Hosting Nightmare: Kinsta Charging 3X Due to Bot Traffic – Need Advice!

[Seita]

My website has been rapidly growing and is monetized through Mediavine. According to my Google Analytics and Mediavine reports, I'm receiving around 30,000 monthly pageviews. However, Kinsta's dashboard is showing an inflated number of about 173,000 pageviews, causing them to charge me nearly three times more than my plan's actual cost.

When I reached out to their support, they told me the discrepancy is due to bot traffic. They recommended enabling a temporary challenge to block these bots, but this would mean a 5-second delay for first-time visitors.

I'm concerned about this: Will the 5-second delay negatively affect my site's SEO performance?

Also, can anyone suggest reliable hosting alternatives that handle bot traffic better and provide accurate analytics?

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[IM Dude]

My website has been rapidly growing and is monetized through Mediavine. According to my Google Analytics and Mediavine reports, I'm receiving around 30,000 monthly pageviews. However, Kinsta's dashboard is showing an inflated number of about 173,000 pageviews, causing them to charge me nearly three times more than my plan's actual cost.

When I reached out to their support, they told me the discrepancy is due to bot traffic. They recommended enabling a temporary challenge to block these bots, but this would mean a 5-second delay for first-time visitors.

I'm concerned about this: Will the 5-second delay negatively affect my site's SEO performance?

Also, can anyone suggest reliable hosting alternatives that handle bot traffic better and provide accurate analytics?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Find out and switch to similar hosting, siteground, wpx and wpengine are good option. Migrate your site when traffic is least (Sunday night). Ask for refund after that.
You can try these 2 plugins before you pull the plug on kinsta.
BBQ firewall
Blackhole for bad bots.

 

[Seita]

Find out and switch to similar hosting, siteground, wpx and wpengine are good option. Migrate your site when traffic is least (Sunday night). Ask for refund after that.
You can try these 2 plugins before you pull the plug on kinsta.
BBQ firewall
Blackhole for bad bots.

Thanks, for your suggestions. How is Cloudways hosting?

 

[V]

Thanks, for your suggestions. How is Cloudways hosting?

It's good. They basically manage the VPS for you. They don't actually have their own servers.

I would say get a VPS and set it up with proper caching. Lazy-load images and use compression. I am in the middle of writing a guide on how to set up your own VPS for WP without any coding or Linux knowledge.

 

[xReminisce]

Honestly, you would need to fix that "bot" traffic issue
regardless whether you go.
While it seems unfair
Kinsta isn't doing anything wrong, they are STILL serving those bots.
they are STILL using resources for those bots.
The burden is on you really to make sure as little bots gets thru.

I'm concerned about this: Will the 5-second delay negatively affect my site's SEO performance?

In a way, yes.