Kinsta vs SiteGround
Both are WordPress hosts aimed at agencies, freelancers and growing sites. They differ most on staging environments, value for money and support.
At a glance
| Kinsta | SiteGround | |
|---|---|---|
| Overall score | 88/100 Higher | 75/100 |
| Free plan | No | No |
| Paid from | $35/mo (about £26.15) monthly; $30/mo billed annually | £1.99/mo (about $2.66) first-year rate, prepaid for 12 months; renews at £13.99/mo |
| Positioning | premium managed | managed shared |
| Launched | 2013 | — |
| Best for | Sites where an hour of downtime costs more than a year of the price difference. | Small sites and freelancers who want managed WordPress hosting at a low first-year price, and will budget for renewal. |
Where each one leads
| Dimension | Kinsta | SiteGround | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Staging environments | 5/5 | 3/5 | Kinsta |
| Multi-site management | 4/5 | 4/5 | Tie |
| Support | 5/5 | 4/5 | Kinsta |
| Performance | 5/5 | 4/5 | Kinsta |
| Value for money | 2/5 | 4/5 | SiteGround |
| Ease of use | 4/5 | 4/5 | Tie |
| Scalability | 5/5 | 3/5 | Kinsta |
Scores are 1–5 per dimension. Kinsta leads on 4 dimensions, SiteGround on 1. The overall figure weights these for WordPress hosting generally — see methodology.
Pricing
Plans are listed per tool rather than paired row by row — tiers rarely line up, and putting one vendor's second plan beside another's implies an equivalence that is not there.
| Tool | Plan | Per month | Terms |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kinsta | Launch | $35 | monthly; $30/mo billed annually |
| Launch Plus | $59 | monthly; $50/mo billed annually | |
| Build | $69 | monthly; $58/mo billed annually | |
| Expand | $99 | monthly; $83/mo billed annually | |
| Scale | $169 | monthly; $141/mo billed annually | |
| SiteGround | StartUp | £1.99 | first-year rate, prepaid for 12 months; renews at £13.99/mo |
| GrowBig | £3.99 | first-year rate, prepaid for 12 months; renews at £23.99/mo | |
| GoGeek | £5.99 | first-year rate, prepaid for 12 months; renews at £34.99/mo |
Pricing checked 23 September 2026 and 24 September 2026 against each vendor's own pricing page. Kinsta: Billed in USD, excluding tax. Annual billing gives two months free; business plans include the first month free. SiteGround: Shown to UK visitors in GBP, excluding VAT. Headline prices are first-year rates prepaid for 12 months; renewal prices are shown with each plan. Where the two bill in different currencies, conversions use the European Central Bank reference rate.
Verdict
Kinsta
- +Unlimited free migrations, daily automatic backups and free malware removal on every plan.
- +Runs on Google Cloud's premium tier, with a built-in application performance monitoring tool.
- +Round-the-clock human support in eight languages.
- −Expensive at the entry level — $35 a month for a single WordPress site.
- −Plans are capped on server bandwidth, so traffic spikes — including bot traffic — can push a site into a higher tier.
SiteGround
- +Introductory prices from £1.99 a month on StartUp, prepaid for 12 months (ex VAT).
- +Free SSL, a free CDN and free daily backups kept for 30 days on every plan.
- +GrowBig adds unlimited websites, 50 GB of storage, staging and on-demand backups.
- −Renewal prices are much higher: StartUp renews at £13.99 a month, GrowBig at £23.99 and GoGeek at £34.99 (ex VAT).
- −StartUp hosts one website with 10 GB of storage and no staging.
Common questions
Is Kinsta cheaper than SiteGround?
Kinsta starts at $35/mo (about £26.15; monthly; $30/mo billed annually), and SiteGround starts at £1.99/mo (about $2.66; first-year rate, prepaid for 12 months; renews at £13.99/mo) — so SiteGround is the cheaper entry point. Converted at the European Central Bank reference rate. Compare what each includes at that tier, and what it renews at, rather than the headline figure alone.
Which is better, Kinsta or SiteGround?
On our weighted scoring across the use cases in this category, Kinsta comes out ahead overall. The honest answer is that it depends on the use case — the tables above break the score down by dimension so you can weight it to your own priorities.
Other comparisons
Sources & verification
- api.frankfurter.app — checked 6 November 2026European Central Bank reference rate, published via Frankfurter.
- kinsta.com — checked 23 September 2026No free plan, but the first month of business plans is free and migrations are unlimited and free.
- siteground.co.uk — checked 24 September 2026No free plan.