Please note, if you click and buy through links on our site, we may earn a small affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. Learn More
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).
Let's get started!
Kinsta vs Pantheon WordPress Hosting Compared (2024)
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.
($35 + 75 visitors at $1 per 1k visitors)
($35 + 175 visitors at $1 per 1k visitors)
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.
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
($35 + 10GBs at $2/GB)
($35 + 30GBs at $2/GB)
($35 + 90GBs at $2/GB)
($35 + 190GBs at $2/GB)
Comparison Between Main Features
Other Features Compared
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.
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.
Conclusion
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!