Knownhost and Hostgator are among the top web hosting companies in the world, providing services to thousands of clients around the world.
The decision to choose between them is a hard one, but this post will, however, attempt to compare their products and services so you can make an informed decision.
Whether you want to buy WordPress hosting, cloud hosting or even a dedicated server, these two web hosting companies can provide you with what you need.
We will compare the Knownhost and Hostgator based on the following features
- Plans and pricing
- Ease of use
- Customer support
- Uptime
- Speed
- Backup
- Migration
- Features
- Security
Knownhost introduction
It was a US-based web hosting company that was established in 2006, it specializes in providing fully managed hosting services to businesses of all sizes with data centres in various locations across the globe, including Seattle, Dallas, Baltimore, and Amsterdam.
They have customers in more than 150 countries of the world.
Hostgator Introduction
Hostgator is a US-based web hosting that was established in 2006. They have hosted over 2.5 million websites on their platform.
They specialize in providing WordPress hosting, reseller hosting, AI web builder, VPS hosting, and shared hosting services.
Knownhost vs Hostgator: Plans and pricing
Knownhost plan and pricing
Knownhost web hosting is categorized into six plans, namely; shared hosting, reseller hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, cloud hosting and dedicated hosting.
Each hosting has sub plans, we described the features and price of the first three mentioned above.
Knownhost shared hosting
They are categorised into basic, standard, professional and premium plans.
The basic plan costs $3.47 per month providing the following features:
- 1 domain
- 1 Core
- 512 MB Memory Limit
- 5 GB Cloud Storage
- 5 Email Accounts
- 2 MySQL Databases
- Unlimited Premium Bandwidth
- LiteSpeed Included
- cPanel Included
- Free SSL Certificates
- Patchman Optional
Knownhost standard plan costs $6.47 per month, providing the following features:
- 5 Domain
- 1 Core
- 1 GB Memory Limit
- 20 GB Cloud Storage
- 25 Email Accounts
- 5 MySQL Databases
- Unlimited Premium Bandwidth
- LiteSpeed Included
- cPanel Included
- Free SSL Certificates
- Patchman Optional
The next plan is the professional plan which costs $9.97 per month. When you buy this plan you will get
- Unlimited Domain
- 2 Cores
- 2 GB Memory Limit
- Unlimited Cloud Storage
- Unlimited Email Accounts
- Unlimited MySQL Databases
- Unlimited Premium Bandwidth
- LiteSpeed Included
- cPanel Included
- Free SSL Certificates
- Patchman Optional
Finally, they have the premium plan which costs $19.97 per month. You will get the following when you buy this plan
- Unlimited Domain
- 4 Cores
- 4 GB Memory Limit
- Unlimited Cloud Storage
- Unlimited Email Accounts
- Unlimited MySQL Databases
- Unlimited Premium Bandwidth
- LiteSpeed Included
- cPanel Included
- Free SSL Certificates
- Patchman Optional
Their WordPress hosting solution is divided into 3; managed entry WordPress, Managed business entry and Managed corporate business.
The Managed entry WordPress costs $5.98 per month, providing the following features
- 50 GB SSD Storage
- Unlimited Email Accounts
- 1 WordPress Website
- Up to 100k Visits per month
- Unlimited Premium Bandwidth
The next plan, called Managed business entry costs $9.98 per month, and provides the following features:
- 100 GB SSD Storage
- Unlimited Email Accounts
- 1 WordPress Website
- Up to 200k Visits per month
- Unlimited Premium Bandwidth
Finally, the managed corporate business costs $19.98 per month. You will be given the following features when you buy this plan
- 150 GB SSD Storage
- Unlimited Email Accounts
- 5 WordPress Websites
- Up to 500k Visits per month
- Unlimited Premium Bandwidth
You can visit their website to get the details of the remaining web hosting plans.
Hostgator plans and pricing
The hosting plan of Hostgator is categorised into 5; shared, reseller, WordPress, VPS, and dedicated servers.
The shared hosting is divided into three; hatchling, baby and business plan.
The hatchling plan costs $2.75 per month. This basic plan offers the following:
- Single website
- One-click WordPress installs
- Free WordPress/cPanel website transfer
- Unmetered bandwidth
- Free SSL certificate
- Free domain included
Next is the baby plan which costs $3.5 per month, and provides the following features:
- Unlimited websites
- One-click WordPress installs
- Free WordPress/cPanel website transfer
- Unmetered bandwidth
- Free SSL certificate
- Free domain included
Finally, under the shared hosting, is the Business plan which costs $5.25 per month. It offers the following features
- Unlimited websites
- One-click WordPress installs
- Free WordPress/cPanel website transfer
- Unmetered bandwidth
- Free SSL certificate
- Free upgrade to Positive SSL
- Free dedicated IP
- Free SEO tools
- Free domain included
WordPress hosting is divided into Starter, Standard and Business.
The starter plan costs $5.95 per month, providing the following features:
- 1 site
- 100k visits per month
- 1 GB backups
- Free SSL certificate
- Free domain included
Next is the Standard plan which costs $7.95 per month. This plan gives the following features:
- 2 sites
- 200k visits per month
- 2 GB backups
- Free SSL certificate
- Free domain included
Finally, the business plan costs $9.95 per month. Providing the following features:
- 3 sites
- 500k visits per month
- 3 GB backups
- Free SSL certificate
- Free domain included
How to Host a WordPress Site with HostGator and Save Money
Knownhost vs Hostgator Plans and pricing
The hosting plan for knownhost starts at $3.47 per month while that of Hostgator is $2.27 per month. In general, hosting with knownhost is more expensive than Hostgator’s.
However, the WordPress hosting plan of Knownhost offers more features than that of Hostgator with an insignificant price difference.
Knownhost vs Hostgator: Ease of use
It is important for web hosting companies to make their platform easy to use and navigate, so bloggers and webmasters can easily find their way around without hiring an expert.
Knownhost ease of use
Knownhost doesn’t have a website builder like Hostgator but their platform is also easy to use. They give you access to your dashboard through cPanel.
Hostgator ease of use
Host gator has made its platform easy for beginner bloggers and webmasters to use by providing tutorials for them to study.
They also have a website builder that’s easy to use. It’s called Gator by HostGator, you can use it to design a website within minutes using their already-made templates.
Knownhost vs Hostgator: Migration
Knowing that you can easily migrate your website from one hosting platform to another without hassle is comforting. Every hosting company has different methods of migration, we will find out how these two hosting companies do theirs
Knownhost Migration
Knownhost allows you to migrate your website to their platform for free, provided the previous hosting control panel is cPanel, DirectAdmin or Plesk.
If your previous control panel is not part of the three mentioned above, you will have to pay for the migration.
Hostgator Migration
If you are migrating from a different hosting company to Hostgator, they offer a 1 site-free migration.
You will also be able to perform full Cpanel transfer, which means you can transfer even subdomains if it has.
However, you will enjoy the free migration if you request it within 30 days of purchase. Their staff will perform the migration when you make a request.
Knownhost vs Hostgator: Features
Knownhost Features
The following are some of the features you can find on the Knownhost platform
- Softaculous 300+ one-click script installs
- DDoS protected servers
- LiteSpeed web server with LSCache
- Free SSL certificates
- Pure SSD-based IO operations & caching
- WHM and cPanel
- Root access
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Free Cloudflare CDN
Hostgator Features
Some of the features you can find on Hostgator are:
- Free Domain
- Free site transfers
- Unmetered bandwidth
- 99.9% uptime guarantee
- One-click installs
- Free SSL certificate
- Opcache optimisation
- SSH and SFTP
- Multiple PHP versions
Knownhost vs Hostgator: Uptime
Uptime is the time a website is live for people to access within a given time. A poor uptime can lead to a loss of money because during that period your customers won’t be able to buy from your website.
Also, it can lead to loss of organic traffic and ranking position if it persists for a long time. Therefore, it becomes necessary for you to verify the uptime of the web hosting company you want to use.
Knownhost Uptime
Knownhost boasts of having a 99.9% Uptime which is not below the standard. That means you will have peace of mind knowing that your website will always be available for customers to access.
Hostgator Uptime
They also guarantee a 99.9% uptime for their users like most web hosting companies.
The tests above were done by Website set up to verify the uptime guaranteed by Hostgator. After several months, the uptime didn’t go below the 99.9% stated by them.
This means they have the technology in place to keep your website live and active all year round.
Knownhost vs Hostgator: Speed
Knownhost speed or load time is the rate at which your website loads when people click on it. The standard speed test is 3 secs. If your website should load beyond this time it is considered slow.
Having a slow website will increase bounce rate, and reduce traffic, SEO performance and conversion rate.
Website optimization indeed plays a role in website speed performance but the hosting server’s speed is also a major contributor to that effect.
Knownhost Speed
The speed of Knownhost was tested by site checkers using GTmetrix, Pingdom and PageSpeed Insights (Google) and the result is displayed in the image below.
The result above shows that Knownhost websites are fast since it falls within the average speed of 3 secs.
Hostgator speed
The speed of Hostgator was tested by the Website Set Up using Pingdom. The result shows Hostgator has a good speed and response time.
They have been able to maintain a good speed over the months in 2022.
Knownhost vs Hostgator: Backups
Having backup may seem like something that is not necessary for beginners but people who have been in the game will tell you how necessary it is to backup your website files.
Because you run the risk of losing all your files permanently if data loss occurs.
Therefore, you need to have your website files backed up so you can restore them if anything goes wrong.
Knownhost backups
They provide automatic backup when you purchase any of their hosting plans. The backups will occur weekly or daily when you purchase a standard or professional plan and 12 hourly when you purchase the Premium plan.
KnownHost now provides a remote storage solution for all your storage needs. For only $0.02/gigabyte, you can create a backup for your files.
It will be integrated with JetBackup, cPanel backups, and DirectAdmin backups.
Their packages start at $10 per month for 500GB of storage space.
Hostgator backups
They provide automatic backup for you depending on the package you opt-in for. However, they advise their users to go for third-party backup companies if they need optimum backup services.
That’s to say they don’t guarantee backup services for their users, it is the responsibility of their users to backup their files.
Knownhost vs Hostgator: Customer support
You may not know the relevance of good customer support until you are faced with a challenge and there is no one to assist you promptly.
It is good that you get support swiftly from your hosting provider whenever you are stranded. We will look at the means available for you to reach their customer service team.
Knownhost customer support
You can reach them through call, email, and live chat. Their Sales and billing office hours are from 7:00 am to 7:00 pm CST. While their technical support team is available round the clock, 24/7/365.
They have a toll-free number for their customers resident in the U.S.A and Canada.
The platform also has written guides that will help you navigate the platform. The guides have ratings to show you the technical difficulty of the article.
Hostgator customer support
You can access the customer support tab on your hosting dashboard where they have tutorials that can answer your questions.
But, if you are not satisfied with what’s provided for you, you can reach their customer support team through the following channels 24/7 via phone, live chat support, and ticket-based email support.
Knownhost Vs Hostgator: Money-back guarantee
The money-back guarantee makes it easy for you to trust their services since you can opt out within a period if you are not satisfied with their products and services.
Knownhost money back guarantee
They have a 30-day money-back guarantee period for all hosting packages upon written requests excluding Dedicated Servers, Domain Name Registrations and SSL Certificates.
Hostgator money-back guarantee
They extend their money-back guarantee by two weeks above the industry average of 30 days. That’s to say you have 45 days to test their products and services.
If anything pops up within that period you can get your money back. This privilege applies to shared, reseller, WordPress and VPS hosting packages but doesn’t apply to HostGator’s dedicated servers, administrative fees, or install fees for custom software.
Based on their terms and conditions, you will get a refund only after 90 days.
Knownhost Vs Hostgator: Security
You need to be sure your data and that of your visitors are safe. And also your website needs to be immune to hackers and malware
Hosting companies provide tools that help to protect websites against such occurrences. Let us see how Knownhost and Hostgator will try to achieve this.
Knownhost Security
They have free and premium SSL certificates powered by comodo, RapidSSL and GeoTrust, that you can use to secure your website. You can choose to buy a single domain, multiple domain or wild card. Their security has the following features:
- Up to 2048-bit encryption
- Comodo Fully Authorized
- KnownHost Fully Supported
Also, your website will be protected from intruders and information by DDoS protection. They also use other security measures like Imunify360, CloudLinux Isolation, Patchman and Server hardening.
Hostgator Security
Their free SSL certification protects your website domains and secure communication between the servers and your website visitors.
They also offer a site lock feature that keeps your website safe. Your website will be scanned daily for potential hacks or malware, if one is found you will be informed instantly.
However, you are not getting this site lock feature for free, it will cost you $5.99 per month.
Knownhost and Hostgator alternative
Knownhost and Hostgator offer good services for their customers indeed, but there are other web hosting companies you can use to host your website at an affordable rate without compromising quality.
Truehost is a suitable alternative for the two web hosting companies discussed in this post. They offer the following plans
- Truehost Silver hosting
- Truehost Gold hosting
- Truehost Platinum hosting
- Truehost Super platinum hosting
The hosting starts at $1.49 per month only compared to Knownhost which starts at $3.47 per month and Hostgator at $2.75 per month, it is cheaper and offers more.
For the Truehost silver hosting of $1.49 per month, you will be provided with the following features
- 30 GB Disk Space
- Unlimited Bandwidth Transfer
- Unlimited Email Accounts
- Unlimited FTP Accounts
- Unlimited Databases
- 99.999% Uptime
- Shared IP Address
- Your own Cpanel
- Free Script Installer – softaculous apps
- All CMS – Joomla, WordPress, Drupal, Magento
- Latest PHP, Perl, MySQL, Postgre Database
- 24/07 Support
You can see that you will get more features by spending less thereby saving money when you buy from Truehost. They also offer security, high speed, good customer service and 99.9% uptime.
Conclusion
The post shows you what Knownhost and Hostgator have to offer without necessarily giving a verdict because they both offer quality services. You are at liberty to choose any of them to design your website.
However, as mentioned earlier, you can use Truehost affordable and reliable hosting services to start your website and create an online presence for your brand or business.
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