Kinsta vs WP Engine vs Pressable: Which Host Has it All?

Choosing a WordPress hosting provider may not be an easy and breezy task with the countless options and recommendations that will come at you left and right.

Even after spending many years building websites and trying out numerous hosts, I still get baffled when picking a new web host, especially if it’s for a serious/business website.

But if your quest came down to a choice between Kinsta, WP Engine and Pressable, I’d say well done! You’ve picked three of the finest providers of premium WordPress hosting.

While all three have great services, there are some significant differences between them that may make one more favorable to you than the others.

I’ll try to summarize the most important considerations that can help you settle on one of these companies.

Speed and Performance

All web hosting companies claim to offer a fast service, but in practice, loading speed can dramatically vary from one website to another depending primarily on its structure (theme and plugins) as well as its content.

The technical specifications of the hosting service also play a role, especially when you have a demanding website.

While all three providers we have in hand utilize a robust cloud infrastructure with redundant resources, a key limiting factor when it comes to loading speed and performance is the number of PHP workers allocated to your site.

The more PHP workers available, the more PHP scripts your site can run simultaneously without delay, the faster your site will load. This is particularly true for uncacheable dynamic pages as opposed to cacheable static pages.

Kinsta has a hard limit on the number of PHP workers available in each plan (starting from 2). This can become a performance bottleneck and cause slow loading for high-traffic dynamic sites, e-commerce sites, and sites that use heavy back-end plugins.

You can increase the number of PHP workers available to your site by upgrading your plan, but that will be quite costly, and more so as you may need to upgrade again and again to meet the growing demands of your site.

WP Engine also limits the number of PHP workers, but they don’t disclose the exact number. This may cause occasional slowness for dynamic sites during traffic spikes, although it is mitigated by their traffic queueing system that prioritizes requests from real users over non-critical requests from bots and crawlers.

Pressable is the least restrictive in terms of PHP workers and they allow your site to utilize as many as 110 of them. Most WordPress sites would rarely need this many PHP workers, but they can come in handy during traffic spikes.

Monthly Traffic and Overage Charge

Each plan offered by each of the three providers we’re discussing is limited by the total number of monthly visitors to your website. Once that limit is reached, you will be charged an overage fee for additional traffic/visits your website receives.

Kinsta has an overage fee of $1 for each additional 1,000 visits.

WP Engine charges an extra $1 or $2 (depending on your plan) per 1,000 extra monthly visits.

Pressable’s overage fee is $1.2 per 1,000 additional visits, with an optional discounted price of $8 per 10,000 extra monthly visits.

In addition to the cap on monthly visits, WP Engine also has a limit on the monthly bandwidth your site can use, while both Kinsta and Pressable allow unlimited traffic.

Backups

Kinsta offers automatic daily backups for the last 14 to 30 days (depending on the selected plan). Additionally, you can create up to 5 manual backups. Both automatic and manual backups can be used as restore points for your site. You can create a downloadable backup only once every week.

WP Engine stores automatically generated daily backups for the last 40 days. You also have the option to create a manual backup when needed. A downloadable ZIP archive containing a full or a partial backup of your site can be created at any time.

Pressable automatically generates daily backups of your site’s files and hourly backups of the database, which are kept for up to 30 days. You can download and restore backup copies of your site’s files and database separately from the control panel.

Support

All three companies have 24/7 technical support with knowledgeable agents who know their stuff and respond promptly.

I would like to give a special shout-out to Pressable here because of the outstanding helpfulness and friendliness of their support team. They don’t disappoint when you need urgent help with your website and they are very skilled at troubleshooting WordPress issues (Pressable is run by Automattic; which also owns WordPress.com and WooCommerce).

Pricing

These are premium WordPress hosting services, so pricing is on the higher end of the scale. They’re not super expensive though and each has affordable entry-level plans.

Kinsta’s Starter plan costs $35 per month and allows you to host 1 website with up to 25K monthly visits.

WP Engine’s Startup plan costs $30 per month and it’s good for 1 WordPress website with a monthly visits cap of 25K and a bandwidth cap of 50 GB.

Pressable’s Personal plan will run you $25 per month and allows 1 WordPress website with up to 30K monthly visits.

Both Kinsta and WPEngine offer optional add-ons and premium upgrades that can drive up your bill. This makes it harder to estimate your hosting costs upfront, and more so with Kinsta.

On the other hand, Pressable has a straightforward, all-inclusive pricing model that is more predictable.

Conclusion: Which is The Best WordPress Host of The Three?

Kinsta, WP Engine and Pressable all have solid WordPress hosting services you can depend on. While features and pricing do vary, all of these three providers have the potential to deliver excellent performance and support for serious WordPress sites.

That said, I personally lean more towards Pressable because it’s an Automattic company with very skilled support agents, and because they have the most transparent pricing model with minimal upselling and no surprise overcharges.