Kinsta vs SiteGround: Pay per Visit or Prepay a Year

The short answer: if one WordPress site carries your revenue through checkout or lead forms and stays under 35,000 visits a month, Kinsta's Single plan is $35 a month on monthly billing, the same in month thirteen as in month one; if you run several quieter sites and want mailboxes on the same bill, SiteGround GrowBig costs $59.88 for its first twelve months, paid upfront, and $29.99 a month from then on, with unlimited sites (checked on 26 October 2026 on the Kinsta pricing page and SiteGround's WordPress hosting page, USD before tax). Over two years that is 24 x $35 = $840 against $419.76. Choose Kinsta if your job is keeping one money site fast, isolated and supported, priced on its own traffic. Choose SiteGround if your job is a handful of brand, campaign or regional sites with email, staging and an AI agent under one plan.

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Kinsta bills on what a site uses: visits, or server bandwidth on its 20GB plan, with no first-year discount. SiteGround bills on a plan: a low prepaid year, then the full rate, with traffic left unmetered on the card. Neither model is cheaper in general. They are cheaper for different sites.

Before you move a single site:

1. Price your heaviest month on Kinsta. For example, a launch month with 62,000 visits on the 35,000-visit plan is 27,000 visits over, and 27 x $0.50 = $13.50, so that month costs $48.50. The rate is $0.50 per 1,000 visits in Kinsta's overage terms; SiteGround's cards list unlimited traffic on every plan (WordPress hosting).
2. Count the sites and inboxes you already have. Kinsta's email docs say its hosting plans include no email, so mail stays with Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. A second WordPress site on Kinsta is $30 a month, or WP 2 at $70 a month monthly (pricing); on GrowBig it costs nothing extra.
3. The figure that says the move paid for itself. Take four weeks of orders or form submissions per 1,000 sessions from your analytics before the move and the same four weeks after it. If speed or uptime was the reason to switch, that rate is where it shows.

What each one bills you on

Read on 26 October 2026 on the Kinsta pricing page, Kinsta's staging docs and overage terms, and SiteGround's WordPress hosting and web hosting pages.

The three differences that matter to a marketing team

One container, or one plan for many sites

Kinsta runs each site in its own isolated container and gives the account unlimited users with different permission levels, per its homepage. SiteGround gives every site its own Site Tools and lists collaborators on every plan, per its web hosting page. For one high-stakes site, isolation is the point. For six small ones, one plan is.

A flat rate with overages, or a step after year one

Kinsta's $35 does not move after the first year, but a viral month lands on the next invoice, and an upgrade made after a spike does not cancel the overage already incurred, per the overage terms. SiteGround's figure moves once, from $4.99 to $29.99, and then holds. Budget Kinsta by your busiest month and SiteGround by its second year.

Where mail goes

SiteGround's web hosting page promises as many mailboxes on your domain as you need, with spam protection and webmail. Kinsta sends a site's transactional mail, such as password resets and order receipts, through MailChannels, and recommends Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 or Zoho for mailboxes (email docs). If your team's inboxes live with the host today, a move to Kinsta is two moves.

An access audit by agent, signed off by a person

SiteGround's AI Agent for WordPress reaches any WordPress install that runs its plugin, wherever it is hosted, so one chat can audit sites on Kinsta and SiteGround together. Its security tutorial treats this audit as read-only work that needs no Power Mode.

1. Connect each site through the AI Agent by SiteGround plugin and AI Studio; the trial includes 20,000 tokens, and SiteGround hosting clients get the same allowance every month (AI agent page).
2. Ask the agent to list every user with the Administrator role across all connected sites, with username, email, registration date, last login and site, and to flag any account whose email domain does not match yours.
3. The human check: the site owner confirms each unfamiliar admin with the agencies and contractors who have access before anything changes. The tutorial's order is to demote an unknown account to Subscriber, reset its password and change its email to one you control, and only then delete it, with a malware scan first; the agent does not scan files or run a firewall.

Kinsta suits you when

• One site earns the money, and an hour of downtime has a price.
• Traffic is steady and known, or you can live with an overage in a launch month.
• Mailboxes already sit with Google or Microsoft.

SiteGround suits you when

• Several smaller sites share one budget line.
• Email, staging and daily backups should come with the hosting.
• Someone on the team will use an AI agent for routine WordPress work.

The Kinsta entry and the SiteGround entry cover plans and add-ons; how to use Kinsta sets up plugin updates with visual checks.

The free month, and the toggle behind it

Start free on both. Kinsta gives the first month free on Single 35k, Single 20GB, WP 2 and Launch, and its 30-day money-back guarantee then runs from the renewal date, per its money-back terms; let Kinsta's team copy the site over, then check the usage chart on the MyKinsta dashboard in the last week of the free month. SiteGround's AI Studio trial runs on whatever host you use now, and its hosting carries a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Read the Kinsta card before you click Sign Up. The pricing page loads with annual billing selected, where the Single plan reads "Pay $0 today, $350 after the first month"; switch to monthly and the same card reads $35 after the first month. The free month is real, and the setting it opens on turns its last day into a full year paid to Kinsta in one charge, so pick monthly if the month is a test.

If the admin list in the audit shows accounts nobody can place, spread over sites at three hosts, the hosting choice comes after a bigger question about who owns the stack. A one-week stack review maps who owns which account; mine is the Startup Fixer, which I sell, and it belongs before any site moves, not after.

FAQ

Does Kinsta include email?

No. Its email docs say hosting plans include no email; transactional mail from the site is supported on production and staging.

What does a second site cost on Kinsta?

$30 a month as an extra site on the Single plan, or WP 2 at $70 a month on monthly billing and $59 a month billed annually, per the pricing page, checked on 26 October 2026.

Does SiteGround cap monthly visits?

Its plan cards list unlimited traffic on StartUp, GrowBig and GoGeek, and cap storage instead, at 10 GB, 50 GB and 100 GB (WordPress hosting page).