WP Engine vs Kinsta: which managed WordPress host costs less?

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The quick verdict

For one business site, the two cost almost the same: $1,308.24 at WP Engine and $1,350.24 at Kinsta over three years, billed yearly, with a domain and one email inbox. Kinsta gives you more in writing: a fixed site count, free migrations, published overage rates and a 30-day money-back guarantee for first-time customers. Pick Kinsta if you like knowing exactly what you are buying.

Pick WP Engine if you want 30 days of daily backups instead of Kinsta’s 14, a development copy as well as staging, and the slightly lower yearly price, and you are fine with no refund window. For five sites, Kinsta is the one you can price today: WP Engine does not publish how many sites a plan holds.

Both are managed WordPress hosting, so the host runs the server, caching and backups for your WordPress site. We build on WordPress every week, but we have not hosted on either company. Everything below comes from their pricing pages, help docs and legal terms.

Side by side

Kinsta lists two plans at the same $350 a year for one site. Launch gives more on paper (75,000 visits and 15 GB against 35,000 visits and 10 GB), so we use Launch in the Kinsta numbers where the limits matter.

Cost over 3 years: one site

Neither host sells email or a domain, so the same two lines go on both bills: a .com at Namecheap ($11.28 + $18.48 + $18.48 = $48.24) and one Google Workspace Business Starter inbox ($7 × 36 = $252).

WP Engine comes out $42 cheaper billed yearly ($1,050 – $1,008). Billed monthly they tie, unless you take Kinsta’s free first month: $35 × 35 = $1,225, or $1,525.24 in all. Kinsta’s Launch card says “Pay $0 today, $350 after the first month” for the yearly plan, so we left the free month out of its yearly total.

Both totals assume you renew at today’s price. WP Engine says “Product renewal pricing subject to change,” and a footnote ties its “first year pricing” to new Essential customers without saying whether $28 is a first-year price. Kinsta shows no intro discount, but its terms let it raise fees “upon reasonable prior notice.”

Cost over 3 years: five sites

Here the two split. Kinsta prices five sites in public. WP Engine does not say how many sites Essential holds, and its paid “Additional Sites” extension has no published price.

The domain line is $48.24 × 5 = $241.20, plus one $252 inbox, for $493.20. Billed monthly, Kinsta Expand is $99 × 36 = $3,564 for hosting, or $4,057.20 in all.

The WP Engine row is a ceiling, not a quote: it assumes each site needs its own Essential plan. If one Essential plan holds all five, WP Engine costs far less. Ask sales for the site count in writing before you compare. Kinsta Expand also beats buying five Single plans ($350 × 3 × 5 = $5,250).

Limits and overages

Both price on traffic, and both charge if you go over.

• Kinsta: its overage page lists “$0.50/1,000 visits,” $0.50 per GB of server bandwidth, $2 per GB a month for extra disk space and $0.05 per GB of CDN bandwidth. If you go over “month after month,” Kinsta says it will “ask you to upgrade your plan.” Overages are not refunded under the money-back guarantee.
• WP Engine: its terms say you pay “the applicable overages.” Its overage page lists “$2 per 1,000 extra monthly visitors,” charged monthly even on yearly plans, but it names older plans, not Essential. No bandwidth or storage overage rates are published.

On published visit rates, and if the older-plan rate applies to Essential, $2 per 1,000 is four times Kinsta’s $0.50. WP Engine’s entry range is wider, though, so check which end of it your price buys.

Features: backups, staging, speed and plugins

• Backups: both run daily automatic backups plus manual ones. WP Engine keeps 30 days. Kinsta keeps 14 days on these plans and sells backups every 6 hours for $20 per site a month.
• Staging: both include one-click staging. WP Engine adds a development copy (three environments per site). Kinsta sells premium staging for $20 per site a month.
• Speed: both include a CDN and server caching. Kinsta lists 125 GB of CDN bandwidth on its entry plans.
• Security: WP Engine lists DDoS protection and plugin risk scans, with an advanced firewall as an add-on. Kinsta lists a managed firewall with DDoS protection and free malware removal.
• Updates: WP Engine automates WordPress and PHP updates; plugin and theme updates are an add-on on Essential. Kinsta sells Automatic Updates from $3 per site a month.
• Plugins: WP Engine bans some, including W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, BackWPup and Duplicator, and removes them over time. We did not check whether Kinsta keeps a similar list.
• Multisite: Kinsta does not allow it on Single 35k or Launch.

Support and uptime

WP Engine gives Essential 24/7 chat; phone and priority support start on Business. Kinsta lists “24/7 human support in 8 languages” on its business plans.

On uptime, neither entry plan gets the top promise in writing. WP Engine lists its 99.99% SLA as “Not included” on Essential, and its general 99.95% SLA does not name plans. Kinsta’s pricing page says “Up to 99.99% uptime SLA,” but its SLA sets 99.9% “unless a higher percentage is set forth in the Customer’s Order Form.” Credits are small at both and never cash: WP Engine starts at 5% of the month’s fee per hour of downtime, Kinsta at 5% for 43 to 59 minutes.

The WordPress.org case

WP Engine is in a lawsuit with Automattic over its access to WordPress.org. A December 10, 2024 court injunction ordered that access restored until the case is decided, and a joint court filing says “the trial is October 19, 2027.” Kinsta is not a party. We cover the dated facts on our WP Engine page.

Leaving later

• Money back: Kinsta refunds you if you cancel within 30 days as a first-time customer (the clock starts after a free month). WP Engine’s terms say fees “are not refundable except as expressly stated herein,” and we found no guarantee for Essential.
• Cancelling: WP Engine needs 30 days’ notice, and ending a yearly term early makes “all remaining fees” due. Kinsta, after the first 30 days, lets the plan run to the end of the billing period.
• Your files: WP Engine lets you download a full ZIP of files and database, kept for 7 days. Kinsta lets you make a downloadable ZIP once a week, with a link that lasts 48 hours.
• After you go: both delete your data. Kinsta says it is “permanently deleted and cannot be recovered.”

Moving in is easier at Kinsta, with “Unlimited free migrations.” Moving out is the same at both: a standard WordPress site that any host can run. See website migration and moving your website.

Pick WP Engine if… Pick Kinsta if…

Pick WP Engine if:

• You want 30 days of backups and a development copy as well as staging.
• You want the lower yearly price for one site ($1,008 against $1,050 in hosting).
• Your plugins are not on its banned list, and you do not need a refund window.

Pick Kinsta if:

• You want a money-back guarantee and free migrations.
• You run several sites and want a published price for each count.
• You want overage rates in writing before the first bill.

Neither? Look at…

If $1,300 over three years is more than your site needs, shared hosting costs a fraction: SiteGround includes daily backups and email, and our web hosting comparison ranks hosts by 3-year cost. For the full picture of what managed hosting buys, read our managed WordPress hosting guide, or see the single-host pages for WP Engine and Kinsta.

Sources

WP Engine: plans and pricing, overage pricing, disallowed plugins, backups, sites and environments, SLA, Terms of Service, cancellation. Kinsta: pricing, overages, backups, SLA, Terms of Service, money-back guarantee, cancel a plan. Court record: the September 24, 2026 joint stipulation in WPEngine, Inc. v. Automattic Inc. (N.D. Cal.).