KnownHost Hosting Reviews
Pros
Cons
Shared Hosting Review
Best for Portfolio and Basic websites
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- Product
- Multiple Sites
Whether you can host multiple domains on this hosting plan.
- Disk Storage
- Free Migration Transfer
If you’re migrating your website from another company or plan, you might need support migrating your website to the new servers.
- Free Domain
Free domains included in hosting can save you anywhere from $8-$30/year, be sure to check whether it will cost you to renew your domain after the initial year.
- Free SSL Certificate
An SSL Certificate provides a secure connection from a web server to a browser. It’s essential your website has an SSL Certificate for safety and search engine reasons.
- Price
The monthly cost for this plan, including discounts
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- Professional
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- 1 TB CLOUD STORAGE
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- $14.96/mo $19.95/mo 75%OFF
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Due to the relatively low cost of entry, Shared Hosting is popular for those looking to host their first website, but also offers a good option for more experienced developers to host lightweight site(s) for minimal cost. Considering that almost every hosting company provides some sort of Shared Hosting, it’s essential to research your options. Go with a company you can trust, and who offers a solution for your specific business needs.
Plans & Pricing
KnownHost offers three different Shared Hosting plans. The primary distinction between the three is the number of domains you can host on a single account, but the higher-level plans also offer additional storage space, email accounts, and MySQL Databases. KnownHost also offers discounts for longer commitments and paying in advance, across all plans, so be sure that you understand the initial cost versus what it will cost you to renew your plan at the end of the first term.
If you’re just getting started, the Basic Shared Hosting plan allows you to host one domain for $3.47/month with a 3-year commitment (renews at $7.16/month). It includes 5 GB of cloud storage (with up to 100,000 inodes), allows you to have five email addresses, and the ability to utilize 2 MySQL Databases. You’ll also be able to utilize 50% of a CPU core with 512MB of RAM.
On average, an introductory level Shared Hosting plan typically costs somewhere between $7.00 – $8.00 per month and varies depending on the services and benefits offered. So if price is your main concern, Knownhost is a good option.
As the name suggests, this plan makes an excellent solution for those looking for basic, cost-effective, and scalable hosting solution. As your site/business grows, you’ll be able to utilize the Standard and Professional plans, each of which maintains an affordable and inclusive hosting solution.
At $9.97/month with a 3-year commitment ($16.96/month renewal rate), you can now host unlimited sites and have access to unlimited cloud storage, email accounts, and MySQL databases on a Shared server. There is still a limit of 300,000 inodes with this plan; however, this limit is the standard amount for most shared hosting plans. You’ll also be powering your sites on 2 CPU cores with 2 GB of RAM.
Features and Benefits
It can be tough to discern between Shared Hosting providers except for comparing the pricing and the account limits listed above. Here are a few features that make KnownHost great:
Cloud Linux means Dedicated Resources
The primary concern with Shared Hosting is the risk that you’re sharing server space with countless other customers. If one site consumes a tremendous amount of resources or gets infected with malware, your site could suffer. By utilizing Cloud Linux, Knownhost can guarantee that you have a unique, protected instance for hosting your site, and it cannot be affected by the actions of another site.
LiteSpeed and LSCache
LiteSpeed Webserver is known to provide dramatically increased speed for your site, especially if it runs on WordPress or another resource-intensive CMS platform. Most Shared Hosting providers utilize Apache Webserver, but KnownHost truly stands behind the benefits of LiteSpeed Webserver when combined with the site-side LSCache plugin for WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, XenForo, and a handful of other platforms. All of KnownHost’s Shared Hosting plans include LiteSpeed Webserver and the LSCache plugin, which will ensure that your site is optimized and running fast from the very beginning.
Patchman
Patchman is included with the Professional Shared Hosting plan and is available for an additional $2/month with the Basic or Standard Shared Hosting plans. The Patchman software runs on KnownHost’s servers and scans CMS platforms to identify vulnerabilities or out-of-date software. If you’re running WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, or osCommerce, Patchman can automatically patch the software without adjusting the core CMS software. This will allow your website to continue to operate while remaining secure and up to date.
Free SSL Certificates
KnownHost offers customers free SSL certificates with all of its plans via AutoSSL or Let’s Encrypt. Your Shared Hosting plan will include a one year signed certificate for the hostname/server and 90-day certificates for every domain that is eligible. Both types of certificates will auto-renew, as long as they point to your server, and your cPanel license remains active! When your visitors see the secured lock symbol in the address bar when they visit your site, they will be more likely to stay, and it will be much easier to earn their trust. If you’re running an eCommerce site, you may want to purchase a stronger SSL certificate, but otherwise, a free SSL certificate will still provide a good level of protection and keep your customers secured during checkout.
Free Backups
While it’s always best practice to keep your own local backup copies of your site, KnownHost will regularly keep three backups for you. The service includes one weekly backup and two daily backups, to ensure that in the unlikely event that something happens to your site, they will have a recent version saved, so you can easily restore yours without having to rebuild or rewrite any content.
WordPress Hosting Review
Best for: Blogs and eCommerce sites
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- Product
- Managed
Managed servers are generally recommended if you are looking for specialised or advanced server hosting and have little to low technical skills
- Disk Storage
- Managed
Managed servers are generally recommended if you are looking for specialised or advanced server hosting and have little to low technical skills
- Visitors
A similar metric to Bandwidth, each-time a visitor views your website they use bandwidth.
– General rule of thumb:
Visitor Limit = Bandwidth x 3 - CDN?
A Content Delivery Network (CDN) saves copies of your website on servers across various regions. This allows your website to be accessed from the closest possible server to the user trying to view your site.
- Price
The monthly cost for this plan, including discounts
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- Entry Level WP
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- 50 GB SSD
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- 100000
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- $5.98/mo $11.95/mo 50%OFF
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- Business (WordPress)
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- 100 GB SSD
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- 200000
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- $9.98/mo $19.95/mo 50%OFF
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If your site runs on WordPress, or the dream site that you’re envisioning will run on WordPress, and you want an easy-to-use hosting plan that’s optimized for WordPress, KnownHost has the solution for you. Even though it’s pretty painless to install any CMS platform using the Softaculous software that KnownHost provides, it’s even easier to get up and running on a WordPress hosting plan. WordPress hosting was developed with the goal of optimizing WordPress sites. It was designed to maintain the fastest speeds for visitors and search engines, to utilize only the most trusted plugins, and to handle the maintenance and upkeep of WordPress installations, so the site owner doesn’t have to!
Plans & Pricing
KnownHost offers two fully managed WordPress Hosting plans:
The Entry Level WordPress Hosting starts at $5.98/month (renews at $11.95/month) and includes hosting for 1 WordPress Website, 50 GB SSD Storage, up to 100,000 visitors per month, and unlimited Email Accounts and Bandwidth.
The Business Level WordPress Hosting plan starts at $9.98/month (renews at $19.95/month). You’ll get hosting for 1 WordPress Website, including 100 GB SSD Storage, up to 200,000 visitors per month, and unlimited Email Accounts and Bandwidth.
KnownHost has structured their discounts a little bit differently for WordPress hosting plans than for their other types of hosting. Instead of receiving a bigger discount for a longer-term commitment, WordPress hosting is offered at half price for your initial term, regardless of whether you sign up for one month or three years.
Just keep in mind that whenever your initial term is up, you will be required to pay the renewal price to keep your service active. The renewal price is twice as much as the starting price, so if you plan to keep your WordPress site up for three years, you can save a lot of money by committing to the three-year term.
The average price for entry-level Managed WordPress Hosting in the market is between $16-$17, so KnownHost is very competitive, with a renewal price of $11.95 per month.
Features & Benefits
In addition to all of the great features and tools available in the Shared Hosting plans, KnownHost WordPress Hosting also offers some benefits that help keep WordPress sites running quickly and smoothly:
Custom-Built WordPress Control Panel
KnownHost offers a unique, custom-built control panel to help you manage your WordPress installation. Without having to log in to your WordPress Admin panel and navigate through the list of options on the side-panel, you can quickly manage your WordPress updates, passwords, domain name, and more, from an easy to use control panel. This is a unique offering! You’ll have to log in to your WordPress Admin page and make changes with almost any other hosting provider.
Automatic Updates and Plugin Optimization
If you go with a WordPress hosting plan, KnownHost includes the LSCache plugin for your site, which will work with the LightSpeed Webserver to deliver enhanced loading speeds. They also keep a short blacklist of plugins that will interfere with the LSCache plugin and plugins that are not maintained or are detrimental to your site. While it’s ultimately your site, they will work to encourage you to not include any of the plugins on the blacklist.
In addition to making sure you’re set up with the right plugins, KnownHost will also make sure that your WordPress software, Themes, and Plugins remain up to date. They will automatically install updates, so you don’t have to!
Advanced WordPress Tools
WordPress isn’t only for beginners. KnownHost offers some great ways for you to interact with your WordPress instance. You can remotely interact with your site via SSH and SFTP logins, and you also get the ability to use the WP-CLI interface if you want to quickly make changes, or if you’re just more comfortable using a command-line interface. KnownHost even offers a Python CLI, which is not something that most hosting providers include. Your WordPress installation also comes with Git integrated into it, so you can manage your source code and version history starting with the first time you log in.
Reseller Hosting Review
Best for: Multi-client agencies or freelancers
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- Product
- Managed
Managed servers are generally recommended if you are looking for specialised or advanced server hosting and have little to low technical skills
- CPU (Cores)
- Disk Storage
- Bandwidth
Recommendations:
– Basic sites: Upto 10GB
– eCommerce sites: 15GB+ - Free Migration Transfer
If you’re migrating your website from another company or plan, you might need support migrating your website to the new servers.
- Price
The monthly cost for this plan, including discounts
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- Professional
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- 2
- 0 GB
- 1.6 TB
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- $25.46/mo $29.95/mo 85%OFF
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If you’re designing sites for clients, or just offering hosting to your clients, and you want them to be able to manage the sites as their own, KnownHost has the perfect Reseller Hosting plan for you. There are four levels of Reseller Hosting plans available:
Basic Reseller Hosting starts at $6.97/month (renews at $13.95/month). This plan includes a 1 Core vCPU Processor, 1.5 GB Guaranteed RAM, 25 GB Cloud Storage Space, 25 cPanel Accounts, and 800 GB of Bandwidth.
The Standard Reseller Hosting plan starts at $9.97/month (renews at $19.95/month). It offers a 1 Core vCPU Processor, 2 GB Guaranteed RAM, 50 GB Cloud Storage Space, 50 cPanel Accounts, and 1200 GB of Bandwidth.
Professional Reseller Hosting is the next step up and begins at $14.97/month (renews at $29.95/month). Included is a 2 Core vCPU Processor, 3 GB Guaranteed RAM, 100 GB Cloud Storage Space, up to 75 cPanel Accounts, and 1600 GB of Bandwidth.
KnownHosts top tier is called Premium Reseller Hosting. The introductory price is $27.47/month, and it renews at $54.95/month. The Premier Reseller plan offers a 3 Core vCPU Processor, 4 GB Guaranteed RAM, 200 GB Cloud Storage Space, 100 cPanel Accounts, 4000 GB of Bandwidth, and comes with the Patchman service.
With each of the plans above, you’ll get the LightSpeed Webserver (and plugins), Free SSL Certificates, and cPanel/WHM software to manage your sites and installations. KnownHost’s Reseller Hosting plans are set up on the Cloud Linux platform, so you will be sure that you have access to the resources that you’re paying for. Hosting your sites in the Cloud also allows your sites to remain online if there is a hardware issue. Since hardware issues are out of your control when dealing with a third-party hosting company, it’s comforting to know that KnownHost has parallel cloud-based servers that allow for redundant storage, meaning your site will continue to be available, even if there happened to be a hardware problem.
Since you make money by selling and/or developing sites for your clients, having a fully managed reseller hosting plan allows you to focus on those core competencies while the professional US-based admin team at KnownHost takes care of the maintenance for you. Having your sites automatically backed up is an asset to you and your clients. In addition, the KnownHost team will also monitor your sites for failures.
They will notify you of any failures that occur and fix them, so you don’t even have to log in. Having a fully managed reseller plan, especially from a hosting provider you can trust, will make sure that your clients are happy with you, so you can focus on offering additional products, enhancements, and upgrades. All of the sites that are hosted on your Reseller Hosting plan will receive regular updates, so you can focus on building the newest page, or finding your next client!
VPS Hosting Review
Best for: High Traffic and Fast Growing sites
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- Product
- Managed
Managed servers are generally recommended if you are looking for specialised or advanced server hosting and have little to low technical skills
- CPU (Cores)
- Disk Storage
- RAM
Minimum Recommendations:
– Basic sites: Upto 4GB
– eCommerce sites: 4GB-6GB of RAM - Bandwidth
Recommendations:
– Basic sites: Upto 10GB
– eCommerce sites: 15GB+ - Price
The monthly cost for this plan, including discounts
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- Basic / MVPS-1
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- 2
- 50 GB SSD
- 2 GB
- 2 TB
- $35/mo $50/mo 70%OFF
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- Standard / MVPS-2
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- 2
- 100 GB SSD
- 4 GB
- 3 TB
- $56/mo $80/mo 70%OFF
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- Professional / MVPS-3
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- 4
- 150 GB SSD
- 6 GB
- 4 TB
- $70/mo $100/mo 70%OFF
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- Premium / MVPS-4
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- 6
- 200 GB SSD
- 8 GB
- 5 TB
- $87.5/mo $125/mo 70%OFF
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As the self-acclaimed Managed Hosting Specialists, KnownHost offers four different fully managed VPS hosting plans for those who want a little more power and independence, while maintaining the security blanket of having KnownHost’s expert admin team on-site to keep things running smoothly. If you’ve outgrown your shared hosting plan, the knowledgeable team from KnownHost will help you migrate your site(s) to one of the following VPS plans for free:
The introductory plan is called Basic VPS Server and starts at $28/month (1-year commitment), or $35 Monthly (including 30% lifetime discount). The Basic plan comes with a 2 Core CPU Processor, 2 GB Guaranteed RAM, 50 GB RAID-10 SSD Storage, and 2 TB of Premium Bandwidth.
The next step up is the Standard VPS Server plan that begins at $49/month (1-year commitment), or $56 Monthly (including 30% lifetime discount). The Standard VPS plan includes a 2 Core CPU Processor, 4 GB Guaranteed RAM, 100 GB RAID-10 SSD Storage, and up to 3 TB Premium Bandwidth.
The third choice of plans is the Professional VPS Server plan, which starts at $63/month (1-year commitment), or $70 Monthly (including 30% lifetime discount). With this plan, you’ll have access to a 4 Core CPU Processor, 6 GB Guaranteed RAM, 1500 GB RAID-10 SSD Storage, and 4 TB of Premium Bandwidth.
Finally, the Premium VPS Server plan is being offered for $80.50/month (1-year commitment) or $87.50 Monthly (including a 30% lifetime discount). This plan includes a 6 Core CPU Processor, 8 GB Guaranteed RAM, 200 GB RAID-10 SSD Storage, and up to 5 TB of Premium Bandwidth.
All plans above come with two IP addresses, DirectAdmin as your control panel (or cPanel for an extra $6/month), and free instant setup. KnownHost is also offering a 30% discount for life on all managed VPS plans, which is applied to all billing term options. Unlike the other plans and plans from most other hosting providers, the price that you pay for your Managed SSD VPS Server at the beginning is the same price you will pay when it’s time to renew. That’s a nice feature, as it can be a big turnoff when you reach the end of your initial term and watch your monthly costs skyrocket!
Most of the great features that come with the other hosting packages are also bundled with the VPS plans; you should be aware that several features do require additional monthly fees. Here is a quick summary of some of the features that are available for an additional fee with your KnownHost VPS server:
cPanel: If you’d prefer a cPanel control panel instead of DirectAdmin, it’s an extra $6/month.
LiteSpeed Webserver: As one of the biggest benefits and differentiators of KnownHost’s services, it’s surprising that LiteSpeed Webserver costs an additional $10 – $32/month on a VPS, depending on the number of domains and RAM being utilized.
Softaculous: It’s a great tool for one-click installations, but it will cost you an additional $1/month to include it on your VPS.
WHMCS: WHMCS is great for managing hosting accounts, but it is an extra $5/month to have it on your VPS.
Immunity AV+: KnownHost offers some great security features, including ImunifyAV+, which will scan your site and code to search for malware and malicious code, and notify you of any concerns. This service appears to be included in many of the plans offered by KnownHost but requires an additional $6/month on a VPS.
Proactive Monitoring: The admin team will monitor your VPS services, notify you in detail of the status, and respond accordingly to anything that needs attention. While this seems like something that should be part of the managed services that you’re signing up for, it actually costs an extra $9.95/month.
Root Access
All of KnownHost’s VPS plans provide you with full root access. Since you’re paying for your own (virtual) private server, you should absolutely have full control. Even though you don’t have a fully dedicated server, you will have root access to be able to manage users, settings, and install the software needed to run your business as you please.
The VPS plans from KnownHost run on the Cloud Linux platform, so you know you will be given a set amount of resources. Being guaranteed your own resources with the support of a trusted, domestic admin team, you can be sure you’re getting what you’d expect. It’s kind of disappointing that they nickel and dime their VPS customers with add-ons, but once you’ve customized the plan to your liking, it will likely still be priced competitively in comparison to the competition.
Cloud Hosting Review
Best for: High traffic sites with a global reach
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- Product
- Managed
Managed servers are generally recommended if you are looking for specialised or advanced server hosting and have little to low technical skills
- CPU (Cores)
- Disk Storage
- RAM
Minimum Recommendations:
– Basic sites: Upto 4GB
– eCommerce sites: 4GB-6GB of RAM - Bandwidth
Recommendations:
– Basic sites: Upto 10GB
– eCommerce sites: 15GB+ - Price
The monthly cost for this plan, including discounts
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- KVM Cloud 1
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- 1
- 75 GB SSD
- 2 GB
- 2 TB
- $56/mo $80/mo 70%OFF
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- KVM Cloud 2
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- 3
- 125 GB SSD
- 4 GB
- 3 TB
- $70/mo $100/mo 70%OFF
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- KVM Cloud 3
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- 6
- 200 GB SSD
- 8 GB
- 4 TB
- $105/mo $150/mo 70%OFF
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- KVM Cloud 4
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- 8
- 250 GB SSD
- 12 GB
- 5 TB
- $140/mo $200/mo 70%OFF
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Not to be confused with KnownHost’s Cloud Shared Hosting plans or SSD VPS Server plans, their Cloud VPS plans offer the independence and control of the VPS plans above, in addition to some performance and security features that can only be achieved using cloud technology.
Managed VPS Cloud Servers
With added data redundancies and parallel processing capabilities, the Managed KVM Cloud VPS plans offer a great alternative to the SSD VPS plans, and are available in the following packages:
The Cloud-1 package starts at $50.40/month (1-year commitment), or $56 Monthly, and includes a one vCore CPU Processor, 2 GB Guaranteed RAM, 75 GB Cloud Storage, and 2 TB of Premium Bandwidth.
The next step up is the Cloud-2 plan, starting at $63/month (1-year commitment), or $70 Monthly. Could-2 offers a three vCore CPU Processor, 4 GB Guaranteed RAM, 125 GB Cloud Storage, and 3 TB of Premium Bandwidth.
If you need more resources, the Cloud-3 starts at $94.50/month (1-year commitment), or $105 Monthly. It comes with a six vCore CPU Processor, 8 GB Guaranteed RAM, 200 GB Cloud Storage, and 4 TB of Premium Bandwidth.
The top Cloud Hosting plan is Cloud-4. It starts at $126/month (1-year commitment), or $140 Monthly, and includes an eight vCore CPU Processor, 12 GB Guaranteed RAM, 250 GB Cloud Storage, and 5 TB of Premium Bandwidth.
The above prices include the 30% lifetime discount that KnownHost is offering, so you will benefit from renewal prices that are consistent with the initial discount pricing you received. The Managed Cloud VPS plans come with the great US-based admin team that is on-site to support you but still require the same additional monthly fees for add-ons as the SSD VPS plans.
KVM
Built on OpenStack and Ceph, KVM offers distributed storage across parallel SSD drives. The SSD “network” provides redundancy for protection/backups and offers incredible recall speed. In addition to the performance benefits, KVM (Kernel Virtualized Machine) offers you full control over the Kernel. The VPS runs on its own server on the host node, providing an experience similar to a full dedicated hosting plan. In comparison to a standard VPS setup, which runs on six local RAID drives (or so), Ceph allows the Cloud VPS to run on potentially hundreds of SSDs, allowing for the transfer of data to happen at a very rapid pace.
Unmanaged VPS Cloud Servers
If you’re looking for a little more flexibility, or simply don’t think you need KnownHost’s proven staff to assist you in maintaining your Cloud VPS, they offer some very affordable unmanaged VPS options. Starting at $9.99/Month for a Cloud VPS with 2 GB of RAM, one vCPU Core, 25 GB of storage, and 2 TB of premium bandwidth, you can get your own Cloud VPS up and running for less than one-fifth of the cost of a managed plan. They’re currently not offering any discounts for longer-term commitments, but they are offering half-off for your first month when you choose to pay monthly.
There are, understandably, a lot fewer options and add-ons available for unmanaged VPS servers. You have the option of including a cPanel/WHM ($20/month) or DirectAdmin ($10/month) control panel or can simply go commando and fully manage your server from the command line. They also offer a KernelCare License for $2.95/month if you’d like to have kernel patches applied automatically without interrupting uptime. Unlike most of their other hosting plans, the unmanaged cloud plans do allow you to choose your favorite flavor of 64-bit Linux OS.
The options include CentOS 7, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, or Debian 9. While most of KnownHost’s plans are limited to CentOS, it’s nice to have a choice of operating systems in the Unmanaged VPS plans. In addition, you have the ability to run an Nginx web server, a LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) to power your website, power your own Docker instance, or even run your own instance of RStudio Server to collaborate on data analyses with friends and coworkers.
No matter which option you choose, KnownHost’s Cloud VPS plans offer a great deal of performance and flexibility for a reasonable cost.
Dedicated Hosting Review
Best for: High traffic sites, maximum resources & security
While KnownHost prides themselves on being Managed Hosting Specialists, they do offer managed or unmanaged dedicated hosting services. Whether your website is starting to lack performance due to increased traffic, requires a lot of resources to operate, or if you need a dedicated server to power your online game(s) or app(s), KnownHost can provide you with a solution to help you get to the next level. Depending on how tech-savvy you are, and how much time you have to maintain a secure server, you will need to determine if it would be more beneficial to manage your dedicated server yourself or utilize their trained US staff to ensure that it stays running and up to date. Each option has its pros and cons, and as you would imagine, there are some additional costs involved with having KnownHost manage your server.
Unmanaged Dedicated Servers
Before deciding to purchase an unmanaged server, you should try to determine if it makes more sense to pay a fee to have the on-site staff from KnownHost handle it for you, and if you would benefit from any of the additional services that are included (or only available) with managed servers.
KnownHost’s Unmanaged Dedicated Servers start at $87.20 per month, with an annual commitment, or $109/month if you opt to pay month-by-month. Many hosting companies offer a low-end dedicated hosting package to attract new customers, but KnownHost’s base offering provides a pretty powerful machine that may be capable of meeting all your requirements without the need to purchase any add-ons.
Upgrades and Add-ons
By itself, the base dedicated server package from KnownHost offers fairly high-end components for a pretty competitive price. If you’d like some context, use our free Dedicated Hosting Finder comparison tool to quickly compare over 100 different dedicated hosting plans from a variety of trusted hosting companies.
While the included features may offer the tools you need to power your website or app in a secured space, with resources that are fully allocated to you, KnownHost offers an array of upgraded hardware options, unique software and protection features, and other unique add-ons that they’ve made available to dedicated server clients. Like everything good in life, these upgrades come at a price, but the vast selection of a la carte options allow you to build the perfect package to meet your needs and your budget.
Hardware add-ons and upgrades are available from every dedicated hosting provider, and the sky’s the limit when it comes to performance and pricing. Since it’s difficult to compare the large range of hardware options that are available across the market, here are some of the unique features that KnownHost has cultivated to create a proprietary offering for dedicated server customers (in addition to the hundreds of possible hardware configurations available):
LiteSpeed Web Server
KnownHost offers dedicated hosting clients the option to utilize LiteSpeed Web Server instead of Apache. Starting at $16/month, LiteSpeed Web Server offers a faster experience for users, especially with resource-intensive sites and applications. The LSCache add-in (or WordPress plugin) is included and claims to further improve upon the enhanced performance offered by LiteSpeed Web Server. In combination with faster speeds, many users are likely to see improvements in SEO rankings. LiteMage is also available to help speed up Magento instances (for an additional fee).
Up to 5 Individual Disks
KnownHost offers your choice of 2 disks with their standard dedicated server package, but also allows for up to 5 individual drives (any combination of SSD and HDD) to be included in your server build. Most dedicated hosting providers offer customers a maximum of 2 storage drives.
Control Panels
cPanel is commonly offered as the default (or only) control panel option by many hosting providers. While free cPanel installation is included with a KnownHost Managed Server, cPanel/WHM requires an additional monthly fee (starting at $25 per 100 users) for Unmanaged Dedicated Hosting customers. Unmanaged servers include DirectAdmin control panel, which may be a smart business decision to distinctly position KnownHost to a growing number of consumers who are getting turned on to the increasingly popular cPanel alternative.
While cPanel has become somewhat of an industry-standard, DirectAdmin has been rapidly bridging the gap. Historically, DirectAdmin has been available as a cost-effective control panel alternative, but cPanel license costs have undergone some recent changes, which have created an opportunity for DirectAdmin to offer an even better value. Not only does DirectAdmin compete with cPanel on price, but it has also continued to offer new features, GUI improvements, and includes most of the same (or comparable) functionality that is available via cPanel.
One unique feature that’s offered by DirectAdmin is the ability to perform encrypted backups. cPanel users have been requesting this feature to be included, but as of now, it is not available. Click here to see a detailed comparison of DirectAdmin and cPanel.
Hardware RAID
While software RAID is a somewhat common offering for dedicated hosting, since it only requires a software modification and no extra or modified hardware, Hardware RAID is a competitive advantage that KnownHost offers to Dedicated Server customers. Starting at $24/month, and requiring four equal-sized drives, hardware RAID offers fast and reliable backup and restoration capabilities. Hardware RAID would typically be implemented by enterprise customers who need to ensure uptime and availability of their information.
KernelCare
KernelCare implements Kernel updates as live patches, which eliminates the need for server reboots and downtime. It’s available for your Dedicated Server $2.95 per month.
KnownHost Managed Dedicated Servers
KnownHost touts themselves as Managed Hosting Specialists, and you’ll notice that they offer a nice collection of features to their Managed Dedicated Server customers that are not available to Unmanaged Server customers, many of which are included in the monthly Management fee. Managed Servers start at $49 per month, in addition to the costs of an Unmanaged Server plan.
In general, Managed Server plans offer countless security and time-saving benefits. By having your Dedicated Server managed by KnownHost, you’ll be able to sleep soundly at night, knowing that their on-site US admin team is monitoring and maintaining your server. When they provision your dedicated server, they will optimize the operating system, install and optimize a control panel (DirectAdmin or cPanel), perform initial security hardening, and will even help you migrate your site to the server (fully managed process for migrations from the same control panel).
Once everything is set up, you will be given root access, and “handed the keys” to configure the server however you’d like. Having root access is a must, and is needed to install server-wide software, manage user permissions, and make any changes to the files and system that you want. You’re paying for a server that is dedicated to you, so you should rightfully have access to control it!
Make sure that you weigh the benefits of a Managed Server plan before deciding whether it will be worth the additional monthly fees. With a Dedicated Server, you will be one of the most highly prized hosting customers, and you should experience great access to customer service and technical support resources. With KnownHost, you will be dealing with a domestic team of experts that will be available 24×7 to answer any questions and to assist you every step of the way.
Top Features
Highly Scalable
Knownhost offers solutions right upto dedicated server hosting, making them suitable for most businesses needs.
24/7/365 Support
Knownhost are one of the few large providers to offer on-shore customer support for all plans.
Fully Managed Server Support
Knownhost are one of the few providers to offer technical configuration, optimization, backups, and migrations free on all plans.
KnownHost Server Performance
To test Knownhost hosting performance we used a few Pingdom reports. Over the span of a year, Pingdom’s probes (located across North America) performed daily checks, on a basic website (less than 100KBs) hosted on Knownhost’s shared server environment. Additionally, there was no throttling added to these checks, so slower response times can be expected for 3G or 4G connections.
Yearly Server Performance:
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Average Uptime
100.00%
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Average Response Time
0.00ms
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Monthly Downtime
No Downtime
Data shown as monthly Uptime averages for a basic Godaady website
Server performance can affect all aspects of your site. Case studies have consistently found that customer wait times (page load and response times) directly affect everything from SEM, revenue, and traffic growth. By a lot too, here’s just one example:
For Mobify, every 100ms decrease in homepage load speed worked out to a 1.11% increase in session-based conversion, yielding an average annual revenue increase of nearly $380,000.
Security
All of KnownHost’s hosting plans offer many security options to help protect you against attacks, malware, and even user-errors. No matter which plans that you decide the right features for your business or personal needs, you can count on the following features to have your back when you need it most!
Free SSL Certificates
SSL certificates have become a requirement for any website over the years, so it’s nice that KnownHost offers free SSL certificates with any plan. As always, if you’re handling financial transactions, or dealing with sensitive personal information, you should consider a paid SSL certificate. Upgraded certificates offer better protection for your visitors and can quickly garner more trust. If you’re just hosting a personal site or running a basic site to showcase your business, it’s great that you can get a free SSL certificate installed for you with any KnownHost hosting plan. Even if you’re not dealing with sensitive data, at least any data that is transmitted will be encrypted.
DDoS Protection
While you should take measures to protect against and monitor for attacks, KnownHost does offer some great tools to help, since you can’t possibly be watching all the time. By using multiple layers of identification and filtering hardware and services, KnownHost ensures that your website stays online, even if it’s being flooded with malicious requests. DDoS protection is included as a Free service to KnownHost hosting customers. While many hosting providers offer this service now, and although it may be unlikely that you’ll be hit with one of these attacks, it’s a very nice thing to have in case it ever does happen to you!
Automatic Backups
You should always maintain a local backup of your website or app, but you can breathe easy knowing that KnownHost will keep three backups of your instance, allowing you to revert back to a time when you know things were working, if necessary. As an included service in most hosting packages, they will maintain two daily backups and one weekly backup of your site and/or data. Almost no option will give you access to a snapshot of the latest version of your server before it crashes, but this is pretty much the next best thing
Automatic Updates and Monitoring
This also is included in some plans and available as an add-on in others. It’s a very helpful service and can easily pay for itself, just in the time it saves you from having to update your software. The various levels of service are detailed in the sections above, but one of the highlights is in the WordPress hosting plan. As an included feature in any WordPress Hosting plan, in addition to keeping your server in tip-top shape, KnownHost will regularly ensure that your WordPress installation, themes, and plugins are all up to date. Although WordPress is pretty good about notifying you when updates are available, it still requires you to log in, click the Install links, and wait for everything to update. This feature is a time-saver, but also applies updates when you’re not logged in.
They also offer Patchman as an optional service to detect and fix any vulnerabilities that occur in WordPress and other common CMS platforms for a small monthly fee.
Imunify 360
Imunify is a self-learning software that continuously monitors your server for security threats and maintains a powerful firewall to help protect your site against attacks. Imunify360 is part of the Cloud Linux platform and is only available with any of the Cloud Hosting plans from KnownHost. It monitors your web server for intrusions, scans for malware and cleans it up automatically, and offers proactive defense for PHP websites. It includes a nice dashboard to monitor all incidents, files, scans, and acts as a log to maintain the health history of your website.
Customer Support Review
KnownHost prides itself on its customer service, and the customer reviews seem to back up their claims! One of the biggest selling points that you will see on almost any KnownHost advertisement is that their customer service is provided by on-site staff at their US-based server facilities.
Developers frequently run into roadblocks, so it’s very helpful to have knowledgeable support staff available when you need them, instead of having to search through forums and blog posts to hunt for an answer that may not be out there… KnownHost’s professional admin team is available 24×7 to assist you and will typically respond to your requests within 5 minutes! You can view their average response time on their support site here. At the time of this review, it shows that they’re responding to the average request in 1.7 minutes. No matter how busy you are, you can handle a 2-minute wait to have your questions answered by an expert.
KnownHost’s support site does show a phone number, but it’s intended only for sales questions and support. If you want help with your service, or have a question about how to do something, you’ll need to submit a ticket. This is pretty common for online service providers, especially hosting providers, so if you are someone who needs to talk on the phone, you may need to find a very high-end hosting provider or hire a tech-savvy personal administrative assistant.
If something goes wrong with your service, or worse yet, your hardware, it’s invaluable to have support that is actually on-site! If you are enrolled in a managed hosting plan, there is a good chance that the admin team is already working on a solution, but you can reach out to them directly any time of day, even holidays, to inform them of a problem, or to get an update on the status of an issue.
KnownHost has a very vibrant community that participates in their forums. While many of the contributors appear to not be located domestically, you’ll find forum posts that cover just about any question or issue you may encounter. If you don’t want to submit a ticket or open up a chat, a quick search of the forums will often provide a quick answer. The KnownHost mods are extremely helpful and quickly resolve any questions that are posed.
The KnownHost team also maintains a blog that contains fresh content published regularly. Many of the posts are promoting or describing their services, but you’ll also find a lot of helpful tips about WordPress, customer retention, social media tips, software advice, and many other hints for optimizing your site and/or your business.
In addition to their blog and forums, KnownHost provides some essential information about their products and services on their Wiki page. Much of the information provided on their Wiki page is for new or potential customers, but some topics offer greater detail for users who are looking to optimize or have encountered specific problems. It’s a good place to start looking for information about the services they offer, but you’re probably better off submitting a help-desk ticket if you need help in your implementation.
Overall, KnownHost offers top-notch customer service. They understand the market and realize that their users want fast access to knowledgeable people who can help. They definitely deliver on their promise, with their professional on-site staff that can be reached 24 hours a day to answer any questions or help you solve any problems while you navigate their vast offering of hosting plans!
Support Tickets
Knownhost offer ticketed support, which can be accessed via the support page.
Live Chat
Knownhost offers technical and sales support via live chat 24/7/365
Knowledge Base
Knownhost has a public wiki filled with technical articles and guides for support.
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