Your Free Local WordPress Development Suite
Design, develop, and deploy WordPress sites from the comfort of your local machine. DevKinsta is free forever, and available for macOS, Windows, and Ubuntu. Used by 60,000+ developers, web designers, and freelancers.
What does DevKinsta do?
DevKinsta makes local site creation and development quick and easy. Spin up a single or Multisite WordPress site with Nginx, MariaDB, and more with a single click. Take advantage of local database and email management tools to develop themes, plugins, and custom sites, all on your local machine. When you’re ready to go live, push your site directly to Kinsta.
Local WordPress development for everyone
For developers, DevKinsta offers a local environment for developing WordPress themes, plugins, and more. DevKinsta is powered by Docker, which means your local WordPress sites are isolated and secured through containerization. Compared to VirtualBox, a virtualization technology used by other local development apps, Docker has a lower resource footprint and near-native performance.
For agencies, DevKinsta lets you test plugin and theme updates for your clients locally to avoid site-breaking changes in production. Copy down client sites and work on them locally. When you’re done, push changes to Kinsta with a single click. You can clone local sites to use as a basis for other sites or experiment with something new.
For designers, DevKinsta offers a local, secure, and fast environment for designing your sites, templates, themes. Debug HTML, CSS, and JavaScript through your local browser. Clone local sites for non-destructive testing, or starting off point for other projects.
For freelancers, DevKinsta lets you create, copy down, and edit WordPress local installs quickly and intuitively. Troubleshoot client sites offline and then push your work directly to a Kinsta staging environment then on to a live production site. Clone local sites for testing or as a basis for other projects.
What are users saying about DevKinsta?
DevKinsta is a great tool for streamlining your workflow when you’re developing and testing WordPress sites, themes, and plugins locally. If you’ve never worked on a WordPress site locally because you think it’s too complicated or you don’t understand the benefits, it’s definitely worth downloading DevKinsta and giving it a whirl.
When designing and developing our WordPress themes and plugins, we want to be able to focus on our actual work, as much as possible. If we can automate setting up the working environment, we can then invest the extra time and energy into our product. This is what DevKinsta makes possible.
DevKinsta simplifies the entire process of local WordPress development for developers. Compared to other tools, DevKinsta offers many features that make it the best of its kind.
DevKinsta makes it effortless for users with varying levels of technical and development expertise to set up as many local WordPress websites as possible. While we’re excited to see what features it adds down the line, for now it’s a solid option if you need a tool that enables you to get sites up and running quickly.
It’s easy to get started, free and available to everyone! I was able to create a local WordPress website in 10 minutes!
I could actually see myself using this on a day-to-day basis. In short, I am sold. DevKinsta is a tool all WordPress developers should at least spin up once.
Being able to pull sites hosted with Kinsta, push them to staging, and create a local environment has made my life so much easier. Reviewing plugins/themes and endlessly putting them on domains is now a thing of the past. Even if you’re not hosting with Kinsta, I’d recommend the tool.
DevKinsta offers an easy way to create and manage your site. What’s more, you can push it live to your Kinsta server with a single click.
I tried it… and loved it! I was still setting up my local environment using XAMPP, like a caveman! It’s a game-changer for me.
My first impression: DevKinsta is super quick and easy. I was able to create multiple sites including HTTPS setup in no time. Hardly took ~2 min to create multiple sites with nice user interface.
The neat and shiny user interface of DevKinsta lets you create a new WordPress site, import an existing site, or create a custom site. So if you are looking to find an alternative for the Local, I would highly recommend you to take a look at this new amazing tool.
Given these are the brains behind a premium managed WordPress hosting – it’s pretty exciting to see the Kinsta team offering a free solution to make developers’ lives easier.
DevKinsta comes with many useful and amazing features that make it way better than almost all other local WordPress development tools.
I tried the Kinsta dev tool. First reaction: In comparison with Local by Flywheel it’s so much easier to install and 100% faster…
If you’re a Kinsta customer, you’ll love the added convenience DevKinsta provides. There’s no need to mess with complicated export plugins. This will seriously streamline your workflow.
One-click WordPress site creation
Launch WordPress sites, including multisites, with a single click! Every DevKinsta site is powered by a modern hosting stack plus the latest version of WordPress Core. You’ll also get access to powerful tools like a built-in database manager, SMTP server, WP_DEBUG toggle, WP auto-updates toggle, site cloning, and more.
PHP 7.x and 8.x support
Use DevKinsta to test your site with the latest version of PHP in a safe environment. DevKinsta supports PHP 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2 and 8.3, and you can switch versions with just a few clicks. If your project is tied to a specific PHP version, DevKinsta lets you choose a version for your site.
Local email management
DevKinsta ships with a powerful SMTP server and email testing tool. Catch and inspect outgoing emails to debug contact forms, marketing automations, site notifications, and more!
Built-in database manager
DevKinsta includes Adminer, a lightweight database management tool. Use Adminer to edit WordPress database tables, execute SQL queries, and more.
Seamless integration with MyKinsta
Create a MyKinsta account right from the app. Download your live site, work on it offline, and push it back to your Kinsta staging environment. Full integration with MyKinsta means you can easily merge DevKinsta into your current workflow.
A community of WordPress experts
As a tool built for website, plugin, and theme developers, DevKinsta is built for a robust community of WordPress users worldwide. Join our community forum to exchange with others, provide feedback, and contribute to shaping the future of DevKinsta.
Powered by Docker
DevKinsta leverages the power of Docker to create a secure and fast local WordPress development experience. With Docker, your local site’s hosting stack is automatically containerized and optimized for security and near-native performance no matter what host OS you’re running.
Available for macOS, Windows, and Linux in 10 languages
DevKinsta is available as a free download for macOS, Windows, and Linux/Ubuntu. In addition to English, DevKinsta also supports French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, German, Italian, Japanese, Swedish, and Danish.
Webinar: How to Install and Use DevKinsta
Do you need help with installing and using DevKinsta? Check out our webinar created by a developer, for developers. Our webinar runs frequently, so find a time that fits your schedule and register now!