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We proudly host our website on Rocket.net.
US$5.98 /month for first year
- $11.95/month No Contract
- ✅ 1 Website
- ✅ 100k Visitors per month
- ✅ Unlimited Bandwith
- ✅ 50GB Storage
- ✅ 1 CPU Core with 2GB RAM
US$19.98 /month for first year
- $39.95/month No Contract
- ✅ 5 Websites
- ✅ 500k Visitors
- ✅ Unlimited Bandwith
- ✅ 150GB Storage
- ✅ 4 CPU Cores with 4GB RAM
Table of Contents
KnownHost started in 2006 and claims to have customers in more than 150 countries. In this review post, we will detail KnownHost’s services, how they performed on our performance benchmarks and speed tests, and our overall ranking of their web hosting services. Note that KnownHost also offers VPS, Cloud, and Dedicated hosting as well, with each category offering unmanaged and managed hosting options. However, this review will focus on KnownHost’s Managed WordPress plans.
KnownHost WordPress Hosting General Features
| KnownHost Features | Is this good? | |
|---|---|---|
| Support Hours | 24/7 through a ticket system | ✅ 24/7 support is pretty standard and a must-have in our opinion. Some providers also offer 24/7 phone support, which is a nice feature. |
| Server Locations | United States: Atlanta and Seattle. Europe: Amsterdam | ✅ This is good if your customers are in North America *or* Europe, but not so good if they are elsewhere. |
| Uptime Guarantee | Not explicitly, but Knownhost says they have a 99.995% uptime. | ❌ Most hosts offer at least a 99.9% uptime guarantee. |
| SSL Included | Yes | ✅ Free SSL is standard and a must-have for website. |
| Money-Back Guarantee | 30 days | ✅ 30 days is standard across web hosts. |
| Email Hosting | Yes | ✅ You won't have to pay for a separate email plan with email hosting included. |
| Plan Lengths | Monthly, 6 months, 1 year, and 3 years | ✅ There isn't a greater discount between the 6 months, 1 year, and 3 year plans, but you get to lock in your upfront rate for longer. |
| Backups Available | Yes | ⚠️ KnownHost only keeps two days of backups plus one weekly backup. Most hosts offer 30 days of backup retention. You can upgrade to have greater backup retention. |
| Site Migrations | Yes | ✅ Having the host transfer the website is best to prevent any problems and stress. |
| Firewall | Yes | ✅ Firewall is crucial and standard among web hosts. |
| Malware Detection | Yes, Imunify360 | ✅ Malware detection is very important and also standard. |
We believe KnownHost offers a great selection of standard features for this price point, especially compared to Bluehost. Some beginner plans don’t include critical basics such as SSL Certificates, malware detection, and free backups. KnownHost includes these features in all of its plans, which we genuinely appreciate. Note though, that KnownHost only keeps two days of backups, plus one weekly backup. This is much less than other hosts that keep at least one month of daily backups.
We also appreciate that KnownHost includes free email hosting. If you have a separate email plan through Google as part of Google Workspace, you don’t need to worry about email hosting – Google is your email host. But if you host your own email server, KnownHost will host it for free, which is awesome.
Read More: Why is email hosting important?
Regardless of the size of your business, it is important to look professional. Having a custom email domain adds to your professionalism. Which looks more professional to you: mybusiness@gmail.com or info@mybusiness.com? If you said info@mybusiness.com, then we agree with you and that is why email hosting is important. Email hosting allows you to have your own email domain instead of relying on Gmail or another free email provider.
If you have Google Workspace, you probably have your own email domain. In this case, Google is your email host. But if you are just using an @gmail.com email address, it is time to upgrade!
Note that KnownHost only has three options for its server location: Atlanta, Seattle, and Amsterdam. Since KnownHost does not offer a CDN, you want to choose the server location nearest to your customers. However, if you have customers on multiple continents, you’ll want to either get your own CDN or consider another host that includes a CDN, such as WPX.
Finally, KnownHost offers plans ranging from monthly to three years. There is no discount for buying a longer-duration plan other than you lock in your upfront discounted rate for a longer period. Thus, if you like KnownHost, then buying a three-year plan is awesome. But if you aren’t sure or just don’t want to commit for that long of a period, note the renewal rates you’ll be paying once your contract expires.
KnownHost WordPress Optimization Features
| Knownhost Features | Is this good? | |
|---|---|---|
| Image Optimization | No | ❌ You want image optimization to ensure faster page loading, although you can also use plugins to accomplish this too. |
| CDN Access | No | ❌ A CDN is necessary if you have global customers and is relatively standard across mid-tier and higher WordPress hosts. |
| CSS/Javascript Minification | Not natively, but included as part of the LiteSpeed plugin. | ❌ Native minification is best, but we like the LiteSpeed plugin too. |
| Staging Website allowed? | Yes | ✅ Staging websites allow you to test changes to a website before going live. |
| HTTP versions | HTTP/2, HTTP/3 | ✅ HTTP/3 is the latest version. |
| Data Compression | GZIP and Brotli | ✅ Brotli is the latest standard in data compression. |
| Full Page Caching | Yes, server-level caching through LiteSpeed. | ✅ Full-page caching helps speed up initial web page load times. |
We really like that KnownHost uses LiteSpeed server technology, as we have had excellent experience with LiteSpeed on other WordPress hosts. A big plus is that you get free credits when using the LiteSpeed cache plugin on WordPress. These credits can go towards image optimizations using QUIC.cloud or custom CSS creation.
One main drawback is that KnownHost doesn’t include a CDN on its WordPress plans. We are disappointed about this. Nonetheless, you can sign up for Cloudflare Basic on your own and then integrate it. It requires some work and configuration but will allow you to get a basic CDN service through Cloudflare for free. Note that Cloudflare Basic is not as good as Cloudflare Enterprise included in Rocket.net and Kinsta WordPress plans.
Read More: What is a CDN?
A CDN, or Content Delivery Network, speeds up web loading by keeping copies of your website in various places worldwide, so your international visitors don’t have to wait for data to travel across continents to get to them.
Still, we appreciate KnownHost including some upgraded optimizations not commonly found on lower-tier WordPress plans, such as Brotli data compression and HTTP/3 support. If you add the Cloudflare Basic CDN for free on your own, use the LiteSpeed cache plugin to minify CSS and JavaScript, and then use free LiteSpeed credits to optimize your images, you can put together quite a powerful WordPress hosting plan on the cheap using the Entry plan as highlighted below.
KnownHost WordPress Managed Hosting Plans
US$5.98 /month for first year
- $11.95/month No Contract
- ✅ 1 Website
- ✅ 100k Visitors per month
- ✅ Unlimited Bandwith
- ✅ 50GB Storage
- ✅ 1 CPU Core with 2GB RAM
- ❌ No CDN
US$9.98 /month for first year
- $19.95/month No Contract
- ✅ 1 Websites
- ✅ 200k Visitors
- ✅ Unlimited Bandwith
- ✅ 100GB Storage
- ✅ 2 CPU Cores with 2GB RAM
- ❌ No CDN
US$19.98 /month for first year
- $39.95/month No Contract
- ✅ 5 Websites
- ✅ 500k Visitors
- ✅ Unlimited Bandwith
- ✅ 150GB Storage
- ✅ 4 CPU Cores with 4GB RAM
- ❌ No CDN
KnownHost’s three WordPress Managed Hosting Plans are geared towards the beginner to mid-tier WordPress user. We believe the Entry plan is priced well for the features and performance you get compared to other beginner hosts like Bluehost or EasyWP. However, you will want to compare KnownHost to Hostinger in this price range.
In fact, we tested KnownHost using the Entry WordPress plan, and we were pleasantly surprised at how well KnownHost performed. If you pair the Entry plan with a free CDN from Cloudflare or Jetpack, you will have a relatively good-performing website for the price point.
Note that the only three differences between the Entry and mid-level Business plan are an increase in storage from 50GB to 100GB, an increase in monthly visitors from 100,000 to 200,000, and that you get two CPU cores instead of one core. Unless you truly need these kinds of numbers, we recommend the Entry plan. The price increase is unnecessary if you don’t have a high-performing website needing additional storage or higher visitor limits.
Read More: How much storage do I need?
10GB is plenty for websites that don’t have a ton of high-quality photos and don’t store videos locally. If you are using WebP as your image format – which you should be doing! – then you could have a thousand or two of WebP photos and not need more storage. Also, if you embed video from YouTube or Vimeo, you don’t need to worry about storage either. But if you store your videos locally, and especially if the videos are 1080p or 4K, then you may want to upgrade your storage.
The Corporate plan is required if you have 2-5 websites. While $20/month is good for the first year, paying $40/month thereafter seems a bit high. You could pay a few dollars more and get a better plan from GoDaddy, Rocket.net, or WPX.
KnownHost Performance Tests
As with all of our web hosting reviews, we tested KnownHost using our test WordPress website to see how KnownHost performs in real life. We ran all of these tests using the Entry WordPress Hosting plan, which is the cheapest WordPress hosting plan KnownHost offers.
There are three components to our performance tests: Google Core Web Vitals, GTMetrix Performance, and worldwide speed testing. The results are below; you can see our full test specifications on this page.
Google Core Web Vitals – Lighthouse Scores
First Contentful Paint (FCP)
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
Total Blocking Time (TBT)
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
Speed Index (SI)
Total Performance Score
Read More: What do these scores mean?
Google likes fast-loading websites because they provide amazing visitor experiences. These scores show how fast and how smoothly a website loads. The better your score is, the greater chance that Google will increase the search ranking of your page, especially if your competitors score poorly. Google prefers everyone to score 90-100, while 50-89 is ok. A score below 50 is poor.
While part of these scores will depend on how efficient your website is, part of these scores also depend on how fast your web host provider is. Additionally, if your web host provider offers optimization features such as minification, then that will improve your score. You can learn more about these metrics on this Google web page.
KnownHost performed quite well on the Google Core Web Vitals. An overall performance score of 92 was among our top performers across all WordPress hosts, on par with even top-tier hosts like Rocket.net and WPX. This is excellent performance by KnownHost!
The scores above are not the actual Lighthouse values but rather the scores Lighthouse assigns to each metric. We chose to display these scores instead of the actual values to make comparing scores across web host providers easier. Below is the chart showing the actual Lighthouse values for those of you who are more technically minded.
| Lighthouse Metric | Raw Value | Lighthouse Score |
|---|---|---|
| First Contentful Paint (FCP) | 1.5 seconds | 95 |
| Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) | 3.3 seconds | 69 |
| Total Blocking Time (TBT) | 0 ms (miliseconds) | 100 |
| Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) | 0.021 | 100 |
| Speed Index (SI) | 2.1 seconds | 99 |
GTMetrix Performance
Read More: What do these scores mean?
As mentioned above, Google likes fast-loading websites because they provide amazing visitor experiences. GTMetrix analyzes and scores web pages using mostly the same criteria as Google Lighthouse. However, GTMetrix allows you to customize the scoring based on location and type of mobile device. GTMetrix also weighs criteria differently than Google itself, providing another opinion on how the user experiences your website loading.
We used three scores from GTMetrix that match Lighthouse for comparison: FCP, SI, and LCP. We then added the Time to First Byte (TTFB) because many people are interested in this score. Finally, we also added the total fully loaded time to measure a complete loading.Based on GTMetrix’s documentation, there are how the scores measure:
- TTFB: Good is less than 800ms and bad is above 1800ms.
- FCP: Good is less than 0.9 seconds and bad is above 1.6 seconds.
- SI: Good is less than 1.3 seconds and bad is above 2.3 seconds.
- LCP: Good is less than 1.2 seconds and bad is above 2.4 seconds.
- Total Load Time: GTMetrix doesn’t have a score chart for this, but based on our own testing, less than three seconds is good and over five seconds is bad.
You can learn more about these metrics on this GTMetrix web page.
KnownHost did very well in our GTMetrix testing in the three North American locations: Chicago, San Francisco, and Vancouver. Fully loaded times were 2.2 seconds or less – with Chicago coming in at 1.5 seconds. Note that our website was hosted at KnownHost’s Atlanta location, so Chicago being the fastest makes complete sense.
However, KnownHost’s performance wasn’t as great outside of North America, with Dubai and Johannesburg being especially slow. Again, not having a CDN hurt KnownHost’s performance. On the other hand, if you have customers in Europe or the Middle East – and not North America – switching to KnownHost’s Amsterdam server location will lead to better performance in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. But if you have worldwide customers, not having a CDN will hinder your worldwide performance.
| Server Location | Time to First Byte (TTFB) | First Contentful Paint (FCP) | Speed Index (SI) | Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) | Fully Loaded Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chicago | 565ms | 1.3s | 1.4s | 1.5s | 1.5s |
| Dubai | 1900ms | 3.1s | 3.4s | 3.5s | 4.2s |
| Frankfurt | 1200ms | 2.0s | 2.2s | 2.2s | 2.5s |
| Johannesburg | 1900ms | 3.1s | 3.4s | 3.5s | 4.1s |
| Hong Kong | 1500ms | 2.6s | 2.8s | 3.0s | 3.5s |
| London | 937ms | 1.7s | 1.8s | 1.9s | 2.5s |
| Mumbai | 1500ms | 2.8s | 3.0s | 3.1s | 3.8s |
| San Francisco | 812ms | 1.8s | 1.9s | 1.9s | 2.2s |
| São Paulo | 1200ms | 2.1s | 2.3s | 2.3s | 2.7s |
| Singapore | 1700ms | 2.9s | 3.1s | 3.2s | 3.8s |
| Sydney | 1300ms | 2.9s | 2.9s | 3.0s | 3.5s |
| Tokyo | 1300ms | 2.3s | 2.4s | 2.5s | 3.0s |
| Vancouver | 817ms | 1.4s | 1.6s | 1.6s | 1.9s |
Worldwide Load Testing
Knownhost’s performance on our worldwide load testing mirrored its performance on GTMetrix. The three North American locations did very well, while performance elsewhere lagged. However, Knownhost’s performance is quite favorable compared to other starter WordPress plans. And as mentioned above, these scores will shift east if you choose to host your website in Amsterdam instead of the United States.
| Average Speed Test Result (ms) | Fail Rate | |
|---|---|---|
| California, USA | 184 | 0.0% |
| Cape Town, South Africa | 762 | 0.0% |
| Central Canada | 103 | 0.0% |
| Dubai, UAE | 637 | 0.0% |
| Frankfurt, Germany | 314 | 0.0% |
| Hong Kong | 647 | 0.0% |
| Ireland | 333 | 0.0% |
| Israel | 468 | 0.0% |
| London, UK | 309 | 0.0% |
| Milan, Italy | 348 | 0.0% |
| Mumbai, India | 689 | 0.0% |
| São Paulo, Brazil | 397 | 0.0% |
| Singapore | 726 | 0.0% |
| Stockholm, Sweden | 374 | 0.0% |
| Sydney, Australia | 587 | 0.0% |
| Tokyo, Japan | 505 | 0.0% |
| Virginia, USA | 53 | 0.0% |
Our KnownHost Review Recommendation
KnownHost offers a great selection of standard features for the beginner price point, especially when compared to other web hosting providers. They include features like SSL Certificates, malware detection, and free backups in all of their plans, which is not common in other beginner plans. However, KnownHost only keeps two days of backups plus one weekly backup, which is much less than other hosts that keep at least one month of daily backups.
The only real downside is that they don’t include a CDN on their WordPress plans, but you can sign up for Cloudflare Basic (or Jetpack’s CDN) on your own and then integrate it. If you add the Cloudflare Basic CDN for free on your own, use the LiteSpeed cache plugin to minify CSS and JavaScript, and then use free LiteSpeed credits to optimize your images, you can put together quite a powerful WordPress hosting plan on the cheap using the Entry plan as highlighted above.
Overall, if you have customers in either North America or Europe, we recommend KnownHost for its excellent performance, great pricing, and beginner-friendly features. However, if you are looking for a top-tier WordPress host, we recommend Rocket.net, GoDaddy, and WPX.
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