The single-site plans a course owner will compare
Kinsta sells single-site plans in two flavours at the same price: visit-based (35k, 65k and so on) or bandwidth-based (20GB, 40GB and so on). The table pairs the visit-based plans with the PHP thread counts from Kinsta’s PHP documentation. Prices are regular rates in USD before tax; the pricing page also showed a first-month promotion on some plans.
There is also a Launch plan at $35 per month ($30 on annual billing) for one install with 15 GB bandwidth, an estimated 75,000 visits, 15 GB storage, 125 GB CDN and 14-day backups. The PHP documentation table did not let us confirm the thread count for Launch, so ask before choosing it for logged-in traffic.
| Plan | Monthly / annual per month | Visits per month | Storage | PHP threads | Backup retention |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single 35k | $35 / $30 | 35,000 | 10 GB | 2 | 14 days |
| Single 65k | $50 / $42 | 65,000 | 10 GB | 4 | 14 days |
| Single 125k | $90 / $75 | 125,000 | 10 GB | 6 | 14 days |
| Single 315k | $170 / $142 | 315,000 | 10 GB | 6 | 14 days |
| Single 500k | $290 / $242 | 500,000 | 15 GB | 8 | 20 days |
| Single 750k | $375 / $313 | 750,000 | 15 GB | 8 | 20 days |
Logged-in performance: what the cache does not cover
Kinsta’s edge caching documentation says the dashboard, forums, cart pages and anywhere a user is logged in automatically bypass caching, and that responses which set a cookie are not edge cached. For a course site, that means lesson pages, quizzes, progress updates and the member dashboard run through PHP on every request.
Kinsta’s PHP documentation explains that cached content does not need a PHP thread, and that when threads stay busy for longer the site can slow down or return 503 or 504 errors. As illustrative arithmetic, not a measurement: if an uncached lesson page takes half a second of PHP time, 2 threads can finish roughly four such requests per second before requests queue. Twenty students submitting a quiz in the same few seconds will notice the difference between 2 and 4 threads.
Kinsta sells a Redis object cache add-on at $100 per month per site with a dedicated 2 GB instance, and its documentation names membership sites and WooCommerce stores as the kind of dynamic site that benefits most. On a small course site, compare that $100 with the cost of moving up a plan tier for more threads; they solve different bottlenecks.
How visits are metered and what overages cost
Kinsta counts visits as the sum of unique IP addresses seen in each 24-hour period in its logs. A student who opens ten lessons in a day from one connection counts once that day; a cohort of students behind one office or campus IP can also count once. Visits are not the same as unique IPs in the access log, because that log excludes edge-cached requests.
Plan limit alerts are on by default: visits alert at 80% and 100% of the plan and again when you exceed it by 10%, and bandwidth and disk alert at 80% and 100%. Upgrading does not reset alerts for that billing cycle. You can switch a plan to bandwidth-based billing if your traffic is many visitors who each view little.
| Overage | Rate | Worked example |
|---|---|---|
| Visits (visit-based plans) | $0.50 per 1,000 visits | 40,000 visits on Single 35k: 5,000 over, $2.50 |
| Bandwidth (bandwidth-based plans) | $0.50 per GB | 25 GB on a 20 GB plan: 5 GB over, $2.50 |
| CDN | $0.05 per GB | 150 GB of CDN on a 125 GB allowance: $1.25 |
| Disk | $2 per GB per month, prorated | 12 GB on a 10 GB plan: about $4 per month |
Staging and selective push
Each install can have a free standard staging environment with 1 CPU, 8 GB RAM and 2 PHP threads, no CDN and no edge caching. It may sleep after 24 hours of inactivity, and live cron jobs do not run on it. Premium staging is a paid add-on, up to 5 per site, and Kinsta’s staging documentation uses $20 for one month as its billing example. It has 12 CPUs, 8 GB RAM, CDN, and PHP threads that match the live environment, so it is the one to use for a load-sensitive rehearsal.
Selective push is the feature that matters most for a live membership site. You can push files only and leave the live database untouched, or push specific database tables, so a theme or plugin change made on staging does not overwrite enrollments and orders that arrived on live in the meantime.
One warning for course sites: Kinsta’s staging documentation says transactional email is enabled by default on staging. A staging copy of a membership site holds real member email addresses. Disable outgoing mail or swap addresses before you test renewals, drip schedules or quiz notifications.
Backups, migrations and support
Kinsta takes a daily automatic backup, retained for 14, 20 or 30 days depending on plan. You can add 6-hourly backups for $20 per site per month or hourly backups for $100 per site per month; both extra tiers keep those backups for 24 hours. You can create up to 5 manual backups, and a downloadable backup once per week, available for 48 hours. An external backups add-on costs $2 per month per site plus $1 per GB of bandwidth, with storage billed by Google Cloud or AWS.
The pricing page lists unlimited free migrations and 24/7 human support in 8 languages for its business plans. The pricing page we read did not state a money-back guarantee.
Verdict by site type
| Site | Verdict | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Course site with mostly public marketing pages and a modest number of active students | Good fit at Single 65k or above | Public pages edge cache; 4 threads give logged-in pages more headroom than 2 |
| Membership site with frequent simultaneous quiz or forum activity | Fit only with the right tier | Logged-in requests bypass cache; size by PHP threads, consider Redis at $100 per month |
| Site that self-hosts lesson video | Skip until video moves | Bandwidth and CDN overages apply; use a video platform |
| Single small course on a tight budget | Probably skip | Single 35k has 2 threads; a cheaper host or a VPS may suit if you can operate it |
| Owner who changes the site often and fears overwriting orders | Strong fit | Selective push of files or specific tables protects live data |
Before you buy
- Estimate peak simultaneous logged-in students and pick a plan by PHP threads, not by visits alone.
- Decide visit-based or bandwidth-based billing from your analytics.
- Plan to disable staging email before cloning a live membership site.
- Download a full backup from your current host first; Kinsta downloads are limited to one per week once you are there.
- Move lesson video to a dedicated video platform before migrating.
Questions before you decide
Does Kinsta cache pages for logged-in members?
Its edge caching documentation says anywhere a user is logged in automatically bypasses caching, so member pages are generated by PHP on each request.
How much are Kinsta visit overages?
$0.50 per 1,000 visits over the plan limit, with alerts at 80%, 100% and 10% over by default.
Does Kinsta staging send real emails?
Kinsta’s staging documentation says transactional email is enabled by default on staging, so disable it before testing with a copy of live member data.
Sources & verification
Product details and prices can change. Check the linked provider before buying.
- Kinsta: Pricing Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- Kinsta Docs: Overages Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- Kinsta Docs: PHP performance and threads Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- Kinsta Docs: Edge caching Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- Kinsta Docs: Redis cache add-on Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- Kinsta Docs: Staging environment Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- Kinsta Docs: Backups Accessed 29 Oct 2026
Sources link directly to providers. Product buttons may use separately labeled affiliate links. Read our disclosure.