Priyanka PanjiyarDevKinsta is a free local WordPress development suite created by the Kinsta team to build, test, and deploy sites. We’ll shine the light on each feature this tool has to offer via this DevKinsta review.
If you’re intrigued by this tool, make sure to read this article till the end to know more about it.
What is DevKinsta? (Overview)
DevKinsta is a free local WordPress development tool created by Kinsta. It lets you easily install WordPress and create a website on your local computer.
Wondering what a local development tool means? It’s a computer program that enables your local computer to act as web hosting and allows installing CMS software like WordPress and Joomla. XAMPP is a popular example of a local development tool.
Now, talking about DevKinsta, it’s a WordPress-specific local development tool. It means that you can use it to install WordPress locally, build a local site, test themes, and plugins, etc.
Not only that, but it’s also useful for hosting your new WordPress site until it’s ready to go live. Develop your site entirely on DevKinsta and push the locally built site to a live hosting server when it’s ready.
It’s in fact the best tool if you’re planning to build a site on Kinsta hosting. As you might guess, there’s a smooth integration for pushing a DevKinsta local site to live Kinsta servers.
But what is and why Kinsta? We’ll tell you in brief. Kinsta is one of the leading managed WordPress hosting providers.
Doesn’t matter whether you’re running a business website, an eCommerce site, an agency, or an enterprise; Kinsta offers top-notch premium hosting plans. Along with that, it has 32 data centers to deliver content as faster as possible to your users.
Firewall and DDoS protection, HTTP/3 protection, and free Wildcard SSL support are some other benefits you get if you choose Kinsta. If you want to learn more about Kinsta, here’s a review article about Kinsta.
In a nutshell, DevKinsta is a powerful local WordPress development tool by one of the popular WordPress hosting company Kinsta. It’s really useful for developers, web designers and freelancers.
DevKinsta Review – Features
Here are features DevKinsta has to offer that make it unique from other local environment development tools.
- Compatible with major operating systems: Whether you’re using Windows, macOS, or Ubuntu, DevKinsta offers installer files for each OS.
- Powered by Docker: Simply put, Docker is an open-source program that packages software into containers. Each container has everything a software requires to run efficiently such as libraries, code, system tools, and configuration files. With Docker, you can deploy applications in any environment smoothly.
- One-click installation: If you have any experience with XAMPP, you must be aware that several settings need to be configured to install WordPress. However, with DevKinsta just a single click is enough to install WordPress. What’s more is, that each site you create is powered by a modern hosting stack and the latest version of WordPress.
- Built-in database manager: Adminer, a lightweight visual database management tool, is included to edit WordPress database tables, execute SQL queries, etc.
- In-built MailHog: MailHog is included for testing emails. You can easily scan outgoing emails, debug contact forms, marketing automation, get site notifications, and much more. You can test emails of all kinds such as contact form submission emails, user registration email, etc.
- WP_DEBUG toggle: This feature is important to catch any PHP errors that might occur while creating a website. Basically, you will get error/warning messages on the browser as well on the debug.log file.
- Latest version of PHP and WordPress: DevKinsta supports the latest version of WordPress and PHP 7.2 – 8.0 versions. You can select different versions for projects according to your needs.
- Enable HTTPS: Enabling the HTTPS option will help you locally test the functionality of the plugin or theme that requires an SSL certificate.
- NGINX as a web server: DevKinsta uses NGNIX instead of Apache as the actual PHP server. Not to mention, NGINX is faster than Apache in comparison.
- Enable multisite option: You effortlessly create and maintain multisite. All you need to do is enable this option. One of the most common benefits of multisite is you can manage all your sites from a single dashboard.
- Seamless integration with MyKinsta: If you’re a Kinsta customer, then you can download your live site, make changes, and push it back to the Kinsta staging environment.
In our opinion, these features are more than enough to create a safe and secure local WordPress website. The good news is you don’t have to be a professional developer to create a site using DevKinsta. With that said, let’s look into the benefits of DevKinsta.
Advantages of Creating Local WordPress Site With DevKinsta
Here are the advantages of having a local WordPress installation:
- Make as many changes as you want to your local site without breaking the live site.
- Effortlessly create and test new WordPress themes, plugins, and code.
- Update the site to the latest version without losing content.
- Develop a site in lesser time because an offline site is faster than an online site.
- You don’t need to rely on an internet connection to develop a local site.
- Easily test, create backups and restore your site.
So far, we hope you’ve got a clear picture of what exactly DevKinsta is, what are its function, and who is it for. Now, let’s walk you through a tutorial on how you can create a local WordPress site using DevKinsta.
Create Local WordPress Site Using DevKinsta
Download and Install DevKinsta
DevKinsta is a free tool; hence, anyone can download, install, and use it. To download and install DevKinsta on your computer, visit its official site. Then, click on the Download DevKinsta button.
Thereafter, choose whether you want to download the file for Windows, Mac, or Ubuntu. Now, enter your email and password and download the installer file.
PS: We installed DevKinsta for Windows.
Along with that, you’ll also need to download Docker and WSL-2. Next, install all the necessary applications mentioned above.
Create a New Site
After the software is installed, you’re ready to create a new site. There are three options you can choose from:
- New WordPress Site: You can create a new WordPress site with the default settings using NGNIX and MySQL with just a single click.
- Import From Kinsta: Import the WordPress site from your Kinsta hosting account.
- Custom Site: Create a website with custom settings. With this option, you get to choose the version of PHP, change the database name, change the site title, and choose the WordPress version. Also, you can enable the multisite by ticking the box.
In this tutorial, we’ll teach you how to create a New WordPress Site.
Once you click on the New WordPress Site option, you need to add Sitename and WordPress admin username. The WordPress admin password field is already filled. You can either keep the same password or change it according to your liking. Then click on the Create site button.
A great thing about DevKinsta is it will install WordPress with a single click. The site is automatically configured with NGINX, PHP, and MySQL.
After WordPress installation, if you click on the WP Admin tab, it takes you to the login page. Simply enter your Username and Password and login into your WordPress dashboard.
The dashboard will open on a new tab. You can now install new themes, plugins, and create a website as per your requirements.
Additionally, the DevKinsta dashboard has various options and basic environment information. Through the DevKinsta dashboard, you can:
- Open your site on the browser.
- Push your site to the Kinsta staging environment (for Kinsta customers only).
- Manage database manager (Adminer).
- Open the admin dashboard on your browser.
- Enable SSL certificate and HTTPS to improve your site’s security.
- Enable WP_DEBUG mode. Enabling this option will help you troubleshoot any issues that may occur while you create your local site.
- Edit your site-level php.ini file directly in the PHP.ini Editor.
DevKinsta Database Manager
As mentioned above, DevKinsta fully allows you to edit and manage your local site’s database. You can access the database via the Database manager option.
Test/Track Emails
Through the Email inbox feature, you can effortlessly track the emails you sent. Further, you can debug the transactional email stuff.
The email box DevKinsta offers has all the mail you ‘send’ from your site. To test this feature, you can add a registration and login form and submit it to send a form notification.
To access the send mails, click on the mail icon located on the left side of the DevKinsta dashboard.
DevKinsta Review – Pricing
As you know, DevKinsta is totally free to use. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Kinsta customer or not. You can simply download, install, and use it. Just follow the above steps to create a site if you don’t know where to start.
DevKinsta Review – Final Thoughts
Creating a site on your local computer has many benefits that we’ve mentioned above in the article as well. There’s no risk of breaking your site or losing your content. You can simply work privately, and when you’re ready, you can push your site to live site.
DevKinsta has made the process of locally creating, maintaining, and making your site live a whole lot easier. Not to mention, it’s faster and safer. Features like enabling HTTPS and email tracking make DevKinsta more feasible than XAMPP.
Also, you can easily examine the database manager. To add more, its interface is simple and plain, making it easier to use. If you’re a Kinsta customer, you get a special benefit to push to/from your Kinsta hosting.
Nevertheless, even if you aren’t a Kinsta customer, the tool is still just as much useful.
DevKinsta vs Its Competitors
We cannot finish this DevKinsta review without mentioning its competitor – Local. Local is a similar tool designed by Flywheel.
The main difference between DevKinsta and Local is that DevKinsta uses virtualization in the background. Local has to install NGINX, apache, various versions of PHP, etc. to the host machine.
However, DevKinsta encapsulates everything into containers. Containers run consistently on any infrastructure hence, the sites you create are lightweight and don’t interrupt the host OS.
Other than that Local offers free as well as premium versions. However, the premium features provided by Local are included in the free version of DevKinsta.
Wrapping It Up!
And that’s it from our side on this DevKinsta review. Hope you’re convinced about how good the tool is.
So, go ahead, don’t hesitate, and download DevKinsta today. Remember, it’s completely free. Also, don’t forget to share your experience with us in the comment down below.
Finally, it’s a wrap. Spread the news about this amazing tool with your friends and family via social media. Also, if you want to read more articles, here is a Namecheap review and Bluehost review.
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