What «Kinsta Select Partner» means when you hire us, and what it does not

A badge in a website footer is easy to add and hard to read. Ours says «Kinsta Select Partner». This note says what that is, what it is not, and how to check it without taking our word for it.

What the status is

Kinsta is a managed host for WordPress sites. It runs a partner programme for agencies, and it publishes a directory of its Select and Elite partners. Grafica Group is in that directory, and the label on our listing reads «Select Partner».

You can read it yourself at kinsta.com/agency-directory/grafica-group. The listing gives our base as Honduras, our languages as English and Spanish, and three services: accessibility consulting, web design and development, and website maintenance.

Kinsta’s own programme page describes three tiers: Entry, Select and Elite. According to that page, a Select partner gets a listing in the agency directory and a limited number of referrals: Kinsta says it refers clients to its Select and Elite partners when they need help with development, design or optimisation. Elite partners get priority on both. We are in the middle tier, and we say so in those words: Select, not Elite.

What it is not

It is not a certificate for any single project. The status is about the agency, not about any one site. Kinsta’s programme page ties the tiers to the hosting business an agency brings, not to a review of its work, and nothing on this blog should be read as Kinsta vouching for a particular piece of ours.

It does not make us Kinsta. We are an independent company, founded in 2012. The server is Kinsta’s responsibility. The theme, the plugins, the forms and the redirects are the kind of work we do.

It is not neutral, and you should know that. Kinsta’s programme page says partners can earn commissions on clients they refer. So when we tell you a site belongs on Kinsta, weigh the advice as coming from a partner, and ask us for the reasons. We will give them in terms you can check: what the site needs, what the current host does not give it, and what the move would cost you in time and risk.

And it does not mean every site we work on is hosted there. Our own main site runs on a different platform, because it is a static site and does not need WordPress hosting at all. Whether Kinsta fits depends on the site, and we give the reasons either way.

What it changes in practice

Two things, both of them practical.

We work inside the platform. Our own blog is hosted on Kinsta, and we maintain client WordPress sites that are hosted there. Before a change that could break a site we take a backup with the host’s own tool and write the way back before the first edit. Changes that touch a theme, plugins, templates or caching are rehearsed on a staging copy first. After a change goes live we read the pages logged out and record whether the visitor got a cached copy or a fresh one. None of that is special to Kinsta, but knowing where each of those tools lives on one platform means less time spent finding them.

Some enquiries reach us through Kinsta. That is what the referral part of the programme is for: a Kinsta customer needs someone to do work the host does not do, and Kinsta introduces a partner. Several of the conversations we are having this year started that way. A referral is an introduction, nothing more. The client still decides, and we still have to earn the work on a first call.

How to check a partner badge, ours or anyone’s

1. Open the directory, not the badge. A badge is an image. The listing is on the host’s own domain and the host controls it. If an agency that claims Select or Elite is not in the directory, ask why.
2. Read the tier as written. Kinsta’s tiers are Entry, Select and Elite, and only Select and Elite are listed. If the tier an agency states is not the one on its listing, ask about it.
3. Ask what the agency has done on that host. Not how many sites, but what kind of work, and what they checked afterwards.
4. Ask what happens when the engagement ends. The hosting account should be yours, in your name, with the agency invited as a user, so that you can remove them yourself.

If you run an agency

The same status matters in a different way. If your clients’ sites are on your own Kinsta account and your developers are full, we take overflow WordPress work under your name, with a written QA sheet on every handoff. The terms are on our Agencies page. Our past work, migrations included, is on the Work page.

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