Migration guide
How to migrate from Kinsta to UpperLevel
Kinsta is a premium managed WordPress / cloud application host. If you have decided it is time to go, here is exactly what the move looks like: five steps, four of them ours. Our team does the hands-on work for free, you approve a preview, and your visitors never notice the switch.
- 111 5.0-star reviews
- Since 2016
- Human support in under five minutes
Why people make this move
What pushes Kinsta customers to switch
If you are leaving Kinsta, it is almost never over renewal hikes (Kinsta keeps those flat). It is the premium price, the metered visit and overage billing, the paid add-ons for things that should be included, and chat-only support with no phone, all of which UpperLevel answers with free hands-on migration, sub-5-minute real human support (phone or chat), and simple flat pricing with no usage-meter surprises, backed by a track record since 2016 and 111 perfect 5.0-star reviews.
High baseline price point versus most hosts. Entry is about $35/mo and serious or dynamic sites (WooCommerce, more PHP workers, Redis) commonly run $300 or more per month, making Kinsta a premium spend that many small businesses and freelancers find hard to justify.
Per-visit and usage overage billing. Plans are metered by monthly visits, and exceeding the cap triggers $0.50 per 1,000 visits (plus bandwidth, disk, and CDN overages), so unexpected traffic spikes produce surprise charges or pressure to upgrade tiers.
Paid add-ons for things many hosts include. Open-source components like Redis (about $100/mo) and PHP performance and memory upgrades cost extra, and reviewers frequently cite tight default PHP worker and memory limits as a forced-upgrade trap.
Also cited by departing Kinsta customers
- Chat-only support with no phone option. Kinsta deliberately offers no phone support, and while chat is generally fast, multiple reviewers (including a downtime-during-emergency 1-star case) report frustration at having no human to call when their site is down.
- Growing-pains support friction. Technical chat stays fast (about 1 to 2 minutes), but multiple 2025-2026 reviews report the billing team is slow or hard to reach, with email replies taking a day or more.
Want the full cost and support comparison? Read UpperLevel vs Kinsta
Before you start
Check your Kinsta renewal date first
The single most expensive migration mistake is timing: getting auto-renewed into another term days before you leave. Here is how Kinsta handles renewal, from sourced, dated references:
Flat and transparent. Kinsta does NOT use intro-vs-renewal bait pricing. There is no first-year promo discount that doubles at renewal. The monthly or annual rate you sign up at is the rate you keep, and Kinsta’s docs and reviewers confirm no renewal price hikes. The real cost creep is not renewal-driven but usage-driven: visit and bandwidth overages ($0.50 per 1,000 visits, $0.50/GB bandwidth, $2/GB/mo disk, $0.05/GB CDN) and paid add-ons (about $100/mo for Redis, PHP-performance memory add-ons) can raise the effective bill over time as a site grows. For accuracy, the UpperLevel no renewal hikes moat is real but should NOT be framed as fixing a Kinsta renewal-gouge problem, because Kinsta already keeps renewal pricing flat.
Details are reviewed before publishing, but figures change. Confirm your own renewal date and rate inside your Kinsta account before you schedule the move.
The plan
Leaving Kinsta in five steps
This is the whole process. You do step one, share access in step two, and approve the preview in step four. We do the rest.
- Step 1
Start your UpperLevel order and tell us about your Kinsta setup
Pick a plan, or call and we will help you choose. Tell us your domain, that you are coming from Kinsta, and anything unusual about your site, like a store, a membership area, or custom code. That is all the preparation there is.
- Step 2
Hand us your Kinsta login or a recent backup
We need a way to fetch your site: either temporary access to your Kinsta dashboard or a full backup export. Credentials are used only for the move, and we confirm with you before touching anything.
- Step 3
We copy your files, database, and email
Our team copies everything off Kinsta onto NVMe storage tuned for your site: files, database, and mailboxes where they apply. You keep working as usual, because your live site stays untouched while we work on the copy.
- Step 4
Review your site on a private preview
Before anything changes publicly, you get a preview link to click through your migrated site. Forms, store checkout, logins, we test them with you. Nothing goes live until you say it is right.
- Step 5
We flip DNS with no downtime, then you cancel
When you approve, we point your domain at UpperLevel with a cutover timed so visitors never see an outage. Only after your site is verified live should you cancel the old Kinsta plan, so there is never a gap.
Worth having handy before step two: your Kinsta dashboard login, access to wherever your domain is registered (for the DNS update), and any wp-admin credentials for the site itself. Missing one? Start anyway — we will find the path together on the phone.
After the move
What week one looks like on this side
The move is the start, not the finish. From the first night, daily backups run with 30-day retention, your SSL certificate renews itself, and malware scanning with unlimited removal watches the site you just brought over. Your invoice will read the same number next year, because the renewal price is the signup price. And when you have a question, the people who physically performed your Kinsta migration are the same ones answering the phone in under five minutes.
All included, all free
What moves with you
- Your full site: files, themes, plugins, and uploads
- Your database, copied and checked row for row
- Permalinks and internal URLs preserved, so search rankings carry over
- Mailboxes and forwarders, where your email lives with your host
- PHP version matched to what your site runs today
- Free SSL issued and forced before the cutover
- DNS handled for you, timed for zero downtime
- A human on the line the whole way, in under five minutes
Questions
The Kinsta move, answered
- How long does a Kinsta migration take?
- Most moves are finished within a day of us getting access, and we agree the timing with you up front. Larger or more complex sites can take longer, and we tell you that before we start, not after.
- Do I need to cancel my Kinsta account first?
- No, and please do not. Keep Kinsta active until your site is verified live on UpperLevel, so your site and email never have a gap. Once you confirm everything works, cancel the old plan and keep the difference.
- Will my site go down during the move?
- No. We work on a copy while your current site keeps running, test that copy on a private preview, and time the DNS cutover so visitors are never staring at an error page.
- What does it cost to leave Kinsta?
- Nothing on our side: the migration is free, with no per-site fee. Check your Kinsta renewal date before you start, because cancelling right after an auto-renewal usually means asking them for a refund instead of just not being charged.
- Can I move more than one site off Kinsta?
- Yes. Freelancers and agencies regularly bring batches of client sites across. Tell us the inventory up front and we sequence the moves so nothing overlaps, with each site getting the same preview-then-cutover treatment. Our Pro tier covers up to three sites.
Moving from somewhere else?
Guides for other hosts
Ready to be done with Kinsta?
Free white-glove migration, human support in under five minutes, and a 45-day money-back guarantee. Start today and your site can be moved, tested, and live before your next Kinsta invoice.