up and troubleshoot the majority of functional and technical issues, whereas Kinsta would hold your hand through the process a lot more.
You can connect a Kinsta support agent directly to your WordPress site, so they can help you debug any issues you’re having.
Overall, Kinsta is the better choice for support, especially if you need WordPress-specific help.
Dashboard
AWS offers you access to their AWS console, a web-based dashboard where you can manage all your AWS services. You can check billing details and metrics, create instances, and much more from the dashboard.
While the AWS dashboard is comprehensive, it can be overwhelming for beginners. Kinsta’s dashboard is much simpler and easier to use.
From the MyKinsta dashboard, you can easily view your website’s performance, manage backups and redirect, set up CDN, purge cache, toggle between PHP versions, and do a lot more.
Performance Monitoring
Both AWS and Kinsta offer comprehensive performance monitoring tools.
AWS’s CloudWatch is a good tool for monitoring your AWS resources and applications. It gives you visibility into resource utilization, performance metrics, and log files.
Kinsta’s MyKinsta dashboard also offers comprehensive performance monitoring tools. You can easily view your website’s uptime, page speed, and bandwidth usage. Additionally, you can see detailed insights into your website’s traffic and performance.
They also have the APM tool that provides you with even more detailed performance insights.
Server Locations
AWS has available cloud spans across 26 geographic regions and 85 zones around the globe. However, their low-cost plans offer access to a very limited number of data centers. If you want more server locations, you’ll need to upgrade to a more expensive plan.
Kinsta, on the other hand, has 29 data centers throughout the world. Moreover, the data centers are powered by the Google Cloud Platform, so you can be sure that your website will have excellent uptime and performance.
Amazon AWS
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a comprehensive, evolving cloud computing platform provided by Amazon.com. Amazon launched AWS in 2006, offering online cloud computing services to businesses and individuals.
Over time, AWS has added a wide variety of new services and features, making it an increasingly powerful and comprehensive platform. Today, AWS is one of the most popular cloud platforms in use, with customers ranging from small businesses to large enterprises.
While AWS offers a wide range of services, some of the most popular include EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud), S3 (Simple Storage Service), and RDS (Relational Database Service). These services provide businesses with scalable, reliable, and high-performance computing and storage resources at a low cost.
AWS offers many features and flexibility, but it can also be complex and overwhelming for beginners. If you’re not familiar with AWS, you might find it challenging to use.
Amazon AWS Pros:
- Offers a wide range of services
- Scalable and reliable
- High performance
- Large arrays of tools
- Highly flexible and cost-effective
Amazon AWS Cons:
- Complex and overwhelming for beginners
- Security issues if you don’t manage it properly
- Limited backup protection
- Paid dedicated support
Kinsta
Kinsta is a managed WordPress hosting provider that offers high-performance hosting for WordPress websites. Kinsta was founded in 2013, and it’s now one of the fastest-growing WordPress hosting companies in the world.
Kinsta provides all of the features you need to run a high-performance WordPress website, including massive traffic support, free CDN, and automatic backups. Kinsta is also one of the few WordPress hosts to offer 24/7 live chat support.
While Kinsta is more expensive than some other hosting providers, it’s worth the price for its speed, reliability, and features. If you’re looking for a managed WordPress host that can help you take your website to the next level, then Kinsta is a great choice.
Kinsta Pros:
- Excel in speed and performance
- State of the art technologies
- Automatic backup and database optimization
- Free CDN and SSL included
- Automatic backups and 24/7 live chat support
- User friendly managed hosting
Kinsta Cons:
- More expensive than many other hosts
- No phone support
- Limited to WordPress
- Don’t support unlimited traffic
Which One Should You Choose?
Both AWS and Kinsta are excellent choices for web hosting. However, Kinsta is the better choice if you’re looking for an easy to use host with WordPress-specific features, support, and performance monitoring tools.
Additionally, Kinsta is the first web host to be powered by the Google Cloud Platform, the premium tier of the network. This assures that your website will have maximum performance, speed, and security.
That said, you get far better value for money when going with AWS, but that might be canceled out by potential downtime if you don’t keep an eye on things, and dealing with technical issues by yourself might not make this worth it.
Moreover, Kinsta is easier to use than AWS, thanks to its simplified dashboard. These characteristics make Kinsta the better choice for most users compared to AWS.
Conclusion
In our opinion, Kinsta is the clear winner for most people. They have made specific optimizations to ensure top-notch performance for WordPress websites and provide features like automatic backups and advanced security features, which are crucial for keeping your website safe. If you are looking for a reliable, high-performing WordPress host, Kinsta should be at the top of your list.
AWS is also a great platform with a lot to offer. However, we feel that Kinsta is the better choice for WordPress users looking for specific features and optimizations for their WordPress websites.
We hope this article helped you learn the difference between AWS and Kinsta so you can make an informed decision about which platform is right for you.