Add-Ons

Kinsta offers a number of add-ons to help you get the most out of your WordPress site. You can view and manage all of your add-ons from within MyKinsta > WordPress sites > sitename > Add-ons.

Disk space add-on

Some WordPress sites, by necessity, are a bit “heavy,” meaning they contain a lot of large files. In some industries, photography, for example, you may need to host high-resolution photos. While you can offload these to a file storage service like Google Cloud or Amazon S3, this isn’t always easy or convenient.

Another common pain point we see for agencies and developers is that you may only have one or two clients that need most of your plan’s disk space.

All hosting plans at Kinsta include a set amount of SSD disk space, you can check your total disk space usage on the Resource usage chart on the Dashboard in MyKinsta. If you exceed your plan’s disk space allocation, we charge an overage fee. With our disk space add-on, you can increase your hosting plan’s storage space without upgrading your plan or incurring overage fees.

To add the disk space add-on, within Add-ons, under Disk space, click Enable. The disk space add-on can be purchased in 20 GB increments at $20/month per hosting plan. You can purchase as many of these add-ons as you want. Choose how much additional disk space you would like to add, and click Continue.

You can also add the disk space add-on by going to your username > Company settings > My Plan, and within Disk space, click Enable.

For example, if you’re on the WP 5 plan at $115/month and purchase one disk space add-on, your monthly bill would be $135/month. The plan already comes with 30 GB, so you would then have a total of 50 GB of available disk space. If you purchase two add-ons, your bill would be $155/month, with a total of 70 GB of available disk space.

Disk space add-ons are automatically prorated, and the subscription will appear on your next billing cycle.

Change the Disk space add-on

To modify the disk space add-on, navigate to WordPress sites > sitename > Add-ons, and under the Disk space section, click Change. You can modify the number of add-ons or remove the add-on altogether by reducing the quantity to zero, then click Continue.

Remove the disk space add-on

To remove the disk space add-on, within Add-ons, under Disk space, click Disable > Disable.

Any actions related to adding, removing, or changing the disk space add-on are recorded in the MyKinsta Activity Log.

If you remove the disk space add-on and you’re in the first 30 days of your WordPress Hosting plan, a prorated fee for the add-on will be added to your next invoice for the time period it was enabled. If your WordPress Hosting plan has been active for more than 30 days, you will receive a prorated credit for the add-on fees to your Account Balance for the remaining days of the current billing period. The credit is automatically used to offset money owed to Kinsta on your next invoice. For more information, refer to our WordPress Hosting Money-Back Guarantee.

Premium staging environments add-on

If you want to add additional staging environments, need a staging environment that more closely matches your live environment, or need to do resource-intensive site testing or development, you can purchase a Premium Staging Environment add-on.

You can add up to five Premium Staging Environments to each WordPress site. While a Standard Staging Environment will still work for most testing, using a Premium Staging Environment is ideal for resource-intensive site testing or development.

Each Premium Staging Environment has 12 CPUs, 8 GB of Memory, and the same number of PHP threads you have for your live site (based on your plan). You can also turn on Kinsta CDN for a Premium Staging Environment. With a testing environment that closely matches your live environment, you can also perform website speed tests on your test site.

The Premium Staging Environment add-on can be purchased for $20/month per site (prorated). You can purchase up to 5 premium staging add-ons per site. Each Premium Staging Environment add-on is automatically prorated, and the subscription will appear on your next billing cycle. Including the free Standard Staging Environment, this allows you to have a total of 6 environments for testing and development that are completely separate from your live site.

To add a premium staging environment, within Add-ons, under Premium Staging Environments, click Create new environment and follow the steps to Create WordPress Standard or Premium Staging Environment.

Remove the Premium staging environments add-on

To remove a premium staging environment add-on, you must delete the staging environment.

If you remove the premium staging environment add-on and you’re in the first 30 days of your WordPress Hosting plan, a prorated fee for the add-on will be added to your next invoice for the time period it was enabled. If your WordPress Hosting plan has been active for more than 30 days, you will receive a prorated credit for the add-on fees to your Account Balance for the remaining days of the current billing period. The credit is automatically used to offset money owed to Kinsta on your next invoice. For more information, refer to our WordPress Hosting Money-Back Guarantee.

PHP performance add-on

The PHP performance add-on allows you to increase your total PHP memory pool, the number of PHP threads, and the PHP memory limit. You can also view and change your PHP performance within WordPress sites > sitename > Info > PHP performance.

To purchase this add-on, click Change on the Add-ons page under PHP performance.

This shows your Total memory pool in your current plan. The memory pool is the total PHP memory distributed across your PHP threads. For example, if you have 4 PHP threads and a total memory pool of 2GB, the PHP memory limit for each PHP thread would be 512MB.

You can change the Total memory pool to increase the total amount of memory distributed across the PHP threads. You can also use the slider to add:

• More threads: You can move the slider towards this to increase the number of PHP threads for your site. When you increase the number of threads, the PHP memory is automatically distributed across the higher number of threads, this may mean you have less memory per thread. For example, if you have 16 threads with a total memory pool of 2 GB, the PHP memory limit for each thread is 128MB. If you increase the threads to 32 but keep the memory pool the same, the PHP memory limit for each thread will be 64MB.
  Note: If you use WooCommerce, you should ensure the memory per thread is at least 128 MB. If it is lower than this, your site may experience downtime and errors.
  More threads allow your site to handle multiple incoming requests simultaneously. However, with less memory per thread, memory-intensive tasks like large database queries or media uploads may exceed the available memory, leading to errors. This is important to consider when configuring your site.
  Dynamic sites that generate content in real-time, such as e-commerce platforms, CMS-driven websites, or forums, are more likely to benefit from having more threads. Static sites that display fixed content, such as blogs, documentation, or brochure-style websites, generally don’t benefit from additional PHP threads, as their content rarely changes and requires minimal server processing.
  You can reduce thread usage by enabling caching and optimizing your code. For more details on minimizing thread usage, refer to Reduce and optimize PHP thread usage.
• More memory: You can move the slider towards this to increase the PHP memory limit per thread; however, if you don’t increase the PHP memory pool, the number of PHP threads available will be reduced. The maximum memory limit per thread is 1024MB. For example, if you have 16 threads with a total memory pool of 2 GB, the PHP memory limit for each thread is 128MB. If you increase the memory limit but keep the memory pool the same, this reduces the PHP threads to 2, and the PHP memory limit per thread will be 1024MB.
  More memory allows your site to handle more memory-intensive tasks. However, if you have fewer threads this reduces the number of incoming requests your site can handle simultaneously.

As you change the values, the image below the slider shows the updated values and how they are distributed between the threads and memory.

When you’re happy with the thread and memory allocation, click Continue. If you have increased the memory pool, this creates a PHP performance add-on; the price details are shown on the next screen. The subscription will appear on your next billing cycle and is automatically prorated for your current billing period.

Note: Since this add-on is prorated, you can temporarily increase the total memory pool, threads, or memory if you’re anticipating high traffic for events like Black Friday or Cyber Monday. After the event, you can revert to the original settings, and you’ll only be charged for the days the add-on was active.

If you reduce the memory pool to remove the PHP performance add-on and you’re in the first 30 days of your WordPress Hosting plan, a prorated fee for the add-on will be added to your next invoice for the time period it was enabled. If your WordPress Hosting plan has been active for more than 30 days, you will receive a prorated credit for the add-on fees to your Account Balance for the remaining days of the current billing period. The credit is automatically used to offset money owed to Kinsta on your next invoice. For more information, refer to our WordPress Hosting Money-Back Guarantee.

Pool, threads, and memory distribution values

The tables below show the distribution options available for the memory and threads based on the value of the total memory pool:

512MB memory pool

PHP threads	Memory per thread
2	256MB
4	128MB
8	64MB

1GB memory pool

PHP threads	Memory per thread
2	512MB
4	256MB
8	128MB
16	64MB

1.5GB memory pool

PHP threads	Memory per thread
3	512MB
6	256MB
12	128MB
24	64MB

2GB memory pool

PHP threads	Memory per thread
2	1024MB
4	512MB
8	256MB
16	128MB
32	64MB

2.5GB memory pool

PHP threads	Memory per thread
2	1024MB
5	512MB
10	256MB
20	128MB

3GB memory pool

PHP threads	Memory per thread
3	1024MB
6	512MB
12	256MB
24	128MB

3.5GB memory pool

PHP threads	Memory per thread
7	512MB
14	256MB
28	128MB

4GB memory pool

PHP threads	Memory per thread
2	2048MB
4	1024MB
8	512MB
16	256MB
32	128MB

If you require more PHP threads or a higher memory limit per thread, we recommend using a dedicated server.

Remove the PHP performance add-on

To remove the PHP performance add-on from all sites, go to your username > Company settings > My Plan, and click Remove within PHP performance.

This resets all of the sites back to the original PHP memory and threads included in your plan. The confirmation window shows which sites the add-on will be removed from and what the memory pool will be reset to. To confirm the removal, click Remove PHP performance add-on.

To remove the PHP performance add-on for an individual site, you can change the PHP performance and reduce the Total memory pool to the default value included in your plan. You can also remove the add-on for all sites that have it enabled within your username > Company settings and on the PHP performance section, click Remove.

The confirmation window shows which sites the add-on will be removed from and what the PHP memory pool, thread count, and memory per thread will be reset to. To confirm the removal, click Remove PHP performance add-on.

If you’re in the first 30 days of your WordPress Hosting plan, a prorated fee for the add-on will be added to your next invoice for the time period it was enabled. If your WordPress Hosting plan has been active for more than 30 days, you will receive a prorated credit for the add-on fees to your Account Balance for the remaining days of the current billing period. The credit is automatically used to offset money owed to Kinsta on your next invoice. For more information, refer to our WordPress Hosting Money-Back Guarantee.

PHP memory limit add-on

This add-on increases the memory limit from 256MB to 512MB at a cost of $50 per site per month. To view the add-on within MyKinsta, go to WordPress sites > sitename > Add-ons > PHP memory.

Remove the PHP memory limit add-on

To remove this add-on, within the Add-ons page, under PHP memory, click Change > Open chat. This opens up a new chat with our Account Management team, who will remove the add-on for you.

If you remove the PHP memory limit add-on and you’re in the first 30 days of your WordPress Hosting plan, a prorated fee for the add-on will be added to your next invoice for the time period it was enabled. If your WordPress Hosting plan has been active for more than 30 days, you will receive a prorated credit for the add-on fees to your Account Balance for the remaining days of the current billing period. The credit is automatically used to offset money owed to Kinsta on your next invoice. For more information, refer to our WordPress Hosting Money-Back Guarantee.

Kinsta Automatic Updates

With Kinsta, you can enable auto-updates for your plugins and themes for each individual site with either:

• WordPress auto-updates: WordPress automatically installs plugin and theme updates twice daily. It does not run a regression test, so it cannot identify whether an updated plugin or theme causes issues.
•  Kinsta Automatic Updates: Kinsta provides automatic daily updates for plugins and themes, which is free for the first month and just $3 per environment per month thereafter. Note: The first month of Kinsta Automatic Updates is free for all plans. If you’re on a Single 35k or WP2 plan, you also get your first month of hosting free. These free periods run separately, meaning if you enable Kinsta Automatic Updates on day 15 of your plan, you’ll still receive a full month of free updates.
  All plugins and themes are updated for your site even if they are inactive, and any newly installed plugin or theme is seamlessly added to Kinsta’s Automatic Updates, ensuring you stay protected against vulnerabilities without any extra effort.
  In addition, Kinsta performs a visual regression test on your site, comparing your homepage and four other randomly selected pages from your sitemap before and after the update. This helps detect any significant differences caused by the update. If an issue is identified, Kinsta automatically restores a backup taken prior to the update, ensuring your site remains stable and secure. These backups are available for three days within Backups > System-generated, with a note specifying which plugin was updated when the backup was taken.
  Kinsta uses ScreenshotOne to capture and compare screenshots before and after the update. These screenshots, along with images highlighting any differences, are securely stored for 60 days. If your domain has strict security rules that block requests from unknown origins, you may need to configure an allowlist to enable these screenshots. You have two options to achieve this:
  1. Set up a rule that permits requests containing the User-Agent:kinsta-bot header.
  2. Allow traffic from ScreenshotOne IP address ranges.

To enable automatic updates, click Change. You can also enable automatic updates within WordPress sites > sitename > Plugins and themes > Automatic updates > Change.

You can also enable auto-updates for your plugins and themes for multiple sites including staging sites, simultaneously from the WordPress Sites page. Select the checkboxes next to the sites you want to enable auto-updates for, click Actions, and choose Change automatic updates.

Select WordPress auto-updates and click Change automatic updates or select Kinsta Automatic Updates and click Continue.

If you select Kinsta Automatic Updates, you can define the following settings:

• Time window: When you want the updates to occur on your site.
  
• Sensitivity: This controls how strict the visual regression test is. This test compares each pixel in two images based on color and brightness, with the sensitivity setting determining the threshold for acceptable differences. It uses images of the homepage plus four random pages or images from the Test URLs if defined. Lower sensitivity allows minor differences to be ignored, while higher sensitivity is more likely to detect even subtle changes but may also increase the chances of false positives.
• Test URLs: Define up to five URLs on your website to test after each update. The test will compare the differences in the images from these URLs before and after the update and the Sensitivity level determines how strict the test is. If left blank, the test will compare your site’s homepage plus four random pages.
• Enable WordPress maintenance mode: Select this option to display a maintenance page when the updates are running. The maintenance page only appears while the updates are running and not for the entire duration of the Time window.

When you have selected the required options, click Continue. You can change any of these options at any time within Settings.

This creates a Kinsta Automatic Updates add-on; the price details are shown on the next screen, to confirm the add-on, click Change automatic updates. The subscription will appear on your next billing cycle and is automatically prorated for your current billing period.

When an update is identified and installed, it appears within Plugins and themes > Kinsta Automatic Updates.

Click Details to view the information about which plugin and theme updates were successful or failed and how many did not have an update or were excluded. For any successful or failed updates, you can click on the plugin or theme name to show the screenshots taken before and after the update and any images highlighting differences. These screenshots are stored for 60 days.

Exclude or change automatic updates for a single plugin or theme

To exclude or change automatic updates for a single plugin or theme, click the kebab (three-dot menu) on that item and click Change auto updates. 

Select the required option and click Change automatic updates.

Automatic update settings

If you want to change any of the settings for Kinsta’s automatic updates, click Settings.

You can change the following:

• Time window: When you want the updates to occur on your site.
  
• Sensitivity: This controls how strict the visual regression test is. This test compares each pixel in two images based on color and brightness, with the sensitivity setting determining the threshold for acceptable differences. It uses images of the homepage plus four random pages or images from the Test URLs if defined. Lower sensitivity allows minor differences to be ignored, while higher sensitivity is more likely to detect even subtle changes but may also increase the chances of false positives.
• Test URLs: Define up to five URLs on your website to test after each update. The test will compare the differences in the images from these URLs before and after the update and the Sensitivity level determines how strict the test is. If left blank, the test will compare your site’s homepage plus four random pages.
• Enable WordPress maintenance mode: Select this option to display a maintenance page when the updates are running. The maintenance page only appears while the updates are running and not for the entire duration of the Time window.

When you’ve made the changes, click Save settings.

Automatic update notifications

You can set up email notifications for failed or successful updates within your username > User settings > Notifications.

Disable automatic updates

You can disable automatic updates within WordPress sites > sitename > Plugins and themes > Automatic updates > Change. Select Disable and click Change automatic updates.

You can also disable auto-updates for your plugins and themes for multiple sites including staging sites, simultaneously from the WordPress Sites page. Select the checkboxes next to the sites you want to enable auto-updates for, click Actions, and choose Change automatic updates.

If you have enabled Kinsta Automatic Updates, this removes the add-on. The first month is completely free, so if you cancel within that time, you won’t incur any charges for the add-on. After the free month, if you cancel, you’ll receive a prorated credit for the unused days of the current billing period. This credit will be automatically applied to your account balance and used toward your next Kinsta invoice. For more information, refer to our WordPress Hosting Money-Back Guarantee.

Reverse proxy add-on

When you use a reverse proxy, you can serve multiple sites or applications from a single domain regardless of where they are hosted. Using a reverse proxy also keeps the sites separate so they don’t share the same resources.

Reverse proxies can be complex to install, configure, and support; if your main site and subsite (proxied site) are hosted on Kinsta, you can purchase the Reverse proxy add-on for $50 per month per site, and the Kinsta support team will set up the reverse proxy for you.

To purchase this add-on, click Change on the Add-ons page under Reverse proxy. This opens a modal with the pricing and information about what happens next. To go ahead with the add-on, click Open chat; this opens up a new chat with our Support team, who will set up the add-on for you.

Remove the Reverse proxy add-on

To remove this add-on, within the Add-ons page, under Reverse proxy, click Change > Open chat. This opens up a new chat with our support team, who will remove the add-on for you.

If you remove the reverse proxy add-on and you’re in the first 30 days of your WordPress Hosting plan, a prorated fee for the add-on will be added to your next invoice for the time period it was enabled. If your WordPress Hosting plan has been active for more than 30 days, you will receive a prorated credit for the add-on fees to your Account Balance for the remaining days of the current billing period. The credit is automatically used to offset money owed to Kinsta on your next invoice. For more information, refer to our WordPress Hosting Money-Back Guarantee.

Redis caching add-on

Redis caching stores values generated by WordPress’ native object cache in a persistent manner so that cached objects can be reused between page loads. This can reduce the load on your site’s database, decrease response time, and increase the site’s ability to handle additional traffic. Redis caching is available within MyKinsta as an add-on for your site at $100 per month per site.

To purchase this add-on, click Enable on the Add-ons page under Redis caching. This opens a modal with the pricing and information about what happens next. To proceed with the add-on, click Enable Redis add-on. The add-on will appear on your next invoice.

Remove the Redis caching add-on

To remove this add-on, within the Add-ons page, under Redis caching, click Disable > Disable Redis add-on.

If you remove the Redis caching add-on and you’re in the first 30 days of your WordPress Hosting plan, a prorated fee for the add-on will be added to your next invoice for the time period it was enabled. If your WordPress Hosting plan has been active for more than 30 days, you will receive a prorated credit for the add-on fees to your Account Balance for the remaining days of the current billing period. The credit is automatically used to offset money owed to Kinsta on your next invoice. For more information, refer to our WordPress Hosting Money-Back Guarantee.

Hourly backups add-on

If your site changes frequently and you need additional restore points, you can purchase the Hourly backups add-on, which gives you 2 options:

• 6-hour backups at $20 per month per site; a backup is created every 6 hours and is available for 24 hours.
• Hourly backups at $100 per month per site; a backup is created every hour and is available for 24 hours.

To add the Hourly backups add-on, within the Add-ons page, under Hourly backups, click Enable and follow the steps to Enable Hourly Backups.

Change or remove the Hourly backups add-on

You can upgrade or downgrade the frequency of the backups or cancel the add-on within WordPress sites > sitename > Backups > Hourly. To change the frequency, click Change plan, or to cancel the add-on, click Disable.

If you disable the add-on, backups that are currently available will be deleted.

If you remove the hourly backups add-on and you’re in the first 30 days of your WordPress Hosting plan, a prorated fee for the add-on will be added to your next invoice for the time period it was enabled. If your WordPress Hosting plan has been active for more than 30 days, you will receive a prorated credit for the add-on fees to your Account Balance for the remaining days of the current billing period. The credit is automatically used to offset money owed to Kinsta on your next invoice. For more information, refer to our WordPress Hosting Money-Back Guarantee.

External backups add-on

If you want to back up your WordPress site to Google Cloud Storage or Amazon S3, you can purchase the External backups add-on. External backups can be configured for either weekly or monthly frequency, and you can choose between backing up your files, WordPress database, or both. The external backups add-on costs $2 per month per backup plus $1 per GB per month for bandwidth. For example, if you have one site that you back up monthly, that uses 10 GB of external bandwidth, this would cost $12 per month.

To add the External backups add-on, within the Add-ons page, under External backups, click Enable and follow the steps for either External Backups Add-On with Google Cloud Storage or External Backups Add-on With Amazon S3.

Remove the external backups add-on

To remove (and stop) the external backups add-on, go to WordPress Sites > sitename > Backups > External > Disable. To confirm the removal of the external backups add-on, click Remove backups.

This removes access to the backups from MyKinsta; it does not remove the backups from your Google Cloud or Amazon S3 storage.

If you remove the external backups add-on and you’re in the first 30 days of your WordPress Hosting plan, a prorated fee for the add-on will be added to your next invoice for the time period it was enabled. If your WordPress Hosting plan has been active for more than 30 days, you will receive a prorated credit for the add-on fees to your Account Balance for the remaining days of the current billing period. The credit is automatically used to offset money owed to Kinsta on your next invoice. For more information, refer to our WordPress Hosting Money-Back Guarantee.

WordPress site add-on

The WordPress site add-on allows you to increase the number of sites in your plan without upgrading the plan. Each additional site includes a staging environment and is charged at $30 per month. The add-on does not include additional disk space. Resources like visits, disk space, and CDN usage are shared across all sites within the plan. For example, with a WP 2 plan, if you purchase the add-on for an additional site, the 70,000 visits, 20GB of disk space, and 250GB of CDN usage will be distributed among all three sites.

This is available within your username > Company settings > My Plan > WordPress sites. When you upgrade or change your plan, any site add-ons you have will be retained, even if the new plan includes more sites by default. For example, if you’re on the Single 35k plan with a site add-on and you upgrade to the WP 2 plan, which includes two sites, the site add-on will still apply, giving you a total of three sites. If you no longer require the site add-on, you must disable it.

Add sites

To add a site, within MyKinsta, click your username > Company settings > My Plan, and within WordPress sites, click Enable.

Enter the number of additional WordPress sites you want to add, and click Continue.

Review the price details and click Enable WordPress site add-on.

WordPress site add-ons are automatically prorated, and the subscription will appear on your next billing cycle.

Change the number of sites

If you want to reduce the number of sites within the WordPress site add-on, you must first delete the sites you no longer need within WordPress Sites > sitename > Info > Delete site. Deleting a site removes all sites, databases, and staging environments for that site.

To change the WordPress site add-on, within MyKinsta, click your username > Company settings > My Plan, and within WordPress sites, click Change.

Increase or decrease the quantity and click Continue.

If you increase or decrease the number of sites, the new price details are shown. If you change the quantity to zero, the add-on is disabled. To confirm the changes, click Change WordPress site add-on.

If you reduce the number of sites or change the quantity to zero, and you’re in the first 30 days of your WordPress Hosting plan, a prorated fee for the add-on will be added to your next invoice for the time period it was enabled. If your WordPress Hosting plan has been active for more than 30 days, you will receive a prorated credit for the add-on fees to your Account Balance for the remaining days of the current billing period. The credit is automatically used to offset money owed to Kinsta on your next invoice. For more information, refer to our WordPress Hosting Money-Back Guarantee.

Disable the WordPress site add-on

If you want to disable the WordPress site add-on, you must first delete the sites you no longer need within WordPress Sites > sitename > Info > Delete site. Deleting a site removes all sites, databases, and staging environments for that site.

To disable the WordPress site add-on, within MyKinsta, click your username > Company settings > My Plan, and within WordPress sites, click Disable.

To confirm you want to disable the add-on, click Disable.

If you disable the WordPress site add-on and you’re in the first 30 days of your WordPress Hosting plan, a prorated fee for the add-on will be added to your next invoice for the time period it was enabled. If your WordPress Hosting plan has been active for more than 30 days, you will receive a prorated credit for the add-on fees to your Account Balance for the remaining days of the current billing period. The credit is automatically used to offset money owed to Kinsta on your next invoice. For more information, refer to our WordPress Hosting Money-Back Guarantee.