Luca Ottolini is a WordPress developer and certified Codeable expert based in Italy. Through his business, 8Link, he has been building and maintaining websites for over 20 years, working with small and medium businesses, agencies, and other developers. He has completed more than 1,000 projects on Codeable, holds a 4.98/5 rating, and has served over 200 clients.
For Luca, hosting and performance are not an afterthought; it’s part of delivering a high-quality WordPress project. Every site he builds is clean, fast, and built to convert. Hosting has to be of a high standard. And as an added benefit, over time, recommending Kinsta to his clients has also become a consistent source of passive income through Kinsta’s Affiliate Program.
From local agency to global Codeable expert
Luca started with a background in web development and graphic design. For several years, he ran his own agency in Italy, serving local clients. When he wanted to work with clients internationally, he found Codeable.
After a few projects with other platforms, I discovered Codeable, applied, and never looked back.
Along the way, he worked with pretty much every CMS available. WordPress became the obvious choice:
It gave non-technical clients real control over their own sites while having an incredible user base and community behind it.
After 11 years on Codeable and over 1000 projects completed, clients trust Luca’s recommendations on everything, not just code.
His approach to tools is consistent:
My rule is simple: I never recommend anything I wouldn’t use myself. I favor well-supported, actively developed tools with a track record over whatever’s trending. I avoid plugin bloat, I avoid anything that locks a client in with no exit, and I treat hosting as a serious choice.
The problem with cheap hosting
Most of Luca’s clients are small and medium-sized businesses for which the website is the main sales channel. When hosting underperforms, they feel it directly: worse SEO, fewer conversions, and a worse experience for every visitor.
Many clients arrive on cheap hosting. And many of them don’t realize what it’s costing them because they’ve never seen anything better.
Luca has a simple way of opening that conversation:
Would you like to see how your site performs elsewhere?” is usually what makes new clients curious. But I also have clients who simply trust me, and they’re mostly on Kinsta already.
He also avoids a mistake he sees other developers make: asking clients about their hosting budget.
Lower cost usually means lower performance, therefore lower results and worse funnel. Worse SEO, worse UX with endless page loads. If a website is vital for a client, then cheap, old-school hosting solutions are not the best way to go.
When a client pushes back on price, Luca doesn’t negotiate:
I’m not interested in those clients, to be honest. I think in 2026, someone who has an online business needs to know that hosting fees are as important as the rental fees of a brick-and-mortar store.
Why Kinsta
Luca first heard about Kinsta in 2017 from a colleague. There was no affiliate program yet. He just liked the product.
I just liked everything about the service, including the level of tech support, not a given back then. The affiliate program was the icing on the cake.
Having worked across a huge variety of hosting providers through Codeable projects, Luca had a clear sense of what most platforms get wrong:
There are not many hosting providers with a decent control panel that has all the tools a developer needs and presents them in a clear UI. Even fewer providers have the level of support Kinsta has. They saved me hours of work, and clients got smaller invoices. All of my clients who made the switch to Kinsta are super happy about it.
When he needs to build client confidence, Kinsta’s infrastructure helps. Mentioning Kinsta’s high-performance servers and the level of support goes a long way with clients who want to understand what they’re paying for.
The MyKinsta dashboard
MyKinsta gives Luca a consistent workspace across all his client sites. Staging environments, performance tools, and deployment controls are in one place. He can test a site in a separate environment, show the client the difference, and transfer it cleanly.
Codeable developers in Kinsta’s affiliate network get a permanent hosting account with full access to all of Kinsta’s premium features. It is not a trial. It is a working environment that Luca uses to build, test, and demo sites before they ever reach a client.
It’s extremely helpful for me to have an account where I can either create a redesign of a website or simply test how it works and performs in a different environment. The client can see the difference and decide accordingly.
Support that cuts down on billable hours
When a problem comes up, Kinsta support resolves it quickly. That time saving flows straight to the client’s invoice.
Geolocation for a client with multiple regional sites
One of Luca’s clients, a boat manufacturer, was managing separate websites for different regional markets. Luca used Kinsta’s geolocation feature to consolidate them into a single global site that serves localized content based on the visitor’s location, then scaled it as traffic grew.
They had many websites for different regions, until we developed a global site serving different content using Kinsta’s geolocation and scaling it as traffic got bigger.
Turning trusted recommendations into recurring revenue
Luca has tried many affiliate programs over the years. Most of them are a one-time payout and nothing more. What separates Kinsta’s affiliate program for WordPress experts like him is the recurring model.
Kinsta’s affiliate program, ideal for WordPress developers like Luca, offers a one-time signup bonus plus a 10% lifetime recurring commission for every referred client. It is free to join, and Kinsta pays the commissions. It does not increase the client’s hosting costs, allowing developers to earn recurring revenue simply by recommending a hosting provider they already know and trust.
I tried many affiliate programs, just like every freelancer; I’ve always tried to generate some passive income as well. Without a doubt, the most interesting feature of Kinsta’s program is the recurring revenue.
The complimentary hosting account via the Codeable partnership lets Luca build and test client projects before transferring the site to the client’s account, with his referral ID included, so the referral is tracked automatically.
It’s also very handy to transfer the site to the client’s account, including my referral code.
The Kinsta dedicated affiliate team supports affiliates with personalized guidance, resources, and ongoing assistance to help them succeed.
I always have someone to talk to if I need anything. And it’s been the same person, Florina, for years, which is very positive.
The result
Once a client sees their site running on Kinsta, the decision is almost always made. Recommending Kinsta becomes an easy decision.
Most of the time, if I ask a client if they would like to see how their site performs elsewhere, without even mentioning Kinsta, they’re happy to do it, especially if their current hosting is not good. Once they see the difference, 99% of the job is done.
Luca now has the majority of his clients on Kinsta. Every client who has made the switch has stayed happy with it. And the passive income from the affiliate program keeps building.
It’s simply a win-win situation because developers recommend the best, and earn a fair amount of money every month from each referred client.
For Luca, being a part of Kinsta’s affiliate program is not changing how he recommends hosting. It is an extra reward for a recommendation he would make anyway.
The recurring model aligns perfectly with how I work: I'm rewarded for the long-term quality of my advice, not a one-time referral. It turns honest recommendations I'd make anyway into a stable, compounding income.
United States 
