KnownHost vs IONOS
KnownHost and IONOS compared on measured uptime, response time, pricing and features from our own tests. KnownHost scores higher overall.
By Jennifer T. · Updated
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Verdict
KnownHostWins overall
Managed cPanel hosting since 2006 on LiteSpeed and NVMe with stated cores and RAM, daily backups and three locations
The former 1&1: unlimited sites and traffic from $8 a month at renewal, with a free domain and wildcard SSL
KnownHost wins 4 of the six sub-scores and comes out ahead overall (7.4 vs 7.1).
How do the scores compare?
KnownHost leads on 4 sub-scores, IONOS on 2. Higher is better.
Which one is faster and more reliable?
Which one costs less?
On renewal, KnownHost is cheaper ($7.16/mo vs $14.00/mo). Intro prices need the listed term.
What does each include?
| KnownHost | IONOS | |
|---|---|---|
| Free domain | No | One domain free for the first year on every plan: .us, .ca, .com, .net, .org, .info, .me, .biz or .online |
| Free SSL | Every plan, every domain | One DV wildcard certificate on Essential, Starter and Plus; unlimited wildcard certificates on Ultimate |
| Backups | Daily JetBackup with 2-day and 1-week retention on every plan; extended retention sold as an add-on | Daily backup of storage and databases with data recovery, every plan |
| Free migration | Migration team copies files, databases and email and tests the site | No |
| Free CDN | No | Starter, Plus and Ultimate; not on Essential |
| Caching | LiteSpeed Web Server with LSCache on every plan; Redis and Memcached optional | Server compression and HTTP/2 listed; no caching layer named on the plan page |
| Staging | No | No |
| SSH, Git and cron | Every plan, with current PHP versions | Not stated |
| Resource limits | CloudLinux isolation with 1, 2, 4 and 6 cores and 1, 2, 4 and 6 GB memory limits by plan | CPU priority 1x, 3x, 5x and 10x by plan; 262,144 inodes on every plan; cron jobs 10, 25, 50 and 100 |
| Data center choice | Atlanta, Seattle or Amsterdam at checkout | No |
| Uptime guarantee | The network page claims a 99.999% availability SLA and 99.99+% uptimes; the terms of service contain no uptime clause or credit schedule | 99.99% in the general terms, with a credit for the month proportional to the downtime, on request and at IONOS's discretion |
| Security | Imunify360 with real-time malware scanning and a web application firewall; Patchman optional on Basic and Standard, included above | Daily malware scanning (basic, or advanced with automatic removal on Ultimate), DDoS protection, geo-redundancy |
| 5, 25 or unlimited mailboxes by plan, with webmail | 1, 2, 4 or 5 accounts of 2 GB by plan, with forwarding, webmail and anti-spam | |
| Phone support | A US toll-free number on every page, with 24/7 ticket support | 24/7, with a personal consultant |
| Windows hosting | No | No |
| SSH, SFTP, WP-CLI and Git | Not stated | Every plan, with 200 SFTP accounts, Perl and Python |
| PHP versions | Not stated | 8.4, 8.3 and 8.2, with paid extended support for 5.6 and later |
| Websites and traffic | Not stated | Unlimited websites and unlimited traffic on every plan; 5,000 subdomains |