WordPress Hosting

Our Support team is available to assist you 24/7. Support is provided exclusively through a chat system integrated into MyKinsta. To reach our Support team, use the chat icon in the lower right-hand corner of MyKinsta at any time. In this article, we’ll explain how our Support team can assist you as well as a few limitations that do apply.

Getting help fast

While our average initial response time is less than two minutes, you can often get help even faster from our documentation. If you have questions about how to use any of our hosting features, it’s the best place to start.

To find an answer quickly, use the Docs Assistant, available on every page of our documentation. Ask your question in your own words, and it will search our documentation for you and point you to the most relevant articles.

Kinsta has you covered

Our Support team is always happy to assist you with any of the following issues:

• Problems encountered while trying to use features of our platform, such as:
  • Site backups
  • Staging sites
  • Setting up redirects
  • Switching PHP versions
  • Configuring Force HTTPS
  • Using the MyKinsta search and replace tool
• Investigation of server error messages.
• Issues with outgoing transactional email.
• Migration of your site(s) to Kinsta. If our team is handling your migration, we’ll take care of the heavy lifting for you. If you’re migrating your own WordPress site, our Support team is always happy to help with basic migration questions but cannot assist with failed migrations after the fact.
• Investigation of duplicatable performance issues to rule out server or platform configuration as the cause of the issue. If it is determined that server or platform configuration is not the cause of the issue, we recommend using Kinsta’s APM tool to aid in identifying performance bottlenecks in your code so that you can work with a developer to address these development issues that fall outside our scope of support.
• Reverse proxy configurations are supported when you’ve purchased the Reverse Proxy Add-on from Kinsta. If you set up a reverse proxy on your own, please note that this falls outside the scope of Kinsta Support. In such cases, we recommend working with a developer to assist with the setup.

You will still need a developer

Kinsta provides a hosting platform optimized for WordPress and the tools you need to manage and run your website. However, we don’t take over development responsibilities for our clients. For this reason, there are a few things that fall out of scope for our Support team, such as:

• Changes to the appearance of your website.
• Changes to the content of your website.
• Changes to the functionality of your site’s theme and plugins.
• Optimization of your website for improved performance in search results (SEO services).
• Optimization of your database entries outside of Kinsta’s automatic database optimization.
• Optimization of your website for improved performance on website speed tests such as Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix.
• Code audits.
• Any code editing. We’re happy to help you identify a PHP file generating a fatal error and disable the problematic plugin or theme to get your site back online, but fixing the code to resolve the error is up to the developer of that specific plugin or theme.
• Migrating your site away from Kinsta to another host.
• The development, processing, or handling of the Kinsta REST API in your site.

If you need the help of a developer, you can find a trusted agency in our Agency Directory, where you can search by services, frameworks, and location.

WordPress core, plugin, and theme updates

Keeping WordPress core, plugins, and themes up to date is your responsibility, but we provide tools to make it easier and safer.

Our Support team is happy to help with:

• Setting up and using Automatic Updates, a paid add-on that updates your plugins and themes daily. Each update is checked with a visual regression test, and if a significant change is detected, your site is automatically restored from a backup taken before the update.
• Restoring a backup if an update causes problems on your site.
• Investigating server error messages that appear after an update.

The following fall outside the scope of our Support team:

• Updating WordPress core, plugins, or themes on your behalf.
• Fixing conflicts, errors, or changes in functionality caused by an update. These need to be resolved by a developer or the developer of the plugin or theme.

We always recommend taking a backup before updating your site manually, so you can roll back in one click if something goes wrong.

Site traffic and bot protection

Our Support team is happy to help you understand the traffic reaching your website and the tools available to manage it. This includes investigating specific requests that are being blocked or challenged, explaining the data in MyKinsta Analytics, and helping you use tools such as Bot Protection, IP blocking, and IP Geolocation.

Since you know your visitors and how they use your site best, decisions about which traffic to allow, challenge, or block remain your responsibility. For this reason, the following fall outside the scope of our Support team:

• Custom traffic reporting or analysis beyond the data available in MyKinsta.
• Deciding which visitors should be allowed, challenged, or blocked on your site.
• Planning, implementing, and managing traffic mitigation strategies.
• Ongoing monitoring of your site’s traffic or proactive adjustments to MyKinsta settings such as Bot Protection.

If you’re experiencing more traffic than expected, our guide to understanding your traffic and usage can help. Based on the data available in MyKinsta, we can also offer suggestions for managing your site’s traffic. However, these suggestions are a starting point, and we recommend consulting a developer or relevant specialist before making changes that affect how visitors reach your site.

Other frameworks and non-WordPress software

Our Managed WordPress Hosting plans are optimized for WordPress. While we will allow you to set up a simple non-WordPress PHP script alongside your WordPress site, we do not provide any support for non-WordPress scripts and applications.

We also offer installation of a limited number of custom server packages, such as Redis (additional fees apply). Our support for these packages is limited to installation only. Clients who request installation of these packages are responsible for integrating these packages with their WordPress websites by way of plugins or custom development work.

If you need a hosting solution for your application or database, check out Sevalla.

Feedback and testing opportunities

Kinsta occasionally offers opportunities to test and provide feedback on new features and products. Due to the nature of beta tests, investigation and communication via email may take place across several weekdays. As a reminder, beta features should be used with caution and are not intended for production use.

If in doubt, don’t hesitate to ask

We’re here to help. If you aren’t sure whether a specific issue is covered by our Support team, open a chat in MyKinsta and ask.