General Information

1. Who Can Become a Kinsta Affiliate?

We encourage you to join our affiliate program if you’re a developer, designer, agency owner, or publisher who creates cloud hosting-related content. The same goes for learning platforms and any sort of technology solution providers (SaaS, platforms, open-source projects, applications, CMSs solutions, code libraries, and more). Kinsta customers get automatically approved.

We welcome all websites in the development industry niche and any business with the ability to make direct referrals to their professional network. Read more about who’s Kinsta’s affiliate program for.

That being said, we’re selective. Our affiliate team manually screens each applicant’s website. There are some common reasons why we reject applications.

We generally do not accept:

  • Publishers or blogs without a significant amount of relevant, high-quality content
  • Websites under construction or unfinished
  • Websites without their own domain name
  • Websites that display lists of tools or services with no further information
  • Websites without an affiliate disclosure
  • Coupons and deals websites
  • Social media profiles

We do not accept websites containing adult content, inappropriate content, or content regulated or illegal in any of the countries we operate in.

2. Do I Need to Be a Kinsta Client to Become an Affiliate?

No. But you should try our premium hosting services, they’re awesome!

3. How Do I Join the Affiliate Program?

Easy! To apply, head to https://kinsta.com/affiliates/ and click “Become an affiliate”. We’ll ask you to fill in some standard information about your site and your promotional methods. Then, our affiliate team will manually review your application.

You’ll receive an email with our decision within 3 business days. If your application is approved, you’ll gain access to the dashboard and our affiliate materials. We’ll also send you some great tips to start earning commissions!

If you’re a Kinsta customer, your application is automatically approved by our system.

4. How Do I Create My Affiliate Link?

Log in to the affiliate dashboard, click on the “Make affiliate link” button, paste any URL you’d like to link to from the Kinsta website, and click on “Create link”. Learn more about affiliate links.

Your affiliate link can be used to refer any Kinsta hosting service. 

5. Do You Use a Third-Party Platform to Track Sales?

No. We’ve built our Kinsta’s affiliate dashboard from the ground up. We stand behind our data and encourage you to double-check with your own measurements. Our system is Intelligent Tracking Prevention 2.0 ready. We track referrals through affiliate links that place a cookie on the customer’s browser.

Use our dashboard to see your referred page views, subscriptions, and more. It’s available in eight different languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, and Japanese.

6. I Can’t Log in to the Dashboard

First, make sure that you are trying to log in to our affiliates dashboard by heading to https://affiliate.kinsta.com/login. The affiliates dashboard is a separate platform from the MyKinsta dashboard. They have different URLs and you may use different email addresses to access each of them.

If you are still unable to log in, email [email protected] 

7. How Should I Write About Kinsta on My Site?

We’re glad you asked! Reviews and comparison articles are among the highest-converting types of content created by affiliates. To get information that can help you write reviews, visit the links below.

About Kinsta’s Managed WordPress Hosting:

About Kinsta’s Application Hosting and Database Hosting:

Not enough information? Don’t hesitate to reach out to [email protected]. 

Commissions and Payments

8. How Much Commission Do I Get for Each Referred Customer?

For every referral of Managed WordPress Hosting, you earn both:

  • An initial bonus (named one-time commission) between $50 and $500. The amount is calculated based on the plan the customer subscribes to and it’s paid only once.
  • A 10% recurring commission paid every month for the lifetime of the customer. The 10% is calculated out of the plan’s monthly fee (discounts applied). Add-ons are not included.

For every referral of Application Hosting and/or Database Hosting, you earn a 5% recurring commission every month for the lifetime of the customer. The 5% is calculated out of the customer’s monthly invoice (discounts applied).

Learn more about our commission model.

Referred customers

9. I Just Made a Referral, but It Wasn’t Tracked

Kinsta’s affiliate dashboard can take up to 24 hours to show a new referral, so give it some time. To see your conversions, log in to the dashboard and check the ‘Referred customers’ area.

If your referral doesn’t display after 24h, you can claim it by reaching out to [email protected] within 14 days of the subscription date. Sometimes the client you refer doesn’t use the affiliate link in the right way, the cookie doesn’t fire, or another disruption takes place. In these cases, please get in touch. You’ll be required to provide some information so our team can investigate further and confirm that you should get credit for the sale. 

10. What if My Referred Customer Signs Up for Two or More Kinsta Hosting Services?

You’ll receive the respective commissions for each service. For instance, if a customer uses both Managed WordPress Hosting and Application Hosting, you’ll receive in recurring commissions the 10% of the WordPress plan’s price and the 5% of the Application Hosting’s invoice.

What if the customer stops using one service? Then, you’ll keep receiving the commissions for the other service they’re still using.

11. Why Is the One-Time Commission Status ‘Accumulating’?

There’s a 2-month qualification period for referrals of Managed WordPress Hosting to become certified. This window ends when your referred customer has maintained a paid, active WordPress hosting subscription for 2 months and has settled all payments. If the referred customer asks for a refund and cancels their Kinsta hosting, your referral becomes void.

Once the qualification window is completed, your one-time commission gets approved. That means that you’ll receive your one-time commission in the next payment round. The amount will appear on your dashboard replacing the ‘Accumulating’ message.

The monthly recurring commissions will start accruing once the one-time commission has been approved.

Referrals of Application Hosting and Database Hosting don’t generate a one-time commission and, therefore, are not subject to a qualification period; your recurring commissions for these referrals get approved once your referred customer makes their monthly payments.  

12. When Will I Get Paid?

Once the balance of your approved commissions (both one-time and recurring) is more than $50.00, your commissions are eligible for payment and will be automatically included in the next payment round. Payments are made via PayPal between the 15th and 20th of each month.

13. I Only See Recurring Commissions Approved for My Referral. Won’t I Get the One-Time Bonus?

Only referrals of Managed WordPress Hosting are rewarded with a one-time commission, which goes from $50 to $500.

When your referred customer is subscribed to a WordPress plan, your one-time commission is approved as soon as the 2-month qualification period is completed. If that’s not the case, email us at [email protected]. 

When your referred customer is signed up for Application Hosting or Database Hosting but not subscribed to a WordPress plan, no one-time commission is approved for that referral. You’ll directly start getting recurring commissions approved.

14. Will I Really Get the Recurring Commission Forever?

Yes. You’ll receive recurring commissions for the lifetime of the customer. We only stop paying the recurring commission if the referred customer cancels their WordPress plan and/or stops using Application Hosting and Database Hosting.

15. My Customer Upgraded Their Plan. Will My Recurring Commission Increase?

Yes. Your recurring commission will be raised when the payments that your referred customer makes to Kinsta are increased. 

For referrals of Managed WordPress Hosting, recurring commissions are always adjusted when a customer upgrades, downgrades, or makes any other plan change, so they are equivalent to 10% of the customer’s new plan’s price. 

When switching between billing intervals, we’ll calculate the day period the customer was on each plan and prorate. Here are some example calculations.

For referrals of Application Hosting and/or Database Hosting, recurring commissions are always adjusted so they’re equivalent to 5% of the customer’s payment.

16. Is There an Alternative Payment Method to PayPal?

No. At this time, Paypal is the only payment method available to receive your commissions.

17. How Does the Recurring Commission Work for Yearly Plans?

Recurring commissions earned from referrals of customers on yearly WordPress plans are paid monthly. We take the yearly fee paid by the customer, calculate the proportional monthly commission, and release the amount due each month.

Promotional Methods and Affiliate Terms

18. Am I Allowed to Run Paid Ads?

Affiliates cannot bid (in regards to online advertising, including but not limited to pay-per-click or pay-per-impression campaigns) on any keywords or phrases containing Kinsta branded terms and cannot include Kinsta’s affiliate links in paid ads that impersonate our brand. See our affiliate terms for more details.

We don’t have any objections if you run paid ads (without using Kinsta branded terms) to drive traffic to a page on your site that contains a Kinsta affiliate link.

19. Can I Get an Exclusive Discount?

No. At Kinsta, we don’t provide exclusive discounts to specific affiliate partners. Moreover, we don’t have any coupon codes or deals available for potential clients. Learn more about our business approach to coupons. As per our affiliate terms, we prohibit the use of coupons and references to non-existing discounts.

That doesn’t mean that users can’t save some money on Kinsta’s hosting services or that we don’t provide any incentives for potential clients. For a limited time, customers of Application Hosting and Database Hosting get the first $20 on us.

And see below some of our perks for Managed WordPress Hosting:

20. Can I Place My Affiliate Link on a Third-party Traffic Source?

No. Placing a Kinsta affiliate link directly on a third-party traffic source is forbidden. That includes banner exchanges, click exchanges, press releases, affiliate networks, or similar methods.

The only exceptions to this rule are video streaming platforms and open-source code repositories, in which you can add your affiliate link.

21. Can I Refer My Own Company?

No. You can’t refer yourself in any fashion. This includes any website in which you have a controlling, proprietary, or equitable interest and the company you work for.

22. Can I Buy a Plan on Behalf of a Customer?

No. The form of payment should always belong to the client, who also needs to be the owner of the MyKinsta account. Any referral where payment is made utilizing a form of payment controlled by or belonging to the affiliate would be considered a violation of our affiliate terms.

If you want to handle payments on behalf of your customer, consider hosting your client’s sites on your own Kinsta accounts and billing them separately. Learn more about managing multiple sites and user settings in MyKinsta. Keep in mind this means you would be managing your client’s hosting and wouldn’t get affiliate commissions. If you are an agency interested in this type of model, check out our Agency Partner Program.

Join the program now and start earning with Kinsta today!