Kinsta is a single managed WordPress platform, while Cloudways is a management layer over your choice of cloud VPS. The useful comparison is architecture, bundled services, and the costs that appear as usage grows.
Kinsta Single is $35/month or $30/month annually for one WordPress install, 10GB storage, and 125GB CDN bandwidth. Multi-site plans run from WP 2 at $70 to WP 40 at $450 per month; Agency starts at $340/month.
Cloudways Flexible starts at $11/month for a DigitalOcean Micro server, billed hourly at $0.0357 in arrears. It includes 2GB RAM, one vCPU, 50GB storage, and 2TB transfer. The separate Autonomous line starts at $99/month for Growth and $199/month for Scale.
Kinsta offers visits-based and bandwidth/storage-based plans. Overage rates are $0.50 per 1,000 visits, $2/GB/month for disk, $0.05/GB for CDN bandwidth, and $0.50/GB for server bandwidth. Extreme overages can require payment or an upgrade.
Cloudways advertises unlimited visits and unlimited applications per server, but transfer remains allocated. Excess bandwidth costs $0.02–$0.12/GB depending on provider, while offsite backup storage costs $0.033/GB per server.
Kinsta includes 24/7/365 support and unlimited free migrations. Its 30-day money-back wording applies “on all other plans,” implying the promoted Single offer may be excluded.
Cloudways includes 24/7 chat, email, and ticketing. Advanced Support is a $100/month add-on for faster priority service, and only the first website migration is free. Its free trial lasts three days with no credit card.
Kinsta is a single managed stack with its own global infrastructure (29 data centers, 300+ edge locations) and bundles staging, malware removal, wildcard SSL, CDN allocation, and backups. Entry backup retention is 14 days, rising to 20–30 days on some higher plans.
Cloudways is a control-panel layer over DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS, or Google Cloud VPSs. Cloudflare Enterprise CDN starts at $4.99/domain/month, Rackspace email is $1/mailbox/month, and backup storage is separate—more infrastructure choice, but a different bundle from Kinsta.
Competitor details as of July 2026 — verify current terms on their site.
Explore our deeper Kinsta comparison, Cloudways comparison, or compare more WordPress hosts.
Kinsta’s base plan bundles more managed-platform features, then charges across visits, disk, CDN bandwidth, and server bandwidth. Large overages can prompt immediate payment or a required upgrade.
The $11 server has no visit or application cap, but backup storage, CDN, email, priority support, and provider bandwidth can add separate charges. The Autonomous Growth tier at $99/month is about nine times the Flexible entry price and includes Cloudflare Enterprise CDN. Autonomous Scale is $199/month with 250GB bandwidth, 50GB disk, and 100 PHP workers per server.
Nova is neither a visits-metered platform nor a reseller-style control panel. Every tenant runs in its own Kubernetes namespace and containers. Unlike Kinsta, Nova charges no per-visit overages; unlike Cloudways, Nova bundles CDN, backups, and support without metered add-ons.
Nova includes keyword research, content briefs, rank tracking, AI drafts, and unlimited dashboard change requests on managed plans. It also includes free 24–48 hour zero-downtime migration, daily backups to Google Cloud Storage, a Traefik plus WAF edge, and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Explore Nova managed WordPress hosting.
Nova Hosting is $49/month with no setup fee for one site, 10GB storage, 100GB bandwidth, daily backups, automatic SSL, 30 SEO audits, and 20 AI drafts per month. The Insights Pro tooling is included at no extra charge.
$1,499 setup; 50GB storage, 500GB bandwidth, daily backups with seven-day retention, email support, CDN, SSL, and heatmap analytics.
$2,499 setup; 200GB storage, 2TB bandwidth, hourly backups with 30-day retention, staging, phone support, and a 99.9% SLA.
Continuous backups with 90-day retention, 24/7 phone support, white-label branding, a dedicated account manager, and a 99.99% SLA.
| Feature | Kinsta | Cloudways | Nova |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry price | $35/mo Single ($30/mo annually) | $11/mo Flexible; billed hourly in arrears | $49/mo Nova Hosting (no setup fee) |
| Traffic model | Visits-based or bandwidth/storage-based plans | Unlimited visits and applications per server | No visits-based metering |
| Infrastructure | Single managed platform (29 data centers, 300+ edge locations) | Management layer over third-party cloud VPSs | Tenant-isolated Kubernetes namespaces and containers |
| Backups | Included; 14-day retention on entry | $0.033/GB offsite storage | Daily to GCS; hourly/continuous on higher plans |
| CDN | 125GB CDN bandwidth on Single | Cloudflare Enterprise from $4.99/domain/mo | Included |
| Support | 24/7/365 included | 24/7 chat/email/tickets; priority add-on $100/mo | Included; phone on Momentum+ |
| SEO tooling included | Research, briefs, rank tracking, and AI drafts |
Nova includes a free zero-downtime migration completed in 24–48 hours. The team handles DNS, database, media, plugins, and SSL with no separate migration fee.
Plan My MigrationNo. Cloudways is a control-panel and management layer over VPS infrastructure from DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS, or Google Cloud. Kinsta is a single managed WordPress platform with its own global infrastructure (29 data centers, 300+ edge locations). Cloudways manages the layer around the rented server, but its architecture and add-on model differ from Kinsta’s bundled platform.
Cloudways Flexible starts lower at $11/month, billed hourly, while Kinsta Single is $35/month or $30/month annually. At higher usage, Kinsta can add per-visit, storage, and bandwidth overages; Cloudways can add provider bandwidth, backup storage, CDN, email, and support charges. Actual scale cost depends on the resources and add-ons used.
Kinsta publishes plan allocations and specific overage rates, but several metrics can create charges. Cloudways bills Flexible hourly in arrears and separately meters several add-ons and provider bandwidth. Kinsta is more consolidated, while Cloudways offers more infrastructure choice with more billing components.
Kinsta Single includes 125GB of CDN bandwidth and backups retained 14 days. Cloudways charges $0.033/GB for offsite backup storage, and Cloudflare Enterprise CDN starts at $4.99 per domain per month. Those Cloudways services are separate from the $11 entry server price.
Nova isolates tenants in Kubernetes namespaces and containers, includes CDN, backups, and support without metered add-ons, and has no per-visit overage billing. It also bundles keyword research, content briefs, rank tracking, AI drafts, and unlimited dashboard change requests on managed plans.
Account for infrastructure, usage meters, and add-ons, then compare Nova’s bundled managed platform against the way your site actually operates.