Kinsta Tech Support is probably the best in the industry. I’m 99.9999% sure of it. I only stumbled on them after years of frustrating experiences on cheaper hosting platforms that were recommended by the bloggers and gurus. Little did I know, most of the recommendations were biased from affiliate partnerships and kick backs.
Imagine Tech Support that will actually, legitimately TEACH YOU skills as a webmaster.
There’s a lot of special features Kinsta has, and Tech Support can help you through them and even offer solutions on the backend not possible otherwise. For example, I used to have a strange caching issue and my tech support manually forced-off caching for the 1 page that was causing the issue.
Imagine Tech Support responding in all hours of the day somehow.
Imagine Tech Support speaking native English, yep, I went there.
That’s what I’ve had with all my clients and it’s my 5th year using Kinsta personally for my wife.
Here’s is my honest to goodness review of Kinsta
| Pros | Cons |
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I’ve not personally tried their newer initiatives like Kinsta Dev and Kinsta Applications, but while following other’s works in this area I can see they are consistent with the execution quality.
An Actual Convo with Kinsta Tech Support
| Conversation with Kinsta Started on May 17, 2023 at 02:40 PM UTC time UTC (GMT+0000)04:04 PM | Mercedes from Kinsta: Thank you for your patience thus far Peter. My colleague from the System Team fully analyzed your site, and we noticed that PHP workers and Ajax aren’t okay, so you need to work on your site and Database optimizations with your developer. For example, in the last hour, WooCommerce AJAX requests (wc-ajax=get_refreshed_fragments) were 381. Also, your site cache is 0.0, you need to work with your devs on this as well: [Image “image.png”] Optimization will help you a lot, in case you still have problems, we can opt for twice your PHP Workers.— May 18, 2023 —04:49 AM | Peter Peng: Hi, thanks for that. I’ve disabled AJAX fragment requests now 04:50 AM | Peter Peng: what does Site Cache 0.0 mean? Can’t find it on Google 05:05 AM | Sonia from Kinsta: Hi, Sonia here from the Account Management Team 👋 I will transfer this conversation to my colleagues from the Support team and they will assist you further. Sonia | Account Manager 05:23 AM | Tom from Kinsta: Hi Peter, Regards, 05:33 AM | Peter Peng: Hi Tom, thanks so much, I’m very surprised we’re not using any caching! Let me check that first 05:34 AM | Peter Peng: Tools > Site cache is Enabled 05:34 AM | Peter Peng: Edge Caching is not 05:34 AM | Peter Peng: We don’t have any conflicting caching plugins either 05:34 AM | Peter Peng: for Lashgod.ca 05:35 AM | Tom from Kinsta: Hi there. 05:36 AM | Peter Peng: Hi 05:36 AM | Peter Peng: Yea so I thought Kinsta was doing the caching? 05:37 AM | Tom from Kinsta: Yes it’s a bit strange. 05:37 AM | Peter Peng: oh 05:37 AM | Tom from Kinsta: When this is present, which is most of the time, then there isn’t any caching: [Image “image.png”] 05:38 AM | Peter Peng: I mean my main question is… I’ve done all I can to enable caching, no? 05:39 AM | Peter Peng: [Image “cache.JPG?expires=1684423971&signature=67ceadee456854e1f3f4469fe1bd5d2b64226e79b3e957559493be6633b7456d”] 05:39 AM | Peter Peng: ^ always green 05:39 AM | Tom from Kinsta: Yes we should have perhaps reviewed that more closely. 05:39 AM | Peter Peng: ohh ok 05:39 AM | Peter Peng: no worries 05:39 AM | Tom from Kinsta: Well, yes. but that is just that it’s enabled in the dashboard. 05:40 AM | Peter Peng: so hopefully there’s less PHP / AJAX calls from that? already gone through cron/heartbeat api/disable revisions/disable cart frags 05:41 AM | Tom from Kinsta: lot more goes on behind the scenes. and in this case 1 year ago – looks like it was to avoid customer info in other places. 05:42 AM | Peter Peng: ok, now that’s enabled 05:42 AM | Peter Peng: [Image “Capture.JPG?expires=1684423971&signature=0d39778051db0777199507664525801ef5c159296e1d11e702c513064d132ff4”] 05:42 AM | Tom from Kinsta: Thanks. 05:43 AM | Tom from Kinsta: I’ve made the changes here too – you have some perfectly normal URLs excluded from cache – like ‘account’ and ‘cart’ and so on 05:44 AM | Peter Peng: hmm interesting 05:44 AM | Peter Peng: yes I remember 1 year ago another tech was helping me with some very strange cart issues 05:44 AM | Peter Peng: 1 customer would get credit card details of another customer 05:44 AM | Peter Peng: it was crazy and we had to disable cache for the checkout process 05:45 AM | Tom from Kinsta: Well that’s normal at that stage. 05:45 AM | Peter Peng: actually I don’t even remember how that was fixed, or if it fixed itself 05:47 AM | Tom from Kinsta: Not sure what that was, I think the site is still bypassing cache somehow, perhaps due to this header: [Image “image.png”] 05:53 AM | Tom from Kinsta: there aren’t any more custom rules that I can see that would just bypass cache on the home page. 06:00 AM | Tom from Kinsta: For a site with no apparent caching it’s pretty snappy 👍 06:29 AM | Tom from Kinsta: Please, let me know if there is anything else that I can assist with today? 06:50 AM | Tom from Kinsta: Hello! We haven’t heard back from you on this topic in awhile, however if you do need further assistance you can simply reply here! Please note that this chat will automatically close within 7 days if no further responses are made; however, a new chat can always be started within MyKinsta once you’re ready to continue! 06:50 AM | Operator: Help Tom understand how they’re doing: 06:50 AM | Operator: Rate your conversation 01:38 PM | Peter Peng: Hi Tom, so sorry I had to leave quickly. But thanks so much for all these tips. I’ll work on it 01:43 PM | Bogdan from Kinsta: Tom is no longer on the shift! However, I am Bogdan and I am happy to help. Is there anything else you’d like to ask me right now? Just let me know and I’ll do my best to help. 01:54 PM | Bogdan from Kinsta: Hello! We haven’t heard back from you on this topic in awhile, however if you do need further assistance you can simply reply here! Please note that this chat will automatically close within 7 days if no further responses are made; however, a new chat can always be started within MyKinsta once you’re ready to continue! 02:29 PM | Peter Peng: Hi Bogdan, thanks for your message 02:29 PM | Peter Peng: I am still trying to dicover why Lashgod.ca is bypassing cache 02:29 PM | Peter Peng: I know that 1 year ago, Kinsta helped me disable cache, but Tom says he’s fixed some of that 02:30 PM | Peter Peng: [Image “bypassing+cache.png?expires=1684423972&signature=cd9680e61c40260694b968c020f21967a27d401196e7e21f06efaf9b917d579e”] 02:30 PM | Peter Peng: ^ just trying to keep this topic open as Tom found this strange code 02:30 PM | Adriaan from Kinsta: Hello there! Thank you for reaching out to Support, you are speaking with Adriaan! 👋 02:30 PM | Peter Peng: I have WP Rocket disabled btw bc Kinsta already does caching right? 02:30 PM | Peter Peng: Hi Adriaan 🙂 02:34 PM | Adriaan from Kinsta: That is correct, we already handle caching so you don’t need to rely on additional plugins for it. Generally speaking, caching plugins are banned at Kinsta with the exception of WP Rocket, but the caching features within WP Rocket also need to remain disabled: literature: And the rule I see Tom disabled was the following: if ($http_cookie ~* “wp_woocommerce_session_”) { 02:35 PM | Peter Peng: hmm ok 02:35 PM | Adriaan from Kinsta: Regarding the website still bypassing cache, allow me some time. 02:36 PM | Peter Peng: oh okay 02:36 PM | Peter Peng: I’ll be researching too, ty so much 02:37 PM | Adriaan from Kinsta: The only custom Nginx rules relating to caching is the following: if ($request_uri ~* “/checkout|/checkout-2|/contact|/contact-us|/brand-ambassador|/gift-card|/my-account|/my-account-2|/shop-all”) { But this would only be for the above pages, not the home page. How ‘current’ is your Staging environment? 02:38 PM | Peter Peng: my staging is a current copy of Live righ tnow 02:38 PM | Peter Peng: I do have a hint to ask u though 02:39 PM | Peter Peng: recently my developer says he was cleaning up WP Rocket, bc someone else installed it, then we deactivated 02:39 PM | Peter Peng: and then my dev says he has to clean up these files too 02:40 PM | Peter Peng: [Image “wprocket+cleanup.jpg?expires=1684423972&signature=f666ed4036f76c06788749bc0bf6f358e3f79724c11cbb4c6cc5e390624eec83”] 02:41 PM | Adriaan from Kinsta: That is what I wanted to suggest doing on Staging as a test. 🙂 02:41 PM | Adriaan from Kinsta: As well as disabled all plugins if that does not resolve it. (on staging) 02:41 PM | Peter Peng: haha I see 02:42 PM | Peter Peng: ok 02:42 PM | Peter Peng: stagning is from this morning 02:43 PM | Peter Peng: want me to disable all plugins on staging? 02:43 PM | Adriaan from Kinsta: Great! I enabled caching on Staging – you can test disable the necessary, all plugins, switching to a default theme, etc. to try get the home page serving from cache again. 02:44 PM | Peter Peng: doing it now. Goodbye, staging plugins, lol 02:44 PM | Peter Peng: done 02:45 PM | Peter Peng: also switched to 2020 theme 02:46 PM | Adriaan from Kinsta: Hmmm, still getting Bypass. 02:46 PM | Adriaan from Kinsta: And the advanced-cache.php file & cache folder? Can you try moving those to ~/private or delete? 02:49 PM | Peter Peng: ok. My dev already emptied Cache folder 02:49 PM | Peter Peng: and the Advanched-cache.php file is 0kb as he just deleted the code in it lol 02:50 PM | Peter Peng: so I can delete the 0kb PHP file as a try? 02:51 PM | Peter Peng: yea, my other 2 live sites don’t even have an “advanced-cache.php” file. 02:51 PM | Peter Peng: Ok here it goes.. 02:52 PM | Peter Peng: ok now it looks like this: 02:52 PM | Adriaan from Kinsta: Checking internally a couple of things as well. 02:52 PM | Peter Peng: [Image “new+situation.JPG?expires=1684423972&signature=52e97d0b80f1ee638ca610dc189c16f7e8bee8bfcbff0c6d3784d29b1fd5ef8e”] 02:53 PM | Peter Peng: (well the good news is the Live site is still alive) 02:54 PM | Adriaan from Kinsta: The Live site would not be affected by changes on staging. 🙂 02:54 PM | Peter Peng: oh i did that in live oops 02:54 PM | Adriaan from Kinsta: But, not sure what has changed as I’m getting Cache HIT on Live now? 02:55 PM | Adriaan from Kinsta: Oh! 02:55 PM | Peter Peng: is it a miracle 02:55 PM | Peter Peng: can u please double check? 02:55 PM | Adriaan from Kinsta: [Image “image.png”] 02:56 PM | Peter Peng: that looks like a good thing 02:58 PM | Adriaan from Kinsta: Yup, apart from changes you may have made on Live and not staging, nothing on Live has been changed on our end. 03:00 PM | Peter Peng: may I get an export of this chat log for educationals? 03:02 PM | Adriaan from Kinsta: Of course! When you scroll all the way to the top in the chat widget, there should be a download icon top-right of the chat widget. — |
Tech & business junkie.
Former engineer, Shopify owner and developer.
Currently focused on social media automation.
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