Rocket.net vs. Kinsta Comparison: Which Is the Best Option For 2023?

Rocket.net and Kinsta are both premium WordPress hosting services that are fully managed. Managed WordPress hosting is too expensive. Kinsta is even worse because it limits monthly visits and PHP workers. Kinsta is like a deluxe brand. Think about this: you pay $500 for a product, but it is available for as little as $100 elsewhere.

Rocket.net has more features than Kinsta, including free Redis and Cloudflare Enterprise features that Kinsta does not include. Also, they offer enough monthly visitors and PHP workers, but their bandwidth needs more. Kinsta is good if you have a lot of money to pay for each visit and want to host on the Google Cloud Platform with decent bandwidth.

Kinsta paid add-ons are incredibly expensive (Redis for $100/mo, Boom!), reverse proxy for $50 per month, extra backups for $50 per month, and 20 GB of disk space for $20.

Never recommend Kinsta for beginners; they are too expensive, even for small websites. Rocket.net is also not a cheap option. It would help if you have a decent income, and they are unsuitable for novices or those requiring a large amount of bandwidth and storage.

Another plus of Rocket.net is that you can get started for as little as $1 for the first month. Yep, it is some kinda free trial. Rocket.net has smart features that are available for free, such as Redis, Enterprise CDN, Polish image optimization, tiered caching, Argo routing, malware scanning, bot protection, and a wide range of other cutting-edge facilities.

If you have a large site, multiple websites, handle clients, or require a lot of bandwidth and storage, you can use cloud hosting control panels like RunCloud, GridPane, etc.

Kinsta vs Rocket.net: Detailed Comparison

I thought comparing them using comparison tables would be more helpful because you can get an authentic look at what you need and the differences between them. So I created a few tables for features, pricing, parallels, and contrasts. Here they’re.

Kinsta vs. Rocket.net: Plans, Price, and Features

Both have the same pricing structure, but Rocket.net is slightly less expensive and has more functionality than Kinsta. Kinsta is only ahead in bandwidth, but all other metrics are below Rocket.net. Also, because of the PHP worker limitations, Kinsta isn’t recommended for e-commerce sites in their first two plans. So, if you want to host an e-commerce site with Kinsta, you must select at least Business 1, which starts at $115 per month.

Speed Test:

Website speed means a quick response time, also known as Time to First Byte (TTFB). It doesn’t matter how well-known or expensive your hosting is if your website has poor TTFB. For a quick Time to First Byte, your host needs to be clever with CDN.

So, here is the Rocket.net and Kinsta comparison for TTFB and the connect time speed test with the KeyCDN performance test.

As you can see in the images, there are significant differences between them. Rocket.net provides impressive TTFB and Connect Time results using Cloudflare Enterprise.

Note: Rocket.net allows you to use e-commerce with any package. However, if you have very dynamic websites, you should go for VPS, cloud, or dedicated servers because they provide adequate server resources, bandwidth, and storage. There is more uncacheable content on dynamic sites. You can also adjust your server resources as you scale up.

Rocket.net

Rocket.net is a superior-performance hosting provider that offers advanced edge-caching features. Of course, this is an expensive option unsuitable for beginners.

But it works effectively and is simple to get started with. It can be cost-effective if you only have a couple of sites, but they are expensive if you’ve got several, even if they are minor.

Rocket.net is well-known for offering full-featured Cloudflare Enterprise services at a reasonable cost. Because of their edge-caching, they also provide an appropriate number of monthly visitors and boundless PHP workers compared to other premium hosts.

Unlike Kinsta, Rocket.net doesn’t restrict the use of plugins. You can use cache plugins like FlyingPress, WP Rocket, etc. Most of the time, you won’t need security, cache, image compression, or others with them because they have the most features in the system.

They offer to host small- to large-scale sites. Read this Rocket.net review for more.

Rocket.net: Price & Plans

Rocket.net offers three types of hosting plans, such as:

• Manage Hostings
• Agency Hosting
• Enterprise Hosting

1. Manage Hostings

Rocket.net’s managed hosting is designed for bloggers and small-medium websites.

You have three options to select from:

1. Starter: It starts at $30, and you can get 250 000 visitors, 10 GB of storage, 50 GB of bandwidth, and all other managed hosting features for just one website.
2. Pro: You can host three websites and receive 20 GB of storage, 100 GB of bandwidth, and one million monthly visits. It is suitable for medium-sized blogs and other small to medium-sized sites. The pro plan starts at $60 per month.
3. Business: can host 10 sites with 40 GB storage, 300 GB bandwidth, and 2.5 million monthly visitors. It is suitable for medium-sized websites and costs $100 per month.

2. Agency Hosting

Agency Hosting is designed for those that want to host multiple sites in one package, and there are three options: Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3. 

• Tier 1: This plan starts at $100 monthly and includes 10 WordPress installs, unlimited monthly visitors, 50 GB of storage, and 300 GB of bandwidth.
• Tier 2: Available for $200 a month, it comes with 20 WordPress installations, limitless monthly visitors, 75 GB of storage, and 500 GB of bandwidth.
• Tier 3: It is priced at $300 per month and comes with 30 WordPress setups, 100 GB of storage, and 600 GB of bandwidth.

3. Enterprise Hosting

Enterprise hosting is built for large-scale websites like ad networks that require the highest level of performance and additional features such as separate CPU cores, RAM, NVMe storage, Object Cache Pro (Redis), relay, automatic daily backups, increased backup retention, private Slack channel, and enterprise phone support, among others.

• Enterprise 1: Appropriate for high-traffic websites, where you get 8 cores, 64 GB of RAM, 1 TB of NVMe, and unlimited requests. Prices start at $650 per month.
• Enterprise 2: suitable for serving millions of visitors’ websites or many websites, and you receive 32 cores, 128 GB of RAM, 1 TB of NVMe, and unlimited requests. And charges start at $1300 per month.
• Enterprise 3: 65 cores, 256 GB of RAM, and 2 TB of NVMe for $1950 monthly.

Rocket.net: Pros & Cons

Rocket.net: Cloudflare Enterprise Features

Rocket.net has become known for its edge caching with Cloudflare Enterprise, which is the main reason they are so fast. They also provide limitless PHP workers and monthly visits, as most of your traffic is handled by EDGE servers rather than origin servers.

Rocket.net provides all Cloudflare Enterprise powers and doesn’t need extra configuration because they are all built-in. So, let’s take a look at the key enterprise features.

1. Polish Image Optimization

Polish is an image optimization tool that enhances images instantly.

Polish removes attributes from images and minimizes with lossy—lossless to improve image performance. When an image is found from the source, Cloudflare machines compress it in the cache. That similar image will be reduced in size, width, height, etc.

You don’t want to use costly image optimization plugins. Polish does it at the edge. Still, using apps like Ezgif, CloudConvert, etc., is a good idea to upload optimized images.

2. Argo Smart Routing

Argo Smart Routing is a strategy to improve internet traffic performance and reliability by dynamically routing requests through Cloudflare’s network infrastructure. According to Cloudflare, Argo generally reduces Internet lag by 35%–50%.

Argo uses real-time data and leads to every bit of web traffic. Argo can safely guide traffic along the shortest routes to avoid latency caused by the connection. It is effective for global users who require high-performance and low-latency experiences.

Any Cloudflare customer can use the Argo smart route add-on. A typical website starts at roughly five dollars per month and grows as it goes. But it is free with Rocket.net.

3. Tiered Caching

Tiered Cache optimizes cache hit rates to decrease checks to origins. Cloudflare tiered caching can improve caching performance while reducing the origin server load. You can see the tiering cache in the free version, but it is much improved with enterprises.

Tiered caching is a strategy that involves using multiple cache layers or levels to enhance overall performance and efficiency. Each cache tier stores a copy of data or content, and requests are first directed to the top tier.

If the data is not found in the top tier, the request is then handed to the next lower tier, and so on, until the data is found or recovered from the origin server.

The idea behind tiered caching is to use the upper cache tiers’ speed and low latency to serve often used or catching on data, lowering the load on the lower tiers and the origin server. It reduces data recovery time, grows scaling, and improves resource utilization.

4. Load Balancing

Shifting traffic from weak servers to stable servers is the primary focus of load balancing. To balance traffic, Cloudflare supports several load-balancing methods.

Cloudflare’s Load Balancing service is a paid feature available in their higher-tier plans. It involves splitting up processing tasks between multiple machines.

It can be used to distribute network traffic among multiple servers. This reduces the load on each server and increases server performance, which speeds up performance and drops latency.

When someone requests your website, the DNS process routes it to Cloudflare’s load balancer. The load-balanced system then uses the established load-balancing method to figure out which origin server or endpoint should handle the request.

5. Prioritized Routing

Cloudflare’s enterprise plans are more powerful and expensive than others. They definitely give the best weight. Prioritized routing means that your traffic gets priority, reducing jams. It is helpful if you have a high traffic volume and can reduce system spikes and failures.

It cuts visits to your host server. Also, network prioritizing improves uptime and reliability. This improves network performance and utilization by handling traffic along the most practical routes.

Prioritized routing can be used to improve network security tactics. For example, routes to more secure or trusted destinations can be prioritized so that traffic destined for those locations takes the most secure way.

6. Much improved Security

Enterprise plans have higher-priority security features at a higher price than other plans. You won’t need to use any security plugins for your website, which means your site will be secured at both the host and enterprise CDN levels. 

It is an ideal way to avoid slow plugins on your site. Fewer plugins and themes mean a faster site, both front-end and back-end.

Enterprise Security services provide robust protection against various cyber threats and secure your websites and applications’ availability, performance, and security.

Cloudflare’s DDoS protection automatically detects and reduces volume, application layer, and DNS-based attacks. They use Cloudflare’s global network and scale to handle and determine malicious traffic before it reaches the origin server.

WAF, Bot management, zero-trust security, TLS encryption, DNS protection, Threat intelligence, and other security features are also available.

Rocket.net provides all Cloudflare Enterprise features at no additional cost or configuration.

Conclusion

Rocket.net is one of the fastest hosts I’ve used, and I’m very impressed with their TTFB, which is always under 100 milliseconds. However, it is an expensive solution not recommended for small websites. Costly but proper, with ultra-fast enterprise performance. If you get more than 25K PV per month with average bandwidth—

—then, you should try Rocket.net free WordPress migrations. I’m sure you’ll be surprised.

For me, the biggest downside of Rocket.net is the shortage of bandwidth. It’s okay for blogs and other average websites, but if your site requires a lot of bandwidth, you should figure out how much bandwidth and space you’ll need and then pick a plan accordingly.

They will not take your site offline if you go over it, but you must upgrade. Monthly visitors shouldn’t be a problem because Rocket.net has thousands more visitors than Kinsta.

Also, if your site requires more bandwidth and storage, you can use a VPS or dedicated host such as GURU, Scala, Mechanicweb, Vultr, DigitalOcean, Linode, ServeBolt, etc.

Kinsta

Kinsta is a premium managed WordPress hosting provider. It offers a cloud-based infrastructure optimized for WordPress websites. The company was launched in 2013 and has gained favor for its performance hosting solutions and customer service.

In the beginning, Kinsta was good, and it worked like magic because few hosting companies offered premium services at the time. I’ve liked them since the beginning.

But, like in the past, Kinsta is still not developing its infrastructure and maintains the same features while increasing its prices steadily. And they improved their marketing strategy over the hosting and developed a blog, but the hosting remains the same as in 2013.

Kinsta includes plenty of extra expenses, just like a big branding company, as it is empty and pretty expensive. They are justified in doing so because they provide top brands like Google Cloud and AWS DNS. Kinsta’s extensions are very expensive, which is another reason to avoid them. I’m unaware of any host that charges for Redis and Nginx proxy. 

Kinsta claims to use Cloudflare Enterprise, but this is different. They offer only full-page caching and a basic firewall. Lack of many enterprise features like the WAF, priority routing, Argo routing, tiering cache, polish image optimization, load balancing, etc.

Kinsta is still better than WP Engine, Flywheel, Godaddy, SiteGround, etc., but with too much marketing and hidden pricing, it is no longer a viable choice for any customer.

Also, except for CDN bandwidth, Kinsta overage costs are incredibly high:

Kinsta uses the Google Cloud C2 machine series, which performs better and is usually more durable than N1 machine versions. The C2 series is available in various machine setups and is ideal for heavy applications requiring greater capacity and output.

According to Google, C2 machines beat N1 machines in terms of speed and latency and at the highest frequency with powerful processors.

However, Kinsta doesn’t provide the incredible performance they claimed. 

Kinsta utilizes the premium AWS Route53 DNS service, although Cloudflare Free is faster than Route53, according to Dnsperf. Here’s a screenshot:

Kinsta banned numerous WordPress plugins, including all security, miscellaneous, media conversion, image optimization, backup, caching, and many others.

These plugins are well known to spike CPU usage or overlap features. Managed hosts usually do this. But it’s not suitable for techies; it’s like being locked up.

However, in some cases, such as when you don’t need crappy security plugins, Kinsta provides fair protection for your site, including server-side.

Kinsta sets a high priority on website security. They use dynamic and passive strategies to protect websites from attackers and unauthorized access, such as firewalls, DDoS detection, and uptime tracking. Compared to PHP processes, it performs better.

Kinsta offers a user-friendly dashboard for website owners to manage their WordPress sites effectively and provides quick and responsive service. Site migrations, replication, staging, backups, SSL, and more can be handled easily.

You can’t use cache plugins like Cache Enabler or LiteSpeed. However, you may use WP Rocket, Flyingpress, etc. You cannot use any backup plugins except some small backup plugins, such as BlogVault. See here for the complete list of Kinsta-banned plugins.

Kinsta: Pros & Cons

Kinsta Plans & Pricing

Kinsta, unlike Rocket.net, doesn’t offer a free trial or an entry discount. The only discount is that you will receive two months free if you pay for a year in advance.

Kinsta has a wide range of plans and can usually split them into four groups:

1. Starter
2. Pro
3. Business
4. Enterprises

1. Starter

The starter is designed for beginners with fewer than 25K visits. It costs $35 per month and includes 10 GB of storage, 100 GB of bandwidth, 1 free migration, and 2 PHP workers.

2. Pro

The Pro plan is intended for medium-sized websites that can handle 50,000 monthly visits and includes the following:

• 20 GB of storage.
• 200 GB of CDN bandwidth.
• 2 free migrations
• 2 PHP workers
• Site cloning for $70 per month.

3. Business

Business is typically suitable for e-commerce and high-traffic sites, with monthly plans ranging from $115 to $450. However, compared to Rocket.net, Kinsta is too expensive.

The first plan starts at $115 per month but only receives 100,000 monthly visits, whereas the Rocket.net Business plan costs $100 and accepts 25,00000 monthly visits.

4. Enterprises

Enterprise plans start at $675 and can be scaled up as required, but the first plan only provides 1,000k monthly visits. Rocket.net Enterprise plans include unlimited requests, PHP workers, object cache pro, and bandwidth. Kudos to Cloudflare Enterprise.

Conclusion

Although Kinsta hosting is pricey, you’ll have to spend a lot of money. Get ready to pay more for hosting as your startup grows. Your monthly hosting fees will be more expensive if you’re a real enthusiast with a lot of traffic, bandwidth, storage, or multiple websites.

I’m not a fan of premier WP hosting. It’s really expensive and can even be stressful if there’s a lot of traffic. I can’t predict how much. It gets bigger as your hits increase.

Go to Kinsta and check how much it charges for hosting a single 500K site.

The answer is more than $450 per month.

I can keep a personal VPS or cloud server and host multiple websites for that price.

Suppose you are a beginner, a non-techy user, or don’t have time to mess with these things. In that case, premium hosting is ideal. Because it is straightforward to set up, has fashionable interfaces, and is extremely simple to use, with no additional setup.

The problem is that you should be a millionaire.

Rocket.net vs Kinsta: Which Should You Choose?

Both are impressive and packed with plenty of features. But, for the most part, I would be straight with Rocket.net because it is less expensive than Kinsta and much faster, with 10X more monthly visitors, no CPU issues, Enterprise CDN, no hidden fees, and paid add-ons. There is so much more significance on Rocket.net. You can also start with just $1.

Pick Rocket.net If You:

• Want an ultra-fast hosting experience
• Want Enterprise CDN with fully featured
• Want a WooCommerce-optimized host
• Want more monthly visitors, server resources, and faster TTFB
• Prefer more technical support
• Don’t want to pay for additional services (Addons)
• Don’t require a lot of bandwidth or storage
• Wish to use fewer plugins

Pick Kinsta If You:

• Want to host on Google Cloud
• Uncertain about how to select a web host
• Don’t care about paying a high price or looking for a secure option
• Like marketing and trademarks like GC, AWS, and even Kinsta
• Prefer to use an eye-catching control panel
• Want the same answer to all questions
• Aren’t concerned about banned plugins
• Don’t mind paying for extra services (Addons)

Web hosting is a vital part of any website, no matter its size. And while you have plenty of options, picking a suitable host is very important.

For more details on hosting, see my article, “Best Web Hosting in Europe.”

What host do you like to use?

Do you agree with this Rocket.net vs Kinsta comparison?

Let me know what you think in the comments section.

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