KnownHost vs LiquidWeb: A Superior VPS

Table of Contents

KnownHost vs LiquidWeb: Pricing and Coupons

Liquid Web has a far lower VPS starting price compared to KnownHost. Thanks to an exclusive WP-Tweaks.com deal, the starter Liquid Web package costs just $15.00/m, compared to $40.00/m for KnownHost.

As you can see, the price difference between them is enormous. While the Liquid Web renewal price is higher, you can lock in your savings for 24-months, and that’s an incredible amount of savings. Here’s the LiquidWeb coupon code list for all the deals.

KnownHost Lacks VPS Term Discounts

The lack of initial VPS term discounts is KnownHost’s biggest disadvantage compared to Liquid Web. Instead, KnownHost gives you a recurring discount for the longer you host. Here are the KnownHost discount percentages:

VPS Term Duration	KnownHost Discount (%)	Price ($)
Monthly	Full price	$40.00/m
3-months	5% off	$38/m
6-months	10% off	$36/m
12-months	15% off	$34/m

KnownHost doesn’t let you host for more than one year. You can see that even with the maximum renewal discount, it’s still far more expensive than LiquidWeb. The only consolation is that if you host on a monthly basis, you can get 50% on VPS plans using the following coupon code:

You can see all the deals on the KnownHost coupon code page.

Liquid Web Add-Ons are Very Cheap

LiquidWeb offers some add-ons at massive discounts. For example, you can purchase the Cloudflare Pro and Business e-mail package for just an additional $5/m. By itself, Cloudflare Pro costs $20/m. So if you’re a Cloudflare customer, you get half the cost of your VPS reimbursed just in Cloudflare savings.

So even though Liquid Web has a higher renewal price than KnownHost, it comes out on top in the pricing battle.

KnownHost vs Liquid Web Pricing Ratings:

KnownHost Price Rating: ★★★☆☆ 3 stars
Liquid Web Price Rating: ★★★★☆ 4 stars

Winner: Liquid Web

Liquid Web vs KnownHost: Features Comparison

Both KnownHost and Liquid Web offer VPS add-ons. It’s hard to compare the two, but LiquidWeb wins the race again, thanks to free backups and cheaper security options.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the features:

LiquidWeb is better than KnownHost for VPS features. Here’s a detailed breakdown.

KnownHost vs Liquid Web Backups

Liquid Web provides 100 GB of free Acronis backups on all VPS plans. Acronis lets you keep real-time, offsite backups with complete self-service restore functionality. KnownHost, on the other hand, only takes backups every other day, and you need to open a ticket to restore them. Here’s a screenshot of Liquid Web’s Acronis backups free with each plan:

So LiquidWeb utterly decimates KnownHost when it comes to server backups.

KnownHost lets you purchase the JetBackup add-on for an additional fee. For more details, check out my article on KnownHost backups. But even though JetBackup is superior to what cPanel has by default, it’s far inferior to the Acronis backups that Liquid Web provides. Jetbackup doesn’t have offsite storage, real-time protection, or backup encryption. Jetbackup also uses up resources on your server, whereas Liquid Web’s Acronis hardly uses any resources.

This by itself might be enough to choose Liquid Web over KnownHost. Backups are on my list of good web hosting features, and you get a great deal with LiquidWeb.

LiquidWeb vs KnownHost: Security

KnownHost’s security add-on has two components:

1. ImunifyAV
2. Imunify360

ImunifyAV scans your PHP and HTML files for malware and removes them in real-time. Imuinify360 includes ImunifyAV but also adds a sophisticated firewall. These aren’t cheap, and for a single user, it can be around 30% of the cost of hosting. Imunify360 is the same cPanel plugin that KnownHost offers for free on its shared hosting, and it costs $11.00/m.

Liquid Web, on the other hand, bundles protection packages and Cloudflare Pro for just $5.00/m, as shown in this screenshot:

Considering that Cloudflare Pro by itself costs $cloudflare_pro=20.00/m, this is unbeatable value. I’ve said before that Cloudflare is the best CDN, even though it’s free. But with Cloudflare Pro, you get access to the sophisticated WAF, extra firewall and page rules, and a lot more. If you choose the higher-tier LiquidWeb package, you can even bundle a “Threat Stack Oversight Detection System” for the same additional cost.

So I feel that Liquid Web beats KnownHost easily in terms of security.

Liquid Web vs KnownHost: VPS E-mail Add-on

Both KnownHost and Liquid Web have e-mail add-on packages when purchasing a VPS. With Liquid Web, as seen in the screenshot above, you can bundle the premium business e-mail service along with the security package for just $5.00/m. This is much cheaper than KnownHost, whose Mailchannels add-on starts at a pricey $15.00/m.

Liquid Web’s pricing compares very well with Google Workspace, especially if you purchase the security and e-mail bundle.

So even though KnownHost VPS has add-ons for all the same services that Liquid Web does, the prices are much higher.

KnownHost vs Liquid Web Features Ratings:

KnownHost Features Rating: ★★★☆☆ 3 stars
Liquid Web Features Rating: ★★★★★ 5 stars

Winner: Liquid Web

KnownHost and Liquid Web Data Center Locations

LiquidWeb and KnownHost both have two data centers in the US and one in Europe. These are Liquid Web’s data center locations:

1. Lansing, Michigan (US Central)
2. Phoenix, Arizona (US West)
3. Amsterdam, Netherlands (Europe Central)

And these are the data centers for KnownHost:

1. Seattle, Washington (US West)
2. Atlanta, Georgia (US East)
3. Amsterdam, Netherlands (EU Central)

There’s not much to choose from between KnownHost and Liquid Web. Neither of them has a data center in Asia, unfortunately.

Winner: Tie

Liquid Web vs KnownHost: Uptime SLA Guarantees

A web host’s Service Level Agreement or SLA specifies how much uptime they promise their customers. They express this as a percentage. We’re looking for a number as close to 100% as possible. For example, a 99% uptime guarantee sounds good, but it translates to 7.2 hours of downtime per month! The SLAs also specify the compensation if the web host doesn’t meet the SLA uptime guarantee. This compensation is in terms of SLA credits – meaning discounts on existing or future invoices, measured by how much the provider missed its SLA target.

The Liquid Web SLA has an uptime guarantee of 100%, and this is unprecedented in the hosting world since web hosts always give themselves some leeway. By contrast, the KnownHost SLA promises a 99.9% uptime guarantee. That sounds almost perfect, but it means over 40 minutes of downtime per month, and that’s 40 minutes of potential lost sales.

KnownHost and Liquid Web respond to SLA failure in different ways. Liquid Web will reimburse you for ten times the amount of time your server was down. KnownHost will give you a percentage discount on the next bill – an increment of 10% for each 1/10ths of a percentage below the uptime guarantee, ending at 100% if the uptime ever drops below 99%.

I think both Liquid Web and KnownHost have excellent SLAs. But Liquid Web has to be the winner, thanks to the 100% uptime guarantee, instead of 99.9% for KnownHost.

KnownHost vs Liquid Web Uptime Ratings:

KnownHost Uptime Rating: ★★★★☆ 4 stars
Liquid Web Uptime Rating: ★★★★★ 5 stars

Winner: Liquid Web

Liquid Web vs KnownHost Customer Support

Unlike KnownHost, LiquidWeb guarantees the response times of its support channels. For example, here are the Liquid Web response time SLAs:

• Live chat initial response guarantee: 59 seconds
• Phone support response time guarantee: 59 seconds
• Ticket response time guarantee: 59 minutes

If Liquid Web fails to meet these deadlines, you get hosting credits of 10 times the time it exceeds the SLA commitment. So if you get a ticket response in 75 minutes, you get 150 minutes of 3 hours of SLA credit. Of course, you get an answer much faster than 59 minutes most of the time.

KnownHost, on the other hand, has no such SLA guarantee for response times. Having said that, their support is universally praised by customers, with response times to tickets in minutes. So while there’s nothing like LiquidWeb’s response guarantee, it’s still outstanding customer service. Still, because of this difference, I have to say that Liquid Web has better support than KnownHost.

KnownHost vs Liquid Web Support Ratings:

KnownHost Support Rating: ★★★★☆ 4 stars
Liquid Web Support Rating: ★★★★★ 5 stars

Winner: Liquid Web

Final Thoughts on KnownHost vs LiquidWeb

This comparison is rather one-sided. LiquidWeb is better than KnownHost for VPS hosting in almost every way. It’s not that KnownHost is bad. It’s that Liquid Web is so good! The only advantage KnownHost has is that it’s cheaper in the long run if you host for five years. And that Liquid Web doesn’t offer shared hosting. But if you’re looking for VPS hosting, I would choose Liquid Web over KnownHost each time.