Kinsta vs. WPX Differences: WPX Is Built For Static Sites, Not Large Dynamic Sites

Kinsta and WPX are both great hosts, but they’re built for different types of websites.

Kinsta is built to handle large, WooCommerce, and dynamic sites. They have 29 more data centers (compared to 3 on WPX) and their plans are more scalable. Kinsta uses Google Cloud C2 with advanced caching/CDN through their MU plugin, a premium DNS, and enterprise-level Cloudflare features. They handle traffic spikes better which is why brands hosted on Shark Tank use them. They support Redis + advanced caching with world class support. Main cons are PHP worker limits, no email hosting or phone support, banned plugins, and scaling can get expensive.

WPX is built for small-mid sized (most static) sites that need fast performance without paying too much. They use LiteSpeed servers which means you can use the free LiteSpeed Cache plugin and QUIC.cloud CDN (they also have their own XCDN but it only has 25 locations). WPX was the fastest host in many of Review Signal’s speed tests with excellent support, free migrations, and free site speed optimization where they optimize your site for core web vitals. The main cons of WPX are they only have 3 data centers (Chicago, London, Sydney), they previously had a major outage in their Chicago data center, and their custom dashboard can sometimes be janky.

	Kinsta	WPX
Facebook Feedback	Great	Great
Server	Google Cloud C2	LiteSpeed
Caching	MU Plugin	Litespeed Cache
CDN	Cloudflare	XDN Or QUIC
Speed	Fast For Large Sites	Fast For Static Sites
Data Centers	29	3
Simultaneous Visits	High	Low-Mid
Resource Limits	PHP Workers	Bandwidth
Dashboard	MyKinsta	Custom
Email Hosting	No	Yes
Banned Plugins	Yes	No
Support	Excellent	Excellent
Security	Great	Great
Uptimes	Great	Major Outage
Migrations	Free	Free
TrustPilot Rating	4.5/5	4.8/5
Pricing	Expensive	Expensive

 

1. Facebook Feedback – What People Say In Facebook Groups

More people recommend Kinsta over WPX if you look at unbiased Facebook conversations.

Here is someone who gave an honest review comparing them which I also pulled from Facebook Groups. I like to include these since they’re a lot more unbiased than most reviews.

 

2. Server – Kinsta Google Cloud C2 vs. WPX (LiteSpeed)

Kinsta uses Google Cloud C2 which is specifically for compute-intensive workloads. So if your site is running lots of plugins, getting traffic spikes, or your website demands resources in other ways, this is an excellent option. Kinsta even has their own dedicated page on Google’s website.

WPX uses LiteSpeed servers (they briefly announced it on this page) which are much faster than Apache, but it’s unclear how it compares to Google Cloud C2. Both have a reputation for being fast, but LiteSpeed is mostly compared against Apache and NGINX – not Google Cloud.

 

3. Caching – Kinta’s MU Plugin + Server Caching vs. LiteSpeed Cache

On Kinsta, you would use their MU plugin with server and full page caching. Kinsta even bans cache plugins since you shouldn’t need them, although caching plugins usually come with extra optimizations – so you’d need to do those manually or install extra plugins to take care of them.

On WPX, you would use the LiteSpeed Cache plugin even though they recommend W3 Total Cache. LiteSpeed is a better plugin with excellent reviews on WordPress, has been updated for core web vitals, and uses server-level caching (it’s also arguably faster than WP Rocket). Since LiteSpeed Cache has many other extra optimizations in the settings, you shouldn’t need other speed plugins besides maybe Kinsta’s Perfmatters plugin for unloading unused CSS/JavaScript.

 

4. CDN – Kinsta Uses Cloudflare, WPX Uses XDN (But Try QUIC As Well)

Kinsta partnered with Cloudflare while WPX uses their own custom built CDN (XDN).

Cloudflare is consistent, although it’s usually not the most performant if you look at CDN tests on cdnperf.com. XDN is hyped up by WPX but there hasn’t been many tests on it. Alternatively, you can use QUIC.cloud CDN which is specifically built to work on top of LiteSpeed. Both XDN and QUIC.cloud are free when using WPX, but I recommend trying both and testing the results.

 

5. Speed – Load Time And TTFB Tests

Speed tests should be taken with a grain of salt since there are tons of variables (hosting plan, caching, CDN, geographical distance between the data center location vs testing location), etc.

Review Signal’s unbiased test (which doesn’t use affiliate links) found WPX had the fastest average response time when testing various WordPress hosting plans ranging from $25 – $50. Kinsta did not participate in Review Signal’s most current speed benchmarks to my knowledge.

In my own speed test, I signed up for WPX’s Business plan and Kinsta’s Starter plan (as well as several other WordPress hosting plans). No cache plugin or CDN were used with the same Astra Starter Site and same plugins. I measured them in Pingdom for 1 week (336 individual tests were done on each site). WPX came out to be one of the fastest WordPress hosts with a median load time of 436ms (Kinsta’s was 628ms), meaning WPX was 192ms faster than Kinsta.

I also measured load times and TTFB in several other tools:

Aside from the speed tests, there are many examples of people migrating from other hosts to Kinsta and posting their results (not so much for WPX probably because they’re not as popular).

 

6. Data Centers – WPX Only Has 3 Data Centers (Big Con)

A major con of WPX is they only have 3 data centers in Chicago, London, and Sydney. This is a problem if your visitors aren’t close to those data centers, since geographic distance has a big impact on TTFB. Kinsta has 29 data centers so it’s much more feasible to use them worldwide.

Kinsta Data Centers:

Changhua County, Taiwan	Melbourne, Australia	São Paulo, Brazil
Hong Kong	Warsaw, Poland	Council Bluffs, Iowa, USA
Tokyo, Japan	Hamina, Finland	Moncks Corner, South Carolina, USA
Osaka, Japan	St. Ghislain, Belgium	Ashburn, Virginia, USA
Seoul, South Korea	London, United Kingdom	The Dalles, Oregon, USA
Mumbai, India	Frankfurt, Germany	Los Angeles, California, USA
Delhi, India	Eemshaven, Netherlands	Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
Jurong West, Singapore	Zurich, Switzerland	Jakarta, Indonesia
Jakarta, Indonesia	Montréal, Canada	Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
Sydney, Australia	Toronto, Canada

WPX Data Centers:

Chicago, IL (USA)

London (England)

Sydney (Australia)

 

7. Simultaneous Visits – The Shark Tank Affect On Kinsta

Kinsta is known for hosting high traffic sites. DARTDrones (who was hosted on Shark Tank), CodeinWP, Matthew Woodward, and WP Buffs are just a few of Kinsta’s clients that are high traffic. WPX is more for small to mid-sized websites but not high traffic or enterprise clients. There are many examples of websites hosted on Kinsta handling lots of simultaneous visitors.

While Kinsta is great for high traffic websites, you have to be careful with PHP workers. Depending on your website and how demanding it is, Kinsta may recommend adding PHP workers. But it can get expensive so if it happens to you, you may want to look for alternatives.

 

8. Resource Limits – Kinsta PHP Workers vs. WPX Bandwidth Limits

You have to be careful with resource limits on Kinsta and WPX.

One of the biggest complaints about Kinsta is the low amount of PHP workers included with each plan. These determine how many simultaneous uncached requests your site can handle at any given time and increase for dynamic websites. Even if you optimize your site, you may find yourself running into PHP worker limits and having to upgrade your plan, which gets expensive.

WPX is more straightforward and they include a certain amount of bandwidth with each plan. Their bandwidth calculator can help you choose a plan based page size, visitors, and page views.

 

9. Dashboard – MyKinsta Is Better Than WPX’s Custom Dashboard

MyKinsta is much better than WPX’s dashboard (view a demo here).

They both use a custom dashboard, but MyKinsta is pretty much bug free while there have been multiple complaints about staging and other features on WPX. MyKinsta also has a ton of analytics about your website, traffic, uptimes, etc. So it’s easy to monitor key things on Kinsta.

 

10. Email Hosting – Kinsta Doesn’t Include It, WPX Does

Kinsta doesn’t offer email hosting while WPX does (but not for bulk emails).

Web/email hosting should ideally be kept separate since emails take up resources and storage. Those resources would be better dedicated to your website than email. So while Kinsta doesn’t support email hosting and recommends using a third-party service like Google Workspace, you should ideally be keeping web/email separate anyway to lower CPU usage and save on storage.

 

11. Banned Plugins – Kinsta Bans Caching, Backup, Security Plugins

Kinsta bans some caching, backup, security, and other plugin types.

Kinsta already handles most of these and you shouldn’t need these plugins to begin with. So while this may seem like a con, using them is actually unnecessary. WPX doesn’t ban plugins.

 

12. Support – Both Are Excellent, But Kinsta’s Is “World Class”

Kinsta and WPX both have top-tier support.

While both are fast (WPX prides itself on being able to reach someone in 30 seconds or less), but Kinsta’s support just goes a bit deeper than WPX and is arguably more helpful. You’re not going to get better support than Kinsta. Even their competitors say the support is world class.

 

13. Security – Both Are Secure With Guarantees

Kinsta and WPX are both secure hosts.

Kinsta offers a security guarantee where they “work with you for free to try and undo the damage” while WPX offers free malware cleanup. But security is mainly your responsibility, so it’s always good to go through a WordPress security checklist to do things like limit login attempts, change the default admin username, use strong passwords, and disable XML-RPC.

 

14. Uptimes – WPX Had A Major Outage In 2021

WPX had a major outage in 2021 where their Chicago data center went down for several hours (as well as their own wpx.net website). This left WPX customers confused since there were also complaints about their lack of response, although they posted an explanation later on the blog.

Kinsta has never had a problem like this to my knowledge and they even have a status page where you can check the status of Kinsta data centers, MyKinsta, CDN, DNS, etc. I like when a company does this and is transparent whether there’s outages (WPX should consider doing it).

 

15. Migrations – Kinsta Is More Professional, WPX Includes A Speed Service

Kinsta offers free migrations and so does WPX.

There have been reports that if you want to move multiple sites, you may run into issues on WPX for a number of reasons. On Kinsta, it’s usually much more smooth. However, WPX also includes free site speed optimization where their team optimizes your site for core web vitals.

 

16. TrustPilot Rating – WPX Has Higher Ratings And More Reviews

Kinsta has a 4.5/5 star TrustPilot rating with 450+ reviews while WPX is 4.8/5 with 1,700+ reviews. It’s common for hosting companies to ask for reviews from their support team, so maybe WPX just takes this more seriously than Kinsta. I would take these with a grain of salt.

Here’s one person who switched from Kinsta to WPX and left a great review.

 

17. Pricing – Both Have Similar Pricing Structures

Both Kinsta and WPX give you 2 months free if you sign up for a year, but they also offer monthly pricing which starts at roughly $25-$30/month. However, both hosts can get expensive if you run into issues with PHP workers or CPU usage and have to upgrade your plan.

 

18. Winner – The “Winner” Depends On Your Type Of Website

Kinsta has more data centers, more helpful support, a better dashboard without bugs, and can handle high traffic websites better than WPX. For small-mid sized websites, WPX is a better choice because they were rated one of the fastest hosts in speed tests and include free site speed optimization. It comes down to your site, but you can’t go wrong with Kinsta. You can read my full review of Kinsta, but I tried to cover everything in this Kinsta vs. WPX comparison.

Cheers,
Tom