VETTED SAAS
Head to head · Web Hosting

Kinsta vs Cloudways

Kinsta and Cloudways both run on cloud infrastructure, but aim at different buyers. Kinsta is premium managed WordPress on Google Cloud built for speed and polish; Cloudways hands you managed cloud servers with more control and flexible pricing. We score both and explain which earns its price.

Reviewed by M. HALLORAN·Updated JANUARY 2026·How we vet
★ Our pick
Cloudways
87 /100
vs
Challenger
Kinsta
85 /100
◂ Cloudways Advantage Kinsta ▸
Cloudways wins on value, scale and control · Kinsta wins on raw speed, support and managed WordPress polish.

These are affiliate links marked rel=“sponsored”. We may earn a commission if you buy · it never affects our scores or who wins. Disclosure.

How they score

Criteria Cloudways Kinsta Winner
Ease of use
82
85
Kinsta
Performance and speed
90
92
Kinsta
Support
85
89
Kinsta
Value for money
88
70
Cloudways
Scalability and control
90
82
Cloudways
Uptime and reliability
91
90
Cloudways

Scores are our editorial assessment against the VettedSaaS rubric · not vendor supplied.

Choose Cloudways if…
+You want cloud performance you can scale on demand
+You want flexible billing with no renewal jump
+You run growing sites or stores beyond plain WordPress
+You are comfortable picking a server and provider
Choose Kinsta if…
+You want premium managed WordPress on Google Cloud
+You value Cloudflare Enterprise and a polished dashboard
+You want fully hands off updates, staging and support
+You can budget $35 a month or more per site

Feature by feature

✓ full  ·  ∼ partial  ·  — none
Capability Cloudways Kinsta
Free SSL ✓Let's Encrypt ✓
Free CDN ∼Cloudflare add on ✓Cloudflare Enterprise
Daily backups ∼paid, on demand ✓14 to 30 day
Staging environment ✓ ✓
Fully managed WordPress ∼stack level ✓platform wide
Choice of cloud provider ✓ —
Money back guarantee ∼3 day trial ✓30 days

Feature support verified as of June 2026 · check the vendor for current details.

Pricing, side by side

Intro rate per month · renewals differ
Cloudways Our pick
DO 1GB $11
DO 2GB $22
DO 4GB $50
Kinsta Challenger
Starter $35
Pro $70
Business 1 $115

Pricing as of June 2026 · Cloudways charges per server with no renewal jump (about $8.25/mo on annual for DO 1GB); Kinsta on monthly billing, about two months free on annual. Check the vendor for current pricing.

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