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Kinsta offers extremely fast and reliable wordpress hosting, exceptional support, and a very user-friendly dashboard with easy staging. Pantheon offers fast hosting, and a great staging workflow for complex websites, but it is often more expensive than most competitors.

When choosing between Kinsta and Pantheon, I recommend Kinsta as they are generally cheaper, their dashboard is sleek and easy to use, and their support is fantastic. That said, if you have a more code-intensive workflow then Pantheon's staging process (Dev, Testing, and Live environments) might be for you, though they are not cheap, particularly as you reach higher traffic numbers (see pricing comparison below based on number of visits per month).

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Kinsta vs Pantheon WordPress Hosting Compared (2024)

vs
Pantheon

Verdict - At a Glance

Kinsta is clearly not the most affordable host out there but their pricing scales pretty well based on your website growth. Kinsta uses Cloudflare Enterprise as their CDN. Kinsta supports multisite very well. They are also one of the only Wordpress hosts that will configure GEO-IP rules and caching for your site, which can be great when you need to create complex and localized websites using server-side geo-location.

I found Pantheon to be quite a fast host, however, their basic plan is pretty limited based on how much traffic it can handle and their performance plans get quite expensive . I found their staging workflow to be a bit overly complex for content websites that do not require many code updates.

Monthly Pricing Based on Number of Visitors

We always try to quote the monthly fee for each host not including discounts that might apply if you pay yearly. Kinsta plan pricing is easy to follow and renews at the same rate. Pantheon plan pricing renews at the same rate.

Prices listed below is the price of our recommended PLAN based on number of visitors for Kinsta and Pantheon. Sometimes, we include figures in brackets accounts for overages. Sometimes it's cheaper to use a lower plan with overage fees if your host includes this in their pricing structure, but the performance of the lower plan might not be as strong.

Cost for 1,000 visits per month
$35
$50
Cost for 10,000 visits per month
$35
$50
Cost for 100,000 visits per month
$110
($35 + 75 visitors at $1 per 1k visitors)
$600
Cost for 200,000 visits per month
$210
($35 + 175 visitors at $1 per 1k visitors)
$1000
Cost for 400,000 visits per month
$340
See Website
Cost for 1,000,000 visits per month
$675
See Website
Overage Fees PER 1000 visitors (extra fees beyond your current plan)
$ 1
N/A
Overage fees explained
Set fee per 1000 visitors
If your traffic is continually over your plan limit, they may automatically adjust you to a pricing plan that better aligns with your traffic growth. Basic Site plans don't have overage protection (If traffic goes up by 25,000 over the monthly allowed visitors, your plan will automatically be moved to a more expensive Performance plan). Performance plans have overage protection to allow for limited spikes in traffic, but if the increase in traffic persists for 2 months then you're automatically moved to a more expensive plan.

Monthly Pricing Based on Number of Websites

The pricing below shows the closest PLAN based on the amount of websites at both Kinsta and Pantheon. These plans will also include an allowance of disk space and visitors. Some hosting companies allow additional wordpress installs for an overage fee. This can sometimes work out as more affordable than using a higher plan, if it works out as more affordable then we will list these in brackets below

Remember, hosts often include discounts when you pay on a longer basis such as yearly or over multiple years, so make sure to check these offers out if applicable.

Cost for 1 website
$35
$50
Cost for 2 websites
$70
$50
Cost for 5 websites
$115
$50
Cost for 10 websites
$225
$175
Cost for 20 websites
$340
$600
Cost for 100 websites
$1300
See Website
Cost for extra wordpress installs (if allowed)
Not Available Outside of Plan Allowances
Not Available Outside of Plan Allowances
Note on extra wordpress installs
extra installs not available outside plan allowances
extra installs not available outside plan allowances

Monthly Pricing Based on Disk Space

This is pricing per gigabyte of disk space for both Kinsta and Pantheon. As previously mentioned, if it works out as more affordable to use a cheaper plan and pay overages then we'll list that below in brackets.

Keep in mind that if you have a large amount of disk space usage for your site then you could alternatively host these externally using another service

Cost for 10GB Disk Space
$35
$50
Cost for 20GB Disk Space
$55
($35 + 10GBs at $2/GB)
$50
Cost for 40GB Disk Space
$95
($35 + 30GBs at $2/GB)
$300
Cost for 100GB Disk Space
$215
($35 + 90GBs at $2/GB)
$600
Cost for 200GB Disk Space
$415
($35 + 190GBs at $2/GB)
$1000
Overage Fees for extra disk space PER GB (extra fees beyond your current plan)
$ 2
See Website
Overages explained (for disk space)
or $20 per month for an extra 20GBs per month when purchased as an add-on
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Comparison Between Main Features

Hosting Type
Managed Wordpress Hosting
Managed Wordpress Hosting
Host Image
Price starting from ($)
$ 35
$ 50
Moneyback Guarantee (Days)
30Days
N/A
Free SSL Certificate
Yes
Yes
Website Migration Available
Yes
Yes
Support Via
Live ChatEmail/Support Ticketing
PhoneLive ChatEmail/Support Ticketing
Support hours
24/7
24/7
Free Domain Registration Included
No
No
Note on pricing
Kinsta plan pricing is easy to follow and renews at the same rate.
Pantheon plan pricing renews at the same rate.

Other Features Compared

Wordpress Multisite Supported
Yes
Yes
Minimum Price Plan for Multisite (If Supported)
$ 70
See Website
Hosted On
Google Cloud Platform
Google Cloud Platform
Wordpress One-Click Install
Yes
Yes
Wordpress Staging Available
Yes
Yes
E-Mail Hosting Available
No
No

Hosting Speed

Some managed wordpress hosting companies have an SLA (service level agreement) where they commit to a certain percentage of uptime on a monthly basis. The uptime listed below is a general figure for Kinsta and Pantheon. but it's not necessarily an SLA, see the host's T&Cs for more info. SLAs often include conditions where you get a refund of a portion of monthly fees if the service drops below a certain amount of uptime for that month

Content Delivery Networks are widely distributed networks of servers that can serve your visitors important files such as images and CSS files from a server near to their location, which can significantly increase your site speed.

Uptime
99.90%
99.99%
CDN (Content Delivery Network)
Yes
Yes

Security

Website security is extremely important and all websites should be considered to be at risk. It's important to pick a host that takes security seriously. Below are some of the key security features that are offered by Kinsta and Pantheon.

Backups (on host servers)
Yes
Yes
Anti-malware Features
Yes
Yes
DDOS Protection
Yes
Yes

Conclusion

vs
Pantheon

To find out more about the plans from each of these hosts, then you can use the following links to check out Kinsta and Pantheon.

That's our comprehensive comparison between Kinsta and Pantheon Thank you for reading, we hope this will help you to choose between them!