Kinsta vs GoDaddy
Kinsta and GoDaddy compared on measured uptime, response time, pricing and features from our own tests. Kinsta scores higher overall.
By Jennifer T. · Updated
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Verdict
KinstaWins overall
Managed WordPress hosting from $30 a month with flat renewals, 30 data centers, edge caching and 14-day backups
The largest registrar's cPanel hosting: three plans on a three-year term with a free domain and daily backups
Kinsta wins 5 of the six sub-scores and comes out ahead overall (7.9 vs 7.2).
How do the scores compare?
Kinsta leads on 5 sub-scores, GoDaddy on 0. Higher is better.
Which one is faster and more reliable?
Which one costs less?
On renewal, GoDaddy is cheaper ($11.99/mo vs $30.00/mo). Intro prices need the listed term.
What does each include?
| Kinsta | GoDaddy | |
|---|---|---|
| Free domain | No | First year on every plan, marked with an asterisk whose disclaimer the page keeps collapsed |
| Free SSL | Wildcard certificates through Cloudflare on every plan | One year on Economy; unlimited certificates for all sites on Deluxe and Ultimate, auto-renewed through AutoSSL |
| 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 | Automatic daily backups, with recovery of the whole account from the previous day |
| Free migration | Unlimited migrations by Kinsta's team | No |
| 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 | The page lists CDN and firewall among the included essentials without naming the provider |
| Caching | Server-level caching and edge caching through Cloudflare | No |
| Staging | Free one-click staging environments on every plan | No |
| No | Free email is listed on every plan without a mailbox count | |
| 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 | 250,000 inodes and 100 GB per account in the hosting agreement; no CPU or RAM figures on the plan page |
| Data center choice | 30 locations chosen per site at creation | No |
| 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 | 99.9% per month in the hosting agreement, with a credit of 5% of the monthly fee on request, usable for future purchases |
| Security | Fully managed WAF with DDoS protection, bot protection, free malware removal, SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 | DDoS protection and network monitoring on every plan; a site security suite is included on the cards |
| Developer tools | SSH, WP-CLI, Git, DevKinsta local environment, Kinsta API, built-in APM | Not stated |
| Phone support | No | 24/7 chat, phone and email through GoDaddy Guides |
| Windows hosting | No | No |
| Node.js and languages | Not stated | Node.js on every plan; the dashboard exposes CPU, memory, entry processes and I/O controls |