As of 2 Nov 2026, the panel rates Kinsta 3.5/5 and Raidboxes 3/5 in Web Hosting. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 5 of the 6 judges pick Kinsta and 1 picks Raidboxes. Kinsta scores higher on 6 of 7 criteria (Scaling, migration & exit, Performance, uptime & infrastructure, Support, domains & email, plus 3 more). Raidboxes scores higher on 1 of 7 criteria (European sovereignty). Provenance — Kinsta: Rest of world; Raidboxes: EU-Made. Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made.
Kinsta leads six of seven criteria. Performance and reliability reads 7.2 vs 6.2, 6 judges lean Kinsta, 0 lean Raidboxes; management and developer tools (7.8 vs 7.0), security and backups (7.0 vs 6.2), scaling and portability (7.3 vs 6.2) and support and service (7.0 vs 6.0) each lean Kinsta 5 judges to 0 with 1 tie. Pricing transparency splits 3 for Kinsta, 1 for Raidboxes, 2 ties, on means 7.3 vs 6.7. The genuine split is sovereignty: 5 judges lean Raidboxes, 0 lean Kinsta, 1 tie, mean 6.7 vs 4.8; the verdicts name Raidboxes GmbH of Münster against Kinsta Inc. of West Hollywood under Delaware law, with Kinsta's DNS, support tools, log storage and analytics cluster in the United States. Of the weighted totals shown, Kinsta leads four; the data protection officer puts Raidboxes ahead, 6.7 to 6.4; the table gives no total for the small business owner. No overall winner follows.
Choose Kinsta if
You need one-click staging with selective push, cloning, and automatic plugin and theme updates with visual regression checks and rollback — management and developer tools, where Kinsta's mean is 7.8 vs 7.0 and 5 judges lean Kinsta with 1 tie.
You want an uptime guarantee with tiered credits and a 90-day public status page — performance and reliability, where 6 judges lean Kinsta, 0 lean Raidboxes, on means 7.2 vs 6.2.
Your team relies on SSH, Git, WP-CLI, Composer and a REST API in public beta — support and service leans Kinsta 5 judges to 0 with 1 tie, and security and backups leans the same way, 7.0 vs 6.2.
You expect to grow or move workloads — scaling and portability leans Kinsta 5 judges to 0 with 1 tie, on means 7.3 vs 6.2.
Your role matches the agency lead, shop operator, app developer or skeptic judge — each weighted total puts Kinsta ahead: 7.2 vs 6.6, 6.8 vs 6.1, 7.1 vs 6.7, 6.8 vs 6.4.
Choose Raidboxes if
You need a German contracting entity — the verdict names Raidboxes GmbH of Münster, and sovereignty leans Raidboxes 5 judges to 0 with 1 tie, on means 6.7 vs 4.8.
Your data protection review flags US-located DNS, support tools, log storage or analytics — Kinsta's verdict places these in the United States, and sovereignty leans Raidboxes 5 judges to 0 with 1 tie.
You sit in the data protection officer role — that judge's weighted total puts Raidboxes ahead, 6.7 to 6.4.
Your tender requires EU-made provenance — Raidboxes is recorded as EU-made provenance against Kinsta's rest-of-world provenance, alongside the sovereignty lean of 5 judges to 0 with 1 tie.
Your buying panel weighs jurisdiction against price together — sovereignty leans Raidboxes 5 judges to 0 with 1 tie, while pricing transparency splits 3 judges for Kinsta, 1 for Raidboxes, 2 ties.
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The Freelance App Developer
Freelance developer who builds Laravel and Node apps for small clients and runs them for years afterwards. Deploys from Git, needs SSH, Composer, cron, queues and a current PHP version, and sets servers up from scripts rather than by clicking. Wants an API and a CLI that cover servers, snapshots, firewalls and DNS, resource limits stated in numbers, and a stack that runs anywhere else if the client ever moves.
Kinsta
This judge's pick
Raidboxes
Criterion by criterion
Performance, uptime & infrastructure
Kinsta
PHP runs from 7.4 through 8.5, HTTP/3 with a CDN of 300+ edge locations, full-page caching on Nginx and MariaDB, per-site containers, a 99.9% uptime guarantee with tiered service credits, and a public status page with 90-day history and incident reports — a platform I could run client sites on. What holds it back: we found no public information on CPU or RAM figures per tariff, Redis object caching comes only as a paid add-on, and we found no public information on a PHP end-of-life policy or published performance measurements with a method. Platform-level redundancy and automated failover are described, with a replicated standby data centre behind the paid disaster-recovery add-on.
Raidboxes
The pricing page gives me real numbers to plan against — vCores with shared or dedicated type per plan, RAM, SSD, Varnish cache in MB and a PHP memory limit — plus HTTP/2, free SSL, a 99,99 % uptime figure and a public status page. The 99,99 % is a claim without a service credit, PHP versions appear only as switchable in a staging FAQ with no version list or end-of-life policy, and Redis and the CDN come as paid add-ons rather than included.
Control panel, WordPress & developer tooling
Kinsta
This is close to my ideal workflow: SSH, Git, Composer, WP-CLI and per-site containers whose crontabs I edit over SSH, one-click staging with selective push of files, database or both, cloning, PHP version per site, unlimited role-based users with SAML SSO, and an agency programme with white-label options. The REST API is documented with a downloadable OpenAPI specification covering sites, staging, backups, domains, DNS records, PHP memory and thread settings, log files and analytics — though it is in public beta. We found no public information on a command-line tool or infrastructure-as-code support.
Raidboxes
For my daily workflow they document SSH with WP-CLI and Git, SFTP, phpMyAdmin and Adminer, one-click staging with deployments in either direction between dev, staging and live, cloning with templates, bulk admin across boxes, per-plugin scoping of automatic updates, and single sign-on into every WordPress backend. The agency story is real too — box transfer to the client while staying admin, free dev boxes for 90 days, reseller discounts. We found no public information on a public API or CLI for scripting, Composer support, cron control or per-project roles, and rollback for automatic updates is not documented.
Security, backups & recovery
Kinsta
Daily automatic and manual backups kept at least two weeks (14 to 20 days depending on plan), one-click restore, system-generated restore points before risky actions, Cloudflare Enterprise firewall and DDoS protection, continuous malware monitoring with free cleanup, two-factor login, container isolation per site, and SOC 2 Type II plus ISO 27001 published. Backups are stored on the same host machine as the site itself, with off-site copies to AWS or Google Cloud Storage and replication to a second data centre only as paid add-ons. We found no public information on point-in-time restore of single files or tables.
Raidboxes
Isolation runs per project in its own container, the Security Shield names DDoS protection and an exploit detector, IPs are blockable with one click, two-factor works via app, email or SMS, SSL is standard, and daily backups land on a dedicated, specially secured server with 7 to 30 days retention by plan, manual backups included, with ISO 27001 among the listed data-centre certifications. We found no public information on a second backup location, point-in-time restore of single files or tables, malware cleanup or a named web application firewall — and the terms put the customer in charge of their own backup copies, with no right to backup media, only restoration to the booked storage.
Scaling, migration & exit
Kinsta
Migration in is documented as thoroughly as I have seen: free and unlimited, handled by a specialist team on weekdays with published timings, a malware scan, an expedited option at $49 per site with an 8-hour target and a refund if missed, and the limits spelled out honestly. Plan limits come as numbers (disk, CDN bandwidth, server bandwidth, visits with a defined visit), add-ons scale a site without moving it (extra disk, PHP performance resources, a dedicated server from $300 per month), overage is billed on actual usage with the site staying online, termination is self-service, a full backup is downloadable at any time, and the data processing agreement promises deletion or return of data on termination. We found no public information on domain transfer out or a stated deadline for deleting data after the contract ends.
Raidboxes
Getting in is excellent: a free demo migration puts a copy on a temporary domain within two business days while the live site stays untouched, no payment data required, with results published from 500+ migrations; limits are numeric everywhere instead of "unlimited", resources adjust in real time and a burst mode grants headroom beyond quota. Monthly billing and a 14-day withdrawal right with refunds within 14 days by the original payment method are stated. We found no public information on a path from the boxes to a server or cluster, on data deletion after termination, or on domain transfer out — mail runs through a bookable Mailbox.org add-on, and domain contracts are excluded from the withdrawal right.
Support, domains & email
Kinsta
Support is provided exclusively through the chat system integrated into MyKinsta, 24/7, staffed entirely by WordPress developers and Linux engineers, with published figures — average response under 2 minutes, 47-minute average resolution, 96 to 98% satisfaction — in eight languages, plus a free hack-fix guarantee and account managers with schedulable meetings on larger plans. We found no public information on phone support or a premium support tier. Free premium DNS via Route 53 is documented, but we found no public information on mailboxes or domain registration, and email setup is excluded from migrations.
Raidboxes
Live chat staffed by real WordPress and WooCommerce people, no bots and no tickets, German and English, daily from 8 to 22 including weekends and holidays, with a stated response under ten minutes, a help centre, a status page and a genuine partner programme with personal agency support. It is not around the clock on the main pages (a 24/7 mention appears only on the performance add-on page), and a premium support tier exists only as an unanswered FAQ question. Domains from 1,50 € and mailboxes from 3,00 € are bookable in the same account, but we found no public information on DNS management, webmail, spam filtering or mailbox sizes.
European sovereignty
Kinsta
The contracting entity is Kinsta Inc. of West Hollywood, California, with Delaware governing law, arbitration in Wilmington and FTC jurisdiction — a non-EU vendor — though customers select their data centre region on Google Cloud, including European zones, and Kinsta Ltd. is listed as a UK contact. Transparency is strong: a dated subprocessor list with locations, standard contractual clauses with the UK addendum and Swiss amendments, Data Privacy Framework certification, and a published data processing agreement. However, the analytics cluster that processes IP addresses and access log information is hosted in the United States, support and AI tooling run through US providers, and we found no public information on an EU contracting entity, an EU representative, or certifications covering the data centres themselves.
Raidboxes
A German GmbH in Münster with commercial register number and VAT ID contracts with you, the Equinix data centre in Düsseldorf is named, ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II appear among the data-centre certifications, and the privacy policy lists subprocessors with their locations and safeguards, including US providers such as DigitalOcean, Sentry, DocuSign, Calendly and Intercom under standard contractual clauses and the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. The captured pages give different pictures of the hosting chain — the security page names Equinix in Düsseldorf while the privacy policy lists DigitalOcean (USA) and AWS (Luxembourg) among hosting subprocessors — and we found no public information on a published data processing agreement, the parent company or where backups are kept.
Pricing transparency
Kinsta
Add-on pricing is unusually complete — 20 GB extra disk at $20 USD per month, Redis at $100 per site per month, hourly backups at $100 per website per month, a dedicated server from $300 per month, disaster recovery at $300 per month plus a one-time $300 setup fee, expedited migration at $49 per site — and the overage policy, the visit definition, VAT treatment (prices in USD, taxes excluded), auto-renewal, the 30-day money-back guarantee and the price-increase escape are all published. The Single plan is shown with the first month at $0 and $30 USD monthly. We found no public information on the remaining tariff ladder with first-term and renewal prices side by side, or an explicitly stated minimum term.
Raidboxes
Discounted and regular prices sit side by side ("statt 18,00 €... 9,00 € pro Monat"), the 50 % new-customer discount states its duration (max 12 months) and validity date, add-ons are priced per plan from domains at 1,50 € to Redis at 3,00 € and 10,00 €, VAT is explicit at 19 % for business customers, and withdrawal refunds come within 14 days by the original payment method. Setup fees, traffic overage and restore costs are not priced on the captured pages, the minimum term appears only implicitly through monthly billing, and per-plan add-on prices on other pages reuse the same plan names, giving different figures across captured pages.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
Kinsta
Raidboxes
Legal entity
Not determined
Not determined
Hosting location
Not determined
Not determined
Hosting options
Not determined
Not determined
Open source
Not determined
Not determined
Data processing agreement
Not determined
Not determined
Transfer impact assessment
Not determined
Not determined
Facts, side by side
Only facts both products carry under the same definition — anything else would not be a fair row.
As of 2 Nov 2026, the panel rates Kinsta higher: 3.5/5 against 3/5. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 5 of the 6 judges pick Kinsta and 1 picks Raidboxes. Which one fits depends on the criteria that matter to you; the table on this page shows both side by side, and each judge’s reading has its own page. Both were scored by the same AI bench under the same rubric, from public evidence only, as the methodology describes.
Is Kinsta or Raidboxes European?
Kinsta is not European by provenance (Rest of world). Raidboxes is European (EU-Made). Provenance is read from each company’s own legal pages: who builds it and who owns it.
Where do Kinsta and Raidboxes store customer data?
Per the vendors’ own pages as captured — Kinsta: its pages as captured do not say. Raidboxes: Default not stated; pages mention Germany.