When a WordPress site outgrows cheap shared hosting, managed WordPress hosting is the usual next step: faster servers, automatic backups and updates, and support that knows WordPress. Kinsta, Cloudways and SiteGround are three of the most popular options, but they charge in completely different ways, which makes them hard to compare at a glance.
Three different pricing models
- SiteGround sells shared WordPress plans with a low first-year price and a much higher renewal.
- Cloudways charges monthly for a managed cloud server (on DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS or Google Cloud) that can host as many sites as fit. The price does not change at renewal.
- Kinsta charges per plan by number of sites and monthly visits, monthly or yearly, with no intro discount.
SiteGround: lowest start, steep renewal
SiteGround's StartUp plan is very cheap for the first 12 months, for one site with 10 GB of storage. After the first year it renews at roughly four and a half times the intro price, so look at the three-year cost before you commit. GrowBig adds more sites and more storage.
Cloudways: pay monthly, scale up any time
With Cloudways you choose a cloud provider and server size and pay monthly, with no long contract. A 1 GB DigitalOcean server is enough for a small site or two; 2 GB and up suits busier sites or several sites. Because the price is flat and monthly, it is easy to start small and resize later. You manage sites through Cloudways' own panel rather than cPanel.
Kinsta: premium, priced by visits
Kinsta's plans are priced by number of sites and monthly visits. The entry plan hosts one site, and paying yearly lowers the monthly price. It is the most expensive of the three for a small site, but there is no renewal increase, so what you pay in year one is what you pay later.
Which should you choose?
- SiteGround if you want the lowest price for the first year and a familiar shared-hosting setup, and you are ready for the renewal.
- Cloudways if you want monthly billing, room to grow, and several sites on one server.
- Kinsta if you want a premium, fully managed service with predictable pricing and are happy to pay more.
All prices in the cards above are checked daily. You can compare every managed WordPress plan by real three-year cost on HostingPickers.