Cloudways vs Kinsta: What’s the Better Hosting Choice in 2025?

Let me guess. You’re on the hunt for a good hosting provider, and you’ve narrowed it down to two names everyone seems to throw around, Cloudways and Kinsta. Maybe you’ve seen Reddit threads, watched a few YouTube reviews, or even tried the free trial of one. But you’re still unsure which one really fits you or your business.

So let’s cut through the noise and talk about both the way a friend would.

I’ve used both. I’ve built sites for myself, for clients, for side hustles. What I care about is speed, support, pricing, and how easy it is to get stuff done without wanting to pull my hair out. This post isn’t about checking boxes. It’s about how they feel to use in real life.

First, a Quick Intro to Both

• Kinsta is known for being premium. It’s powered by Google Cloud Platform, and it’s got a managed WordPress setup with lots of baked-in features. You don’t get to tweak much, but it works well out of the box.
• Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting platform. It lets you choose from multiple cloud providers like DigitalOcean, AWS, and Google Cloud. It’s built more for control, customization, and flexibility. You still don’t need to manage servers, but you can fine-tune things when you want to.

Let’s break it down.

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1. Pricing — The Elephant in the Room

Okay, let’s talk numbers. This is often the dealbreaker, especially if you’re bootstrapping a business or running multiple sites.

Kinsta Pricing (as of July 2025):

• Starter: $35/month for 1 WordPress site
• Pro: $70/month for 2 sites
• Business 1: $115/month for 5 sites
• All plans come with limits on monthly visits (e.g., 25K visits on Starter)

Cloudways Pricing (DigitalOcean option):

• Starts at $11/month for 1GB RAM, 25GB storage
• The popular 2GB plan is $28/month
• No hard cap on visits
• You can host multiple sites on the same server

Here’s the thing. With Kinsta, you’re paying for simplicity and white-glove service. But the moment your site grows a little or you add more than one project, the bill goes up fast. On Cloudways, you’re charged based on server specs, not the number of visits or installs. That’s a big win for developers, agencies, or even bloggers with growing traffic.

💡 Real-life example: A friend of mine was paying $70/month on Kinsta for two small WordPress sites. Moved to Cloudways, picked a 2GB DigitalOcean server for $24/month, and hosts five sites now without issues.

Winner: Cloudways

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2. Ease of Use

Kinsta is super polished. Their dashboard is beautiful and idiot-proof. You can do basic things like backups, staging, SSL setup, and analytics with just a few clicks.

Cloudways isn’t ugly, but it’s more functional than pretty. You get a custom panel that lets you manage servers, apps, and team permissions. There’s a tiny learning curve, especially if you’re coming from cPanel or a more locked-down host.

But here’s the catch: once you understand how Cloudways works, you’ll realize how much more you can do. You can clone apps, change PHP versions, tweak performance settings, even scale vertically. Stuff Kinsta doesn’t really let you touch.

So, if you want something simple and hands-off, Kinsta has that Apple-like feel. But if you enjoy flexibility and want more control over performance, Cloudways gives you more freedom.

Winner: Tie (depends on your style)

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3. Speed and Performance

Both are fast. Let’s get that out of the way.

Kinsta uses Google Cloud’s premium tier, has server-level caching, and ships with their own CDN (Kinsta CDN). They optimize everything for WordPress, and that works well for most people.

Cloudways, on the other hand, gives you access to the same cloud providers (Google, AWS, DO, etc.), but lets you configure things your way. You can choose between Apache and NGINX, use Redis or Varnish, and integrate Cloudflare Enterprise if needed.

With the right setup, Cloudways outperforms Kinsta. I’ve personally tested the same site on both, Cloudways gave me a 100ms faster TTFB after enabling Redis and switching to the NGINX stack.

💡 Real-life example: A WooCommerce site I manage went from 3.1s load time on Kinsta to 1.8s on Cloudways after tuning a few settings.

Winner: Cloudways

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4. Support and Help When You Need It

Kinsta’s support is excellent. Their chat agents are fast, polite, and usually solve issues in minutes. But they don’t give you root-level access or help with custom code, third-party plugins, or anything outside their managed scope.

Cloudways support is also 24/7 live chat. They help with server-level issues, migration, security patches, and performance tweaks. For deeper, more proactive help, you can pay extra for Premium Support.

In my experience, Cloudways support is good but not as instant as Kinsta. However, I’ve often found their solutions more flexible and hands-on, especially when dealing with staging, cron jobs, or database issues.

Winner: Kinsta for beginners, Cloudways for power users

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5. Features That Matter

Both platforms offer staging environments, daily backups, SSL, team collaboration, and firewalls.

But Cloudways gives you more:

• Choice of cloud provider
• Vertical scaling on the fly
• Server monitoring and alerts
• Free object cache plugin (Breeze or Redis)
• SSH and Git access
• Pay-as-you-go billing

Kinsta limits some of these. You don’t get SSH on the lower-tier plans, and you’re boxed into their setup. It works, but only if you don’t mind being told how to do things.

Winner: Cloudways

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6. Scalability and Growth

Kinsta is not made for people running 10–50 sites. You’ll either pay a lot or keep asking their team for upgrades.

Cloudways is different. Want to add a new site? Clone one. Want to spin up another server? Takes 2 minutes. You can run multiple clients or side projects from one panel and scale up resources as needed.

Agencies love this. Developers love this. Even creators with side hustles love this.

Winner: Cloudways

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So… Who’s It For?

Choose Kinsta if:

• You only run 1 or 2 WordPress sites
• You want something that just works
• You don’t like tweaking server settings
• You don’t mind paying more for convenience

Choose Cloudways if:

• You want more flexibility and control
• You run multiple sites or client projects
• You care about performance tuning
• You don’t want to pay per visit or per site
• You like getting more for less money

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Final Verdict

Kinsta is like buying a premium, fixed-gear bicycle. It looks great, rides smoothly, but you can’t shift gears or do tricks.

Cloudways is more like a high-performance mountain bike. It takes a minute to learn the gears, but once you do, you’re flying.

If you’re serious about speed, flexibility, and value, Cloudways comes out on top.

At $11 to start, with the ability to grow and shape your environment the way you want, Cloudways feels like it’s made for people who want more than just a pretty dashboard. It’s built for builders.