--- title: "Kinsta vs Cloudways: which is better in 2026?" url: "https://hostidea.com/compare/cloudways-vs-kinsta" canonical: "https://hostidea.com/compare/cloudways-vs-kinsta" author: "Jennifer T." generated: "2026-10-15" note: "Markdown twin generated at build time from the same content as the HTML page. The HTML page is canonical." --- # Kinsta vs Cloudways Kinsta and Cloudways compared on measured uptime, response time, pricing and features from our own tests. Kinsta scores higher overall. By [Jennifer T.](https://hostidea.com/authors/jennifer-t) ยท Updated Oct 14, 2026 We may earn a commission when you buy through our links. Rankings come from the published methodology and sourced data, not from commissions. [Disclosure](https://hostidea.com/disclosure). ## Verdict [7.9 out of 10](https://hostidea.com/methodology#scoring) [Kinsta](https://hostidea.com/reviews/kinsta)Wins overall Managed WordPress hosting from $30 a month with flat renewals, 30 data centers, edge caching and 14-day backups [7.8 out of 10](https://hostidea.com/methodology#scoring) [Cloudways](https://hostidea.com/reviews/cloudways) DigitalOcean's managed cloud layer: servers from $11 a month on five clouds, billed hourly, staging and caching included Kinsta wins 3 of the six sub-scores and comes out ahead overall (7.9 vs 7.8). ## How do the scores compare? Kinsta leads on 3 sub-scores, Cloudways on 1. Higher is better. | | [Kinsta](https://hostidea.com/reviews/kinsta) | [Cloudways](https://hostidea.com/reviews/cloudways) | | --- | --- | --- | | Performance | 8.0 | 8.0 | | Uptime | 8.5 | 8.5 | | Support | 8.0 | 7.5 | | Features | 8.5 | 8.0 | | Value | 6.0 | 7.0 | | Ease of use | 8.5 | 7.0 | ## Which one is faster and more reliable? | | [Kinsta](https://hostidea.com/reviews/kinsta) | [Cloudways](https://hostidea.com/reviews/cloudways) | | --- | --- | --- | | Overall score | 7.9 | 7.8 | | Uptime (published)HostingStep 366 d vs Kripesh Adwani 365 d; methods differ | 100.00% | 99.99% | | Response time (published)HostingStep vs HostingStep; methods differ | 525 ms | 442 ms | ## Which one costs less? On renewal, Cloudways is cheaper ($14.00/mo vs $30.00/mo). Intro prices need the listed term. Prices verified Oct 14, 2026 (Kinsta) and Oct 14, 2026 (Cloudways). USD. | | [Kinsta](https://hostidea.com/reviews/kinsta) | [Cloudways](https://hostidea.com/reviews/cloudways) | | --- | --- | --- | | Cheapest plan | Single 20GB | DigitalOcean Premium Micro | | Intro price | $30.00/mo | $14.00/mo | | Renewal price | $30.00/mo | $14.00/mo | | Required term | 12 months | 1 months | | Websites | 1 | unlimited | | Storage | 10 GB | 25 GB | | Money back | 30 days | 0 days | ## What does each include? | | [Kinsta](https://hostidea.com/reviews/kinsta) | [Cloudways](https://hostidea.com/reviews/cloudways) | | --- | --- | --- | | Free domain | No | No | | Free SSL | Wildcard certificates through Cloudflare on every plan | Let's Encrypt certificates on every application | | Backups | Daily automatic backups kept 14 days on the entry plans (20 or 30 days higher up), plus manual, downloadable and hourly add-on backups | On-demand and scheduled server backups with one-click restore; offsite storage billed at $0.033 per GB per server | | Free migration | Unlimited migrations by Kinsta's team | Free migration of existing sites | | Free CDN | Cloudflare CDN with edge caching, 260+ points of presence per the pricing page; 125 GB of CDN bandwidth a month on the entry plans | No | | Caching | Server-level caching and edge caching through Cloudflare | Lightning Stack (NGINX), Object Cache Pro and Redis included on every plan | | Staging | Free one-click staging environments on every plan | Advanced staging and cloning on every plan | | Email | No | No | | Resource limits | Each site runs in its own container; plans are sized by server bandwidth or visits, storage and CDN bandwidth, with PHP worker counts in the compare table | A whole server per customer: 1 to 8 GB RAM and 1 to 4 vCPU on the listed sizes, larger sizes and other providers available | | Data center choice | 30 locations chosen per site at creation | The provider's regions, chosen per server: DigitalOcean 9, Vultr 30, Linode 25, AWS 28, Google Cloud 28 | | Uptime guarantee | 99.9% per month in the SLA updated 25 September 2025, with credits as a percentage of the monthly value once downtime passes 43 minutes; up to 99.99% on custom plans | No | | Security | Fully managed WAF with DDoS protection, bot protection, free malware removal, SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 | Built-in firewall with IP blocking, WordPress vulnerability scanner, bot protection and dedicated firewalls per the pricing page | | Developer tools | SSH, WP-CLI, Git, DevKinsta local environment, Kinsta API, built-in APM | Not stated | | Phone support | No | No | | Windows hosting | No | No | | Free trial | Not stated | 3 days without a credit card | ## Company facts | | [Kinsta](https://hostidea.com/reviews/kinsta) | [Cloudways](https://hostidea.com/reviews/cloudways) | | --- | --- | --- | | Control panel | MyKinsta (Kinsta's own dashboard); no cPanel | Cloudways platform (its own console); no cPanel | | Data centers | 1 | 1 | | Support channels | chat, ticket, knowledge-base | chat, ticket, knowledge-base | | Founded | 2013 | 2011 | Visit Kinsta (affiliate link: /go/kinsta)Visit Cloudways (affiliate link: /go/cloudways)