After doing research, I tried Kinsta for some client sites a month or so ago. Now have 22 sites on them, but it's become clear with the last site migration that the support they offer is mediocre at best.
At the core of the issue is that their platform is not stock standard. We knew that going in, but the surprise has turned out to be that their support team has almost no expertise in actual WordPress. That's essentially their policy. In practice, this means that you can transfer a site from one host to another, and it will work; transfer it to Kinsta, and it won't work, and Kinsta will tell you it's not their problem. Their support only exists to assist with the hosting panel itself, which you will do often. As the hosting panel will just bug out 1 out of 6 actions that you make, particularly around the initial setup of a hosting instance.
The exotic issues that their platform causes are the worst I've encountered in 15 years of hosting sites. Some sites will just not work and they won't provide any assistance at all.
This has happened 3 notable times so far, the 1st turned out to be a conflict with NGINX-related stuff from the old hosting, which support couldn't help with.
The 2nd problem site appeared to transfer over fine. A couple of days later, the client pointed out that the stock levels were not displaying correctly. This was not an issue present on the old hosting (or future the replacement hosting). The stock levels said one thing on the backend and then another on the front end. After several hours of troubleshooting, I opened a ticket with one of the Woo extensions that I assumed must have been the root cause. To my shock, they replied with a screenshot showing the front end and the backend with different variables than what I was seeing. At this point, I knew it had to be some kind of caching etc. So I disabled all caching, and any performance features etc, but the problem was still present, I then had the idea to VPN into the site from the same location as the plugin support team was based, and on the first page load it displayed as their team had screenshoted, only to then switch back on another load the odd state. Long story short, I opened a ticket with support, and they said, they couldn't help with the issue. Again, I thought, its a bit stranger this time since its clearly some type of caching or server conflict at play, but went with it. We moved the site elsewhere, and it works fine.
For the 3rd site, I transferred it over, and it displayed 95% the same, but some of the styling was different, the theme seemed to have switched to some default settings. I assumed that I must have migrated the site over with caching still switched on, or the PHP version, WordPress version, etc., being wrong. So a couple of days later, I deleted the Kinsta instance, triple checked the settings with the old host, and migrated the site again. This time, I checked with the temp domain to make sure the problem areas were resolved, and they were. I then switched over to the actual domain. Checked everything again, etc., and was happy with it, switching off the old hosting instance to make sure it wasn't propagation etc. A couple of hours later, I checked again, and it was now displaying with the same oddities as before. I opened a ticket asking for support since it was clearly caching at play, they again said, they don't know, "they're not a developer" etc. I asked for an actual ticket and for the problem to be escalated, and they said, there wasn't any point, the answer would be the same.
So long story short, it's painfully clear that their platform has some seriously weird things going on with their caching/setup, and their support people will outright refuse to help resolve them. I host well over 150+ WordPress sites and have done for 15 years, and their support is probably the worst I've encountered in terms of hosting support. GoDaddy would probably be worse for level 1 support, but I suspect if you escalated a ticket enough times with them, you would, in fact, get a better result.
When they refused to escalate the issue, I said that it's going to make us stop moving over to the platform, already spending $450 a month with them, they just said, " They're sorry, I feel that way"
Part of their pitch is expert WordPress support, and an account manager, but in the end its a horrific service with overseas support, no phone number and a total disdain for customers. While the platform works as a black box, with locked down PHP settings, plugin ban lists etc, while at the same time having a policy of refusing to troubleshooting conflict issues. Their customer service reps don't even know how to open a debug console in Chrome to view errors.
It blows my mind the positive reviews this company receives. The only postive is that we didn't pay for 12 months in advance or migrate any more sites over.
Reactie van het bedrijf op TrustpilotHi Callum,
We're really sorry we weren't able to give you the experience you expected from Kinsta.
You should not have had to push for your concerns to be taken seriously, and we should have been clearer about what our team checked, what we ruled out, and why. Even when an issue turns out to be outside what our support team can fully fix, we still owe you a clear explanation and a helpful next step.
Our Support leadership team has reviewed the recent conversations and reached out to you directly to take another look. We can’t undo the time and frustration this has caused, but we do want to make sure nothing was missed and that you get a clearer answer than the one you were left with.
Kinsta hosts WordPress sites for agencies, developers, and businesses every day, and we know migrations can get complicated fast. That’s exactly why support needs to feel thorough, practical, and easy to escalate when something does not look right.
We’re sorry that wasn’t your experience here. We’re looking closely at what happened so we can make these situations easier for customers to navigate, especially when an issue isn’t as straightforward. That means clearer explanations, better handoffs when a second look is needed, and more useful guidance on what to try next.
- The Kinsta Team