Affiliate disclosure: some links in this article are affiliate links and I may earn a commission at no cost to you. It does not change what I recommend or what the vendor’s own pages say. Every figure below was read on KnownHost’s live pages on 15 September 2026 and each one is linked to the page it came from.
Let me start with the part that costs me money. If you are running a high-ticket dropshipping store on Shopify, selling $1,000 to $5,000 products, you almost certainly do not need KnownHost. Shopify hosts your storefront. Buying a managed VPS to sit next to it solves a problem you do not have, and it adds a server you now have to think about at 2am when a $4,000 order does not go through.
The people who do need this are specific. You run WooCommerce instead of Shopify. You run a content site alongside the store and the content site is the thing bringing in traffic. You outgrew shared hosting and you keep hitting CPU limits during ad pushes. You run a handful of client sites or brand sites and you want them all on one box you control. If none of that is you, save the money and go read about how high ticket dropshipping actually works instead.
If that is you, then KnownHost pricing is worth understanding properly, because it is genuinely more complicated than the headline number suggests. KnownHost publishes separate price ladders for shared hosting, managed WordPress, managed VPS, unmanaged VPS, managed NVMe VPS, unmanaged NVMe VPS, managed cloud, semi-dedicated, reseller, PCI compliant hosting and four different dedicated server catalogues, each on its own page. Three of the “starting at” figures on its own hosting overview page are labelled as annual prices when the product pages they link to only show those figures on a three year commitment. The shared plans publish renewal prices, which is good and rare. The VPS plans do not publish renewal prices at all. And a control panel licence, the thing that makes a managed server usable, is not included by default.
I opened every page on KnownHost’s sitemap whose URL contains price, plan, hosting, vps, cloud, dedicated or backup, plus the SLA, the support coverage page and the terms of service. Here is what it costs.
See the real price before you commit three years
KnownHost’s own plan cards carry a term switcher with four settings and a renewal price under each one. Basic shared reads $3.47/mo on the default three year tab and $6.71/mo on the one month tab, and the renewal figure under it goes from $7.16 to $8.95. Flip the switcher yourself before you decide.
Shared web hosting: four plans, four terms, and a published renewal price
The KnownHost shared web hosting page has a switcher above the plan cards with four settings: 3 Year, 2 Year, 1 Year and 1 Month. The three year tab is selected by default, which is why the first number you see is the lowest one on the page. Each card then shows two figures, “Starting at $X/mo” and “Renews at $Y/mo”.
That second figure is the part most hosting comparison articles leave out, and KnownHost deserves credit for publishing it on the card rather than burying it. Here is the whole grid, read off the page’s own plan data on 15 September 2026.
| Shared plan | 3 year | 2 year | 1 year | 1 month | Renews at (3 yr term) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $3.47/mo | $4.93/mo | $6.72/mo | $6.71/mo | $7.16/mo |
| Standard | $6.48/mo | $8.42/mo | $9.72/mo | $9.72/mo | $11.01/mo |
| Professional | $9.98/mo | $12.97/mo | $14.97/mo | $14.96/mo | $16.96/mo |
| Premium | $19.98/mo | $25.97/mo | $29.97/mo | $29.96/mo | $33.96/mo |
Look at the Basic row again. The one year intro price and the one month price are effectively the same, $6.72 against $6.71. Paying for a year up front buys you nothing on that plan. The saving only appears at two years and three years. That is unusual and it is worth knowing before you hand over twelve months of money for no discount.
What the three year commitment actually costs up front
The per month figures are the term total divided by the number of months. KnownHost’s page data carries both. Basic shared on three years is $124.92 for the whole term against a regular price of $257.76. Standard is $233.10 against $396.27. Professional is $359.10 against $610.47. Premium is $719.10 against $1,222.47.
So a three year Basic plan is $124.92 charged today, and then, on the page’s own renewal figure of $7.16 per month, about $257.76 for the next three years. Divide $124.92 by 36 and you get $3.47. Divide $257.76 by 36 and you get $7.16. The arithmetic is consistent, which is more than I can say for a lot of hosts, but you are still looking at a bill that roughly doubles at renewal.
Managed WordPress hosting: three tiers, and the footnote matters
KnownHost’s managed WordPress hosting page lists three plans, each with a “You Save 50%” badge and an asterisk next to the price. The asterisk resolves at the bottom of the plan block to a single line: “* Based on 3 year commitment”.
| WordPress plan | Intro (3 yr) | Renews at | Sites | Memory | Storage | Visits/mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entry | $5.98/mo | $11.95/mo | 1 | 4 GB | 50 GB NVMe | 100k |
| Business | $9.98/mo | $19.95/mo | 1 | 4 GB | 100 GB NVMe | 200k |
| Corporate | $19.98/mo | $39.95/mo | 5 | 6 GB | 150 GB NVMe | 500k |
Note that Entry and Business both give you one site and 4 GB of memory. You are paying the extra four dollars for storage and for the visit allowance, not for capacity. If you run a store plus a blog plus a staging copy, Corporate is the first tier that actually lets you do it on one plan.
Managed VPS: where most stores that outgrow shared hosting land
This is the tier that matters for a WooCommerce store doing real volume. The managed VPS page shows five plans as “Starting At $X/mo” with no term switcher and no renewal price published anywhere on the page. That is a real gap. I looked for a renewal figure on the managed VPS page, the managed NVMe VPS page, the managed cloud page, the comparison pages and the public order form, and none of them publishes one.
| Managed VPS | Price | CPU | RAM | NVMe | Bandwidth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic VPS | $43.25/mo | 4 core | 6 GB | 100 GB | 3 TB |
| Standard VPS | $63.25/mo | 6 core | 10 GB | 200 GB | 5 TB |
| Professional VPS | $83.25/mo | 8 core | 12 GB | 300 GB | 6 TB |
| Premium VPS | $103.25/mo | 10 core | 14 GB | 350 GB | 8 TB |
| Extreme VPS | $143.25/mo | 16 core | 16 GB | 500 GB | 10 TB |
Management costs exactly $23.25 a month, on every single tier
KnownHost sells the same hardware unmanaged. The unmanaged VPS page lists Entry at $5, Entry Plus at $10, Basic at $20, Standard at $40, Professional at $60, Premium at $80 and Extreme at $120. Put those side by side with the managed prices above and the gap is identical every time.
Basic is $43.25 managed against $20 unmanaged, a difference of $23.25. Standard is $63.25 against $40, a difference of $23.25. Professional is $83.25 against $60. Premium is $103.25 against $80. Extreme is $143.25 against $120. Five tiers, five identical gaps of $23.25.
Managed cloud is priced the same way on the managed cloud page, at $53.25, $73.25, $93.25, $123.25 and $183.25 for its five tiers, with no renewal price published there either.
The same thing holds on the NVMe line. Managed NVMe runs $47.25, $71.25, $119.25, $167.25 and $215.25 on the managed NVMe VPS page, while the unmanaged equivalents are $24, $48, $96, $144 and $192. Subtract and you get $23.25 every time again. That is useful, because it tells you exactly what you are buying when you buy “managed” here, and it tells you what you save if you are confident running your own server.
Semi-dedicated, reseller, PCI and dedicated
The semi-dedicated page is the one genuinely honest price ladder on the site, because the intro price and the renewal price are identical on every term. Basic is $35 on one month, $33.25 on three months, $31.50 on six months and $28 on a year, which is $336 for the year. Standard runs $55 down to $44. Professional runs $70 down to $56. Premium runs $90 down to $72. No renewal cliff, just a straight prepay discount.
Reseller hosting has the same four term switcher as shared. On the three year tab, Basic Plus is $9.98 renewing at $16.96, Standard Plus is $12.98 renewing at $22.06, Professional Plus is $17.98 renewing at $30.56 and Premium Plus is $29.98 renewing at $50.96. On a one year term, Basic Plus is $14.97 renewing at $18.96.
The PCI compliant hosting page only offers two terms, one year and one month. Entry is $20.92 a month on a year, which is $251.04 billed against a regular $299.40, and renews at $24.95. Business is $29.30 a month, $351.60 against $419.40, renewing at $34.95. Corporate is $67.03 a month, $804.36 against $959.40, renewing at $79.95.
Dedicated servers come in four separate catalogues and they are priced per configuration rather than per plan. Managed dedicated starts at $176.25 a month for the cheapest in stock box, a Xeon E-2236 with 16 GB and 240 GB plus 1 TB. Unmanaged dedicated says on the page, verbatim, “Enterprise-grade Intel & AMD configurations starting at $109/mo.” Budget dedicated starts at $49 a month for legacy hardware, and the cheapest in stock AMD Ryzen box is $179 a month. Stock is listed per machine and several configurations on those pages were marked out of stock when I read them.
Not sure hosting is the bottleneck in your store?
Most $1,000 to $5,000 product stores lose orders to supplier lead times and freight quoting, not to server response time. If you are shopping for a VPS to fix a conversion problem, the build service fixes the actual funnel first.
The add-ons are where a $43 server becomes a $90 server
Every managed VPS and cloud plan page carries an add-on block with published prices. These are not upsells hidden at checkout, they are on the plan page, and you should price them into your decision before you order.
| Add-on | Monthly | Yearly |
|---|---|---|
| Softaculous installer | $1 | $12 |
| JetBackup | $8.95 | $107.40 |
| Imunify AV+ | $7 | $84 |
| Imunify360, 1 user | $11 | $132 |
| Imunify360, 30 users | $23 | $276 |
| Imunify360, 250 users | $32 | $384 |
| Imunify360, unlimited users | $41 | $492 |
| LiteSpeed | $10.00 up to $32.00 | Not published |
| LiteMage | $40.00 or $100.00 | Not published |
| Proactive monitoring | $9.95 | Not published |
| MailChannels, 5,000 messages | $15 | Not published |
| Redis and Memcached | Free | Free |
Remote backup space is priced separately on the remote backups page at $10 a month for 500 GB in Atlanta, Seattle or Amsterdam. The footnote says additional storage may be purchased in blocks of 100 GB for $0.02 per GB, up to a maximum of 10 TB per account. The same page’s FAQ says JetBackup licences start at $8.95 a month, which matches the add-on table.
Control panels are not included, and that is on a page you will not read
This is the single most important line on the whole site and it sits in an FAQ accordion on the hosting overview page, not on any plan card. Verbatim: “Control panels are not included by default. For managed services, a control panel license such as cPanel, Plesk or DirectAdmin is required and billed separately. This is necessary for us to provide ongoing support and management.”
On the managed VPS comparison page, DirectAdmin and cPanel/WHM are both listed as “Optional Choice” on all four columns. KnownHost does not publish the licence price on any page I opened. cPanel’s own pricing page lists four licence tiers named Solo, Admin, Pro and Premier, so at minimum you should treat the control panel as a real line item and ask sales for the number before you order. A managed VPS whose advertised price is $43.25 is not a $43.25 bill.
Three of the overview page’s “from” prices do not match the product pages
This is the trap in this category and KnownHost walks straight into it. The hosting overview page lists a starting price for each product with a qualifier underneath. Three of those qualifiers say “When billed annually” and the annual price on the matching product page is a different number.
| Product | Overview page says | Product page annual rate |
|---|---|---|
| Shared hosting | $3.47/mo when billed annually | $6.72/mo on the 1 Year tab |
| Managed WordPress | $5.98/mo when billed annually | $5.98/mo, footnoted “Based on 3 year commitment” |
| Reseller hosting | $9.97/mo when billed annually | $14.97/mo on the 1 Year tab |
In all three cases the figure on the overview page is the three year rate wearing an annual label. The overview page also quotes VPS hosting from $5.00 a month, cloud hosting from $8.00 a month, NVMe VPS from $12.00 a month, semi-dedicated from $35.00 a month and dedicated servers from $158.00 a month, and that $158 dedicated figure does not appear on any of the four dedicated server catalogues, where the cheapest managed box in stock was $176.25. The only other place I found $158.00 was the DirectAdmin hosting page, which also shows managed dedicated servers “Starting At $158.00/mo”.
None of this is fraud. It is a marketing page that has drifted away from the product pages, which is what happens when a host runs a dozen price ladders. But it means the first number you see is not the number you will pay, and you should always click through to the product page and set the term switcher yourself.
What the SLA actually pays out
KnownHost’s service level agreement opens with a sentence worth quoting in full: “KnownHost LLC guarantees a 99.9% network uptime.” The credit ladder underneath is calculated on your monthly renewal price and runs from a 10% credit at 99.80% uptime, through 50% at 99.40%, to 90% at 99.10% and 100% at 99.00%.
Three conditions matter. Your account must be in good standing, you must submit a billing ticket within five days of the reported downtime, and the request must contain a ticket number for the service interruption. The SLA also excludes internal services such as MySQL, Apache and PHP, scheduled maintenance, ISP problems and customer controlled downtime. So if PHP falls over on your box, that is not covered by the network uptime guarantee.
Now the awkward part. KnownHost publishes four different uptime numbers on its own site. The SLA says 99.9%. The why KnownHost page says “As in 99.99% uptimes.” Every plan comparison page I opened lists a feature row reading “99.995% Uptime Hosting”. And the network page includes “99.999% availability SLA” in a bullet list describing the Amsterdam Interxion campus, which is a datacentre facility specification rather than KnownHost’s own commitment to you.
Only one of those four is contractual. The number in the service level agreement is 99.9%, and 99.9% over a 30 day month is about 43 minutes of allowed downtime. Treat the marketing figures as marketing.
Migration, support and backups, priced
The migration assistance page is refreshingly specific. Free migrations cover moves between cPanel, DirectAdmin and Plesk in any combination. Everything else is paid at $35 an hour with a one hour minimum, and the page lists exactly what counts as paid: custom or non-panel environments, merging multiple sites into one environment, sites without control panel access, complex multi-site WordPress setups and cross-platform proprietary migrations. The page also states that most WordPress migrations finish in under an hour.
The support coverage page carries two numbers you should write down. Unmanaged products get hardware management and network availability only, and additional support is billed at $75 an hour. And moving a server from unmanaged to managed requires a full reinstall or a $250 recertification fee at KnownHost’s discretion. If you are tempted by the $20 unmanaged Basic VPS with a plan to upgrade to managed later, that is a $250 decision.
On backups, the shared hosting page says: “Every shared Web hosting plan includes 2-day and 1-week backup retention by default.” That is a real retention figure rather than a vague “daily backups” claim, and a one week ceiling is short. If you need to roll back further than seven days you are buying JetBackup at $8.95 a month plus remote backup space at $10 a month, which is $18.95 a month on top of a plan that costs $3.47.
On support speed, the shared hosting page says “Waiting? Not here. Typical response as soon as 3 minutes.” The WooCommerce hosting page says “Tickets are typically answered within 5 minutes or less and are dealt with by the same person from the time reported until the issue is resolved.” Both are KnownHost’s own claims about its own support and neither is in the SLA, so neither is enforceable. Support is 24/7/365 by live chat or ticket.
Three realistic monthly totals
Here is what I would actually budget, using only the figures above.
A content site next to a Shopify store. Shared Professional on a one year term is $14.97 a month, renewing at $18.96. Add nothing. Total is about $180 for year one and about $228 a year after that. Fine. This is the sane choice for most readers of this site who need anything at all.
A WooCommerce store doing real orders. Managed VPS Basic at $43.25, plus a control panel licence at a price KnownHost does not publish, plus JetBackup at $8.95, plus Imunify360 for one user at $11, plus remote backup space at $10. That is $73.20 a month before the panel licence. Call it $90 to $110 a month once the panel is in, and budget for the renewal price to be higher because it is not published.
One note on the reseller tier if you are selling hosting to clients rather than hosting your own sites. That is a separate business with its own invoicing, tax and liability questions, and it is worth reading how to set up the business entity behind an online operation before you start billing other people for uptime you do not control.
Several client sites on one box. Reseller Professional Plus on three years is $17.98 a month for 36 months, which is $647.10 up front, renewing at $30.56. That is the cheapest per site option on the site if you genuinely have the sites to fill it, and the renewal is published, which is more than the VPS line gives you.
The verdict on KnownHost pricing
KnownHost does two things better than most hosts in this bracket and one thing worse. Better: it publishes a renewal price directly on the plan card for shared, WordPress, reseller and PCI hosting, and it publishes a term switcher so you can see what each commitment length actually buys. That is genuine transparency and it is rare. Better again: the semi-dedicated line has no renewal cliff at all, and the managed premium over unmanaged is a flat $23.25 on every tier, which is easy to check and easy to reason about.
Worse: the managed VPS, managed NVMe and managed cloud lines publish no renewal price anywhere I could find, the control panel licence is excluded by default and priced nowhere on the site, and the overview page carries three “when billed annually” labels that are actually three year rates. If you are budgeting a VPS, you are budgeting with an unknown renewal and an unknown panel cost, and that is a worse position than the shared customer is in.
My honest read: if you need shared or semi-dedicated hosting, KnownHost is a straightforward buy and the numbers on the page are the numbers. If you need a managed VPS, get the renewal price and the panel licence price in writing from sales before you order, because the website will not give them to you. And if you are on Shopify with no WooCommerce site and no content site, skip this entirely and put the money into finding better suppliers, which is where high ticket margin actually comes from.
One more thing worth saying plainly. Hosting is not a growth lever for a high-ticket store. A faster server will not make a $3,500 product convert. Picking the right high ticket niche and getting suppliers to approve you will. Buy the cheapest hosting that does not break, then go back to work on the part of the business that pays.
Decide this once, with someone who has run the stack
Shared at $3.47, managed VPS at $43.25 plus an unpublished panel licence, or nothing at all because you are on Shopify. That call depends on your store, not on a pricing table. Bring it to a coaching call and we will settle it in twenty minutes.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Hosting prices change without notice and several KnownHost plan pages carry stock-dependent configurations, so check the live page before you buy. Every figure above was read on 15 September 2026.
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Trevor Fenner is an ecommerce entrepreneur and the founder of Ecommerce Paradise, a platform focused on helping entrepreneurs build and scale profitable high-ticket ecommerce and dropshipping businesses. With over a decade of hands-on experience, Trevor specializes in high-ticket dropshipping strategy, niche and product selection, supplier recruiting and onboarding, Google & Bing Shopping ads, ecommerce SEO, and systems-driven automation and scaling. Through Ecommerce Paradise, he provides free education via in-depth guides like How to Start High-Ticket Dropshipping, advanced training through the High-Ticket Dropshipping Masterclass, and fully done-for-you turnkey ecommerce services for entrepreneurs who want a faster, more hands-off path to growth. Trevor is known for emphasizing sustainable, real-world ecommerce models over hype-driven tactics, helping store owners build scalable, sellable, and location-independent brands.
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