Linode Alternative: The Benefits of Choosing Kinsta
If you’re looking for a Linode alternative for WordPress hosting, you’ve come to the right place. Kinsta’s platform is incredibly user-friendly and makes launching new projects simple and straightforward. Let’s find out what makes our managed WordPress hosting so unique!
If you’re looking for a hosting provider to host your application and/or database, make sure to check out Kinsta’s Application Hosting and Database Hosting, your new home for modern web applications and databases.
Get Your Applications and Databases Live Quickly and Seamlessly with Kinsta’s Cloud Platform
If you’re interested in Kinsta’s Managed WordPress Hosting solution, skip over this section for a robust comparison.
If you’re looking for a Linode alternative to host your application or database, you’ll want to check out Kinsta’s Application Hosting and Database Hosting.
With our cloud platform, you can:
- Avoid complicated infrastructure setup, product lines, and control panels
- Deploy right from GitHub in minutes
- Enjoy internal connections between your app and database without row or query count limits
- Host apps with your favorite languages, frameworks, or custom Dockerfiles
- Choose from 25 data centers
- Contact expert support 24/7/365
Don’t take our word for it. Test it yourself for free! Your first $20 worth of server resources are on us.
Introduction
Linode offers several types of cloud computing products and services. You can purchase the individual applications, resources, and solutions needed to configure and power your environment.
However, Linode is largely geared toward experienced developers and the technically literate. Setting up and maintaining your website using Linode requires you to do most of the heavy lifting yourself.
If you have sysadmin experience and you are willing to spend your time almost every day on server management and perform tasks using the terminal, then Linode might be a good solution for you. If you’d rather spend your time growing your business and offload complex server management to a team, keep reading because Kinsta is designed for you!
Kinsta uses a different model. Our platform is designed to work exclusively with WordPress, and each one of our plans comes with enough resources for high-performance websites. You also get access to tools created to help you maintain and grow your site with ease.
Every day, we hear from frustrated clients looking for an easier, more manageable hosting solution. Many want to learn how they can avoid the complicated setup process that other cloud hosting providers often make you go through, and want to learn what makes Kinsta different.
That’s what we’re excited to answer here. We’ll explain what makes Kinsta unlike other solutions, and discuss the major benefits of using us as your managed WordPress host.
How Kinsta Compares to Linode in a Nutshell
Before we dive into the specifics of Kinsta vs Linode, let’s break down the key differences between the two.
Kinsta is the first host to be powered exclusively by the Google Cloud Platform. Google’s premium-tier network, which lets us maximize the speed, security, and performance of each site hosted with us.
We’re also proud to be a top-rated managed WordPress hosting option on G2, the world’s premier software review and comparison site. Our service stands out due to its ease of use, whether you’re a WordPress enthusiast or a developer:
Enjoy a 20% Faster Website Simply by Moving From Linode to Kinsta
We measured 3,200+ migrations over the course of a three-month span. On average, client sites experienced 20% faster load times just by moving to Kinsta.
How is this possible? Our customers enjoy:
- The latest generation of virtual machines from Google’s Compute Engine general-purpose machine family C3D VMs and The fastest Compute-Optimized C2 VMs, available across all plans in supported regions.
- A stack that’s been fine-tuned for WordPress over the past 8 years.
- Google’s Premium Tier Network to deliver website data faster.
- Free CDN powered by Cloudflare’s global network of 260+ locations.
- Built-in Edge Caching that cuts the time needed to serve cached WordPress HTML by an average of more than 50%!
Migrate from Linode to Kinsta hassle free with our free expert migration service. With our 30-day money-back guarantee, you can test out the service and improved speeds completely risk-free. You only lose if you don’t give this a try!
Linode doesn’t offer managed WordPress hosting plans. To use the platform, you need to select what kind of machine you want to spin up depending on the resources you need, and then pay by the hour.
Although you’re free to do as you wish with your Linode servers, configuring them requires sysadmin experience and resources. If you haven’t interacted with virtual servers before, even installing WordPress could be a challenge.
Some additional key differences between Kinsta and Linode include:
- Kinsta houses every WordPress site in its own isolated container, which has all of the software resources required to run it (Linux, Nginx, PHP, and MySQL). The resources are 100% private. Linode offers both shared and private containers.
- Kinsta has 37 data centers worldwide, while Linode has only 11.
- Kinsta offers six types of backups: free automatic/daily, optional hourly, manual, system-generated, downloadable, and external backups sent automatically to Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage. We also offer one-click backup and restore features. Linode offers backups as an extra paid add-on for each server, including daily, weekly, and bi-weekly options.
- Kinsta uses a unique caching system to automatically cache pages at the server level, eliminating the need for any plugins or add-ons. Linode requires you to set up and configure the caching solution that you want to use.
- Kinsta support, composed of WordPress experts, is available 24/7 for every customer via live chat. Linode provides chat, email, and phone support, but they can only assist you with questions related to the physical operation of your virtual servers.
- Kinsta offers free, expert-performed migration services with all of our plans. While Linode advertises a limited time free migration service, you have to apply for it and you only qualify if your resulting infrastructure costs on Linode exceed $200 per month. Alternatively, you can pay $100 an hour for their Professional Services, which can aid you with migrations.
- Kinsta uses a custom-built dashboard called MyKinsta, which is designed to provide the most user-friendly experience possible for WordPress site management. Linode offers a custom dashboard for its users, but it’s geared toward server management rather than WordPress and site maintenance as a whole.
- Kinsta makes it easy to develop websites locally using the DevKinsta application. We also have a one-click staging feature. With Linode, you need to set up and manage staging environments from scratch yourself.
- All Kinsta plans include free access to our in-house developed Application Performance Monitoring tool (Kinsta APM).
- We monitor your sites every three minutes for uptime, which equates to 480 daily uptime checks.
- Kinsta provides an easy Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) implementation using free Let’s Encrypt certificates, which aren’t provided with Linode.
- With Kinsta, you get access to weekly automatic MySQL database optimizations.
- Kinsta is developer-friendly and includes SSH, WP-CLI, and Git on all plans. We also support advanced configurations such as Bedrock, IP Geolocation, reverse proxies, Redis, etc. With Linode, you can set up the same tools manually, but that process requires sysadmin experience.
- Kinsta offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. Since Linode charges you based on hourly server use, it doesn’t offer refunds.
- Kinsta provides an SLA-backed 99.9% uptime guarantee on all plans.
Kinsta is Built for Performance and Scalability
With Linode, your website’s performance will heavily depend on the type of plan you choose and the machine resources you’re willing to pay for. For example, if you sign up for a 1 GB machine with a single core, you’re not going to get top-of-the-line performance.
Linode’s most basic dedicated cloud plan starts at $30 per month (or $.045 per hour). That’s also what you’d pay for Kinsta’s starting plan, but the difference is that with the latter, you get better performance, scalability, and a fully managed service for the same price
If you don’t have a clear idea of the amount of server resources you’ll need for your website, using Linode could be a challenge. Kinsta, on the other hand, provides you with more than enough resources for demanding websites, even with our starter plans.
All Kinsta plans leverage C2 and C3D Google Cloud machines, LXD managed hosts, and orchestrated LXC software containers. Each WordPress site hosted gets its own isolated container that contains all of the necessary software resources for running the site. This includes Nginx, PHP, Linux, and MySQL.
We also offer and manage over 30 different software packages and PHP extensions for you, as well as custom-compiled Linux packages and Nginx rulesets. Thanks to our scalable infrastructure, you can upgrade or downgrade with ease.
With Kinsta, you can choose from over ten standard hosting plans, and we can put together custom options for you as well. Linode offers dozens of options, but the only differences between each machine lie in what resources you get, making it difficult to reach a decision.
With Kinsta, configuration is never a concern. You can quickly and easily launch a new WordPress site from your MyKinsta dashboard, and choose from any of our 37 global data centers.
Kinsta also eliminates the need for any caching plugins or add-ons, because we use unique caching systems to reduce server load and accelerate response times.
As part of our Cloudflare integration, Edge Caching saves your Kinsta site/page cache to any of Cloudflare’s global network of 260+ data centers.
Edge Caching is included free with all Kinsta plans and cuts the time needed to serve cached WordPress HTML by an average of more than 50%!
Kinsta understands that uptime is a critical priority, which is why we check your website to see if it’s responding every three minutes. That’s 480 checks per day, all to ensure that your website is never unreachable to visitors. Linode doesn’t monitor your server; it’s up to you to make sure everything is working.
The bottom line is that using Kinsta as your managed WordPress hosting provider can save you a lot of time and money, and help you avoid a lot of frustration.
Expert Support for WordPress
At some point, you’re bound to run into some sort of technical issue with your WordPress site. Perhaps your website goes down, you encounter problems with a plugin, or your loading times start to slow.
Even if you know your way around WordPress, having a team of experts who can help you troubleshoot problems quickly is a net positive. With Kinsta, you get access to premium 24/7 support regardless of your plan.
Our support team is made up of WordPress and Linux experts, so you always get knowledgeable advice and assistance. In addition to multilingual support and resources that are available in 10 languages, we also have an initial ticket response time of under two minutes. If you don’t believe us, just ask some of our clients!
Kinsta is reliable and makes shipping changes easy. The support team was exceedingly helpful when we needed to migrate our blog. A+ on their support team.
What’s more, you won’t need to repeat the same explanation to agents over and over again. If a different WordPress expert needs to weigh in on your tickets, they’ll be able to catch up nearly instantly, since our support system keeps logs of your conversations with each agent.
Although Linode offers support via multiple channels, support is more focused on the physical management of your virtual server. If you have problems related to WordPress, you’re not guaranteed a resolution.
Uncover your web app’s performance bottlenecks.
Our experts will run a free performance audit of your website or app and send you a detailed action plan.
MyKinsta: A Custom-Built Dashboard for Powerful Site Management
Linode provides you with access to a custom dashboard where you can manage multiple servers and buy extras, such as backup services. However, it doesn’t offer much Quality of Life (QoL) functionality or any features related to website management.
At Kinsta, our mission is to make managing your WordPress site as simple and straightforward as possible. This is why we custom-built our own user portal, MyKinsta, specifically for WordPress site management:
Let’s take a look at some of the powerful features that make our MyKinsta dashboard so useful, most of which you’ll be required to install or configure yourself with Linode:
- One-click WordPress installation
- One-click staging environments, with an option to restore backups to production or staging.
- Quick phpMyAdmin access so you can make any changes that you need to your database.
- Premium Amazon Route 53 DNS, to manage your DNS records directly in the dashboard.
- A built-in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) tool that logs information about your website’s performance, including PHP processes, database queries, and more.
- Detailed analytics and insights, including bandwidth and visitor data, performance analysis data, Content Delivery Network (CDN) usage and insights, and cache HIT and MISS ratio.
- One-click CDN setup (using Kinsta’s custom CDN solution).
- A search and replace tool to make performing bulk updates easy.
- One-click PHP version switching, and the option to restart PHP when needed.
- An easy-to-use tool to purge the site cache.
- Simple redirect management.
- An IP Deny tool that enables you to blacklist IP addresses near instantly.
- New Relic integration (license required)
- Free one-click Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates that you can set up with a few clicks, as well as the option to import your own.
- A WordPress debugging tool.
- Integration with DevKinsta for local development
- Simple password protection for your environment, and the option to strengthen login security by adding your Secure Shell (SSH) keys to the dashboard.
- A multilingual dashboard that’s available in 10 languages: English, Italian, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Japanese, Swedish, Danish, and Dutch.
At Kinsta, we value our clients’ feedback and are always looking for opportunities to improve. We regularly incorporate the requests and feedback we receive to enhance our offerings. In other words, we’re always innovating and exploring new ways to make your website and hosting experience better.
Kinsta is Developer-Friendly
Using Linode gives you full control over your cloud environment. If you have sysadmin experience, you can configure every aspect of your server and add all the tools that you might need, including caching solutions, version control software, and more.
However, that’s only possible if you have the know-how, time, and resources to do so. Also, if you want to use WordPress, you’ll need to install all of its dependencies, including database software, MySQL, and PHP.
Kinsta simplifies the entire process of WordPress hosting by providing plans that come optimized out of the box for WordPress development. To make your life easier, we set up a broad range of tools and features that can improve your workflows, such as:
- WP-CLI, SSH, and Git access.
- Six different types of backups available: automatic/daily, optional hourly, manual, system-generated, downloadable, and backups sent automatically to Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage. We also offer one-click backup and restore features.
- A Redis add-on for quicker database performance.
- The option to load your site over reverse proxy.
- Unrestricted access to your site’s critical files.
- The ability to use custom setups such as Bedrock and Trellis.
- An option to run a different version of PHP for each live and staging site.
- Default enabled post and page revisions.
- The ability to restore backups to staging as well as production.
- An APM tool that lets you debug your website, thanks to in-depth logs you can access from the MyKinsta dashboard.
With Kinsta, setting up staging environments is as easy as clicking a few buttons. Once you’re done testing, you can push staging websites to production with that same level of ease. Even better, unlike with Linode, your staging sites aren’t included in your total disk space usage (only your live sites are).
Optimized for WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads
At Kinsta, we pride ourselves on offering scalable and flexible solutions that support high-traffic, resource-intensive ecommerce sites. We also recognize that these sites often have dynamically generated (rather than static HTML pages), which come with unique and complex demands.
This is why we optimized our platform for managing online stores, including WooCommerce and Easy Digital Download sites.
To optimize the speed and performance of your online store, we offer automatic purging of cache and archive pages. To help ensure a seamless experience, we also:
- Exclude ‘My Account’, checkout, cart, and other pages that shouldn’t be cached
- Provide a smooth checkout process by automatically bypassing the cache for users when “woocommerce_items_in_cart” or “edit_items_in_cart” are detected
- Put specific rules in place to allow EDD and WooCommerce functionality during server-level page caching
Although you can implement similar optimizations using Linode, you’ll need to do so manually, as the web host doesn’t offer any e-commerce or WooCommerce-specific plans.
Safe and Secure
Linode offers a set of standard security features, and may point you toward the tools and add-ons needed for hardening and safeguarding your site. However, since its model gives you full control over server configuration, that leaves security mostly in your hands.
Kinsta takes both active and passive measures to secure every site hosted with us, regardless of your plan. That includes:
- Monitoring your sites every three minutes for uptime, which equates to 480 daily uptime checks
- Implementing strict software-based restrictions
- Detecting Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks as they happen, and stopping malicious code from entering our network
- Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) support
- A Google Cloud Platform firewall
- Automated backups for all plans
- Isolated LXC containers
- Self-healing PHP
- Only support for encrypted Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) and SSH connections (no FTP)
At Kinsta, we understand that any downtime can have a dramatic impact on the User Experience (UX) for your websites. That’s why we provide premium uptime monitoring for every website on our platform. We check all the sites on Kinsta every three minutes. If we detect any downtime or technical issues, our WordPress experts will contact you immediately.
Kinsta Has a Global Presence
Kinsta has a global presence, with 37 data centers (and counting) spanning five continents. Our massive footprint makes it easy for you to pick a different data center for each of your websites, with no extra fees or hidden charges!
Our data center locations include:
- Test, PH
- Johannesburg, Africa
- Changhua County, Taiwan
- Hong Kong
- Tokyo, Japan
- Osaka, Japan
- Seoul, South Korea
- Mumbai, India
- Delhi, India
- Jurong West, Singapore
- Jakarta, Indonesia
- Sydney, Australia
- Melbourne, Australia
- Warsaw, Poland
- Hamina, Finland
- Madrid, Spain
- St. Ghislain, Belgium
- London, United Kingdom
- Frankfurt, Germany
- Eemshaven, Netherlands
- Zurich, Switzerland
- Milan, Italy
- Paris, France
- Dammam, Saudi Arabia
- Tel Aviv, Israel
- Montréal, Canada
- Toronto, Canada
- São Paulo, Brazil
- Santiago, Chile
- Council Bluffs, Iowa, USA
- Moncks Corner, South Carolina, USA
- Ashburn, Virginia, USA
- Columbus, Ohio, USA
- Dallas, Texas, USA
- The Dalles, Oregon, USA
- Los Angeles, California, USA
- Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
- Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
Linode offers 11 data center locations around the world, including standard regions such as the USA.
Free WordPress Migrations
Kinsta makes migrations as quick and painless as possible. In fact, we handle the entire process for you, and make sure that your WordPress website is working perfectly from the start. This means you won’t have to deal with any complex technology or risk losing critical data.
Our team will help you schedule a time for the migration, then take care of everything. All you have to do is sit back and check the migration status from your MyKinsta dashboard.
If I’m talking with another developer and they want recommendations on WordPress hosting, Kinsta hands down. It’ll save you headaches and all sorts of issues and your clients will be super happy so it’s a no brainer.
Linode advertises a limited-time free migration service. However, it’s only for cloud services with a “similar structure”. You have to apply for it and can only qualify if your resulting infrastructure costs on Linode exceed $200 per month.
Alternatively, you can pay for Linode’s Professional Services add-on, which costs $100 per hour and includes migration assistance.
Static Sites for Free
Are you an agency creating static WordPress sites for your clients? Or do you create landing pages for high-traffic campaigns? We got you covered!
Static site hosting is 100% free at Kinsta. You can create a static or Jamstack site or use a static site generator. We can run the build process for you and deploy your site directly to the edge.
Benefits of hosting Static sites with Kinsta include:
- Your site is directly pushed to our edge network with 260+ locations globally, powered by the security and speed of Cloudflare
- Use a static site generator, and we handle the build process, which is also included free of charge
- Add custom domains, and we deliver the security (SSL certificates automatically issued and updated)
Sign up, connect your git account, and start deploying your static site from your repo.
Turbocharging Your Content Delivery With Kinsta CDN
All Kinsta plans include a free, premium HTTP/3-enabled CDN that you can easily enable directly from your MyKinsta dashboard.
Our content delivery architecture is built specifically for high throughput and low latency.
As part of our Cloudflare integration, our built-in Edge Caching saves your Kinsta site/page cache to any of Cloudflare’s global network of 260+ data centers.
When site visitors load your website in their browser, cached responses will be delivered from the location closest to them. Edge Caching is included free with all Kinsta plans and doesn’t require a separate plugin.
Linode does not offer a custom CDN solution. If you want to use one, you’ll need to integrate a third-party service with your server.
Feature Comparison Overview
Now that we’ve made it this far, let’s take a look at some of the biggest differences between Kinsta vs Linode:
| Kinsta | Linode | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Plans start at $35/month | Varies depending on resources (Shared starting at $5/month) |
| *First Month Free | Yes | No |
| Money-Back Guarantee | 30 days on all plans | No |
| Premium 24×7 Support | All plans | Yes |
| Core Infrastructure | Same across all plans (GCP) | Shared and dedicated cloud servers |
| SSH Access | All plans | Yes |
| Global Data Centers | 37 locations | 11 |
| Bandwidth Limits | No limits (within AUP) | Yes |
| Container Technology | 100% resource isolation on all plans | Varies by server type |
| Free Migrations | All plans | No |
| Staging Environment | All plans | No |
| PHP Versions | PHP 7.4, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4 | Manual installation |
| Switch PHP Engine | One-click change in dashboard | Manual |
| Free CDN | 34 (All regions) | No |
| Built-in Edge Caching | 260+ | Not specified |
| Free Premium DNS | Amazon R53 | No |
| Free SSL Certificates | All plans | No |
| Uptime Monitoring | All plans | No |
| Multisite Support | WP 2 plans and higher | Varies |
| Free APM Tool | ✓ | X |
| IP Geolocation | ✓ | Not specified |
| Local Development Tool | ✓ | X |
| Reverse Proxy Support | ✓ | Not specified |
| Redis Add-on | ✓ | Not specified |
| New Relic (license required) | ✓ | Not specified |
| Multilingual Dashboard | English, Spanish, German, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, French, Swedish, Danish, Japan | Not specified |
Free Performance Monitoring Tool
WordPress is a dynamic CMS, which means it’s constantly executing PHP code in the background. Depending on your theme and plugin configuration, it’s possible for your site to get bogged down with bloated and inefficient code.
That’s where APM (Application Performance Monitoring) tools can help. An APM monitors requests to your site, and tracks various metrics like external API requests, database queries, PHP execution time, and more. This information allows you to quickly debug and troubleshoot performance bottlenecks.
All Kinsta plans come with a free custom-built APM tool that can be easily accessed right in the MyKinsta dashboard. Kinsta APM provides you with key WordPress performance insights without the need for expensive third-party subscriptions to other APM services.
With Kinsta APM, you can debug the following and more:
- Slow WordPress plugins and themes.
- Long calls to external APIs and domains.
- Unoptimized MySQL database queries.
Linode plans do not come with a free APM tool, which makes it very difficult to quickly troubleshoot performance issues on your WordPress site.
Develop Locally with DevKinsta
For developers and agencies, Kinsta offers a simple to use (but powerful) local development tool called DevKinsta. With DevKinsta, you can launch WordPress sites with a full hosting stack and SSL support on your local computer with just a few clicks.
DevKinsta is fully integrated with MyKinsta and Kinsta’s hosting platform, which means you can develop locally and push updates directly to a staging environment on Kinsta! Linode doesn’t have an integration with a local WordPress development tool, which means there is no way to clone and push WordPress sites for Linode customers. If you’re a busy freelance or agency developer, DevKinsta’s advanced features and MyKinsta integration can be a huge time saver.
Best Affiliate Program in the Industry
Many Kinsta clients are so satisfied with our services that they recommend the platform to their friends and customers. That word of mouth has helped Kinsta become one of the fastest-growing web hosting providers in the field.
Since we want to reward our users for referring new customers, we’re proud to offer one of the highest-paying affiliate programs in the industry. Whether you run an agency, work as a freelancer, or just use Kinsta to host your own websites, our affiliate program can help you earn truly passive income.
As a Kinsta affiliate partner, you can earn as much as $500 (depending on the plan) for every signup referred to us. Additionally, you’ll receive a 10% monthly recurring commission for the lifetime of the customers referred.
Linode also offers an affiliate program, but it only pays $5 for each customer that you refer its way.
Join Others Making the Switch to Kinsta
At Kinsta, our mission is to offer the fastest, latest technology possible. We’re always evolving and adapting to use the most innovative solutions available.
When you check out our many Changelog entries, you’ll see that no other hosting provider releases new options, tools, and integrations at the same rate and frequency.
Although Linode offers a broad range of customizable servers, it’s not the most WordPress-friendly solution on the market. If you want to unlock your WordPress website’s full potential, switch to Kinsta and try our plans risk-free for 30 days!