Hawk Host vs WestHost: guide for 2024

Hawk Host vs WestHost: Final verdict

Looking over HawkHost vs. WestHost, both have their merits, but there are clear differences in key areas.

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  Hawk Host (Overall grade: 8.4)
  
  offers exceptional uptime, featuring a 99.9% uptime guarantee and solid performance metrics, particularly with high disk speeds and low latency. With data centers spread globally, Hawk Host ensures redundancy and reliability, making it a great choice for businesses needing consistent performance. It supports a wide range of hosting options, including VPS—an area where WestHost falls short. The inclusion of features like enterprise-grade spam filtering, free SSL certificates, and a 30-day money-back guarantee enhances its appeal, along with positive customer reviews focusing on reliable support and affordability.
• 
  WestHost (Overall grade: 7.8)
  
  performed well during a one-month monitoring period with 100% uptime, yet it lacks an explicit uptime guarantee. With data centers in several strategic locations, it promises decent reach and performance, though these metrics are average compared to its competitor. It excels in Dedicated Hosting, making it a strong candidate for high-traffic websites. WestHost’s custom control panel, competitive pricing, and user-friendly features, such as unlimited free SSL certificates, make it suitable for beginners. However, it struggles with more complicated hosting tasks and has mixed customer feedback regarding support consistency.

Hosting types offered

Both platforms provide a variety of hosting types, each designed to meet the different needs of users.

Although both offer a variety of hosting plans tailored to different needs, in
certain cases, one platform may prove to be more suitable.

Detailed comparison

🏆 Winner Hawk Host:A reliable hosting provider with exceptional uptime and performance.

Hawk Host offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee, ensuring minimal downtime for users. Customers can be assured of consistent service, as evidenced by the various redundancies and backup systems across their six global data centers. The hosting provider impresses with high disk read and write speeds alongside low latency, making for a compelling choice for businesses requiring reliable performance. User reviews commend Hawk Host for its blend of affordability and excellent support.

WestHost offers no explicit uptime guarantee but performed well in a one-month monitoring period with 100% uptime. With data centers in diverse locations—like the UK, Canada, Brazil, India, and the US—WestHost promises good reach and redundancy. Performance metrics fall in the average range, with GTmetrix rating their speed as satisfactory. Despite this, Hawk Host’s more comprehensive uptime assurances and superior performance metrics make it the better choice overall.

🏆 Winner
Hawk Host: Superior Performance and Extensive Features

Hawk Host and Westhost both provide impressive hosting performance, but Hawk Host edges out due to its cutting-edge hardware and extensive freebies. Both offer SSD storage, but Hawk Host’s use of NVMe storage promises reduced latency and faster load times. Westhost also features SSDs and includes gigabit port speeds for quick read/write commands. For CDN services, Hawk Host leverages CloudFlare to boost performance, while Westhost includes a CDN in higher-tier plans. Hawk Host’s data centers span seven global locations with specific test IPs, compared to Westhost’s unspecified global network.

Website Speed

Hawk Host excels in delivering optimal website speeds. Their use of enterprise-grade Intel Xeon or AMD EPYC processors, coupled with LiteSpeed Web Server, ensures high performance. In contrast, Westhost utilizes SSDs and gigabit ports, which are substantial but not as optimized as Hawk Host’s setup. Proactive malware scanning and daily backups further enhance Hawk Host’s speed and reliability, ensuring uptime and fast, secure browsing.

Scalability

For scalability, Hawk Host offers flexible options with their Cloud Compute and Shared Hosting plans. Scaling involves upgrading to higher plans rather than automatic scaling. Details on dedicated servers are not specified. Westhost provides more explicit VPS hosting packages with incremental RAM and SSD increases. Both offer free migration support and hands-on assistance, yet Hawk Host remains the more versatile choice for most users due to its feature-rich environment and supportive infrastructure.

🏆 Winner Hawk Host: Hawk Host provides an extensive range of security measures, ensuring a safer hosting environment.

Technical security measures:

Hawk Host offers a variety of SSL certificates, with prices ranging from $14.99 to $399.99 per month, each providing 256-bit SSL encryption. Westhost, on the other hand, includes unlimited free SSL certificates via Let’s Encrypt for all domains, with an additional free DV SSL certificate for the first year. Regarding PHP versions, Westhost supports a wide range from PHP 5.3 to 8.2, whereas Hawk Host supports multiple versions, though the specific versions are unspecified. Both providers include SSH access to enhance secure command-line operations. Hawk Host implements proactive malware scanning and daily backups, while Westhost offers site backup and SiteLock for malware protection for the first year.

Operational security measures:

Hawk Host employs DDoS protection, CloudFlare optimization, and uses enterprise-grade servers to ensure robust performance and security. It also recommends essential practices such as frequent backups and monitoring log files. Westhost offers fraud, virus, and spam protection, along with the option for a managed security clean-up service at a flat fee of $150. Both services offer 24/7 technical support with Hawk Host providing contact via email and Twitter, and Westhost guaranteeing 99.9% uptime. Hawk Host gets favorable reviews for reliability and support, while Westhost provides raw access logs for monitoring and auditing.

Compliance and certifications:

Hawk Host is compliant with GDPR, adhering to the regulations for personal data protection for EU services. There is no mention of PCI or HIPAA compliance in the provided context for Hawk Host. Westhost is GDPR compliant via the EU – U.S. Privacy Shield certification but leaves PCI compliance unspecified. Again, there is no HIPAA compliance mentioned for Westhost.

🏆 Winner
Hawk Host: Offering a robust set of features with significant security measures and ease of use.

Hawk Host and WestHost both offer strong feature sets designed to meet various user needs, but they differ in several key aspects. Hawk Host provides the widely popular cPanel control panel, noted for its user-friendly interface and comprehensive management tools. Their standout features include proactive malware scanning, free SSL certificates powered by Let’s Encrypt, and unlimited email accounts. Meanwhile, WestHost uses a custom control panel called StackCP, which is also user-friendly and includes easy application installers and free domain registration with annual plans. Hawk Host supports over 380 one-click installations through Softaculous, making it ideal for users seeking extensive application support. WestHost also caters to application users but offers fewer options with 80+ supported applications.

Both providers include FTP/SFTP and SSH access, although Hawk Host’s offerings are particularly seamless with built-in SSH enabled by default. Both also offer free SSL certificates, but WestHost stands out with their promise of unlimited free automatic SSL certificates. WestHost also touts extremely competitive pricing starting at $1/month, which could attract budget-conscious users. However, Hawk Host offers robust performance boosters such as free Memcached and Redis servers, appealing to users needing high performance and speed. Both have a 30-day money-back guarantee, giving prospective customers a risk-free trial period.

Both providers support a range of users from beginners to experts with user-friendly website builders and WordPress staging areas. However, in terms of developer tools, both Hawk Host and WestHost offer robust options including SSH access, support for multiple programming languages, and Git for version control, thus appealing to developers looking for advanced capabilities.

Email services:

Hawk Host supports unlimited email accounts with enterprise-level spam filtering provided by SpamExperts, ensuring spam protection and reliable email hosting for businesses. WestHost offers email services with webmail access and features such as autoresponders and personalized mailboxes. Both providers cover the essential transactional email requirements, while reselling specialized email services like Google Workspace or Zoho is not typically highlighted. Both are well-equipped to handle everyday email needs, but Hawk Host may appeal more to businesses due to its enterprise-level spam filtering.

🏆 Winner Hawk Host: Hawk Host delivers a comprehensive range of features across its hosting plans, making it a top choice for users.

Evaluating the pricing of plans among various hosting providers can be complex due to their differing pricing and renewal strategies. Additionally, certain plans require annual commitments, which adds to the difficulty of making comparisons. The prices listed are based on monthly commitments; plans requiring annual commitments are indicated. Additionally, although some providers offer identical plans for WordPress and shared hosting, we have created separate tables for each to enhance clarity.

When comparing Hawk Host and Westhost, Hawk Host offers a broader range of hosting plans across different categories at competitive prices. Hawk Host’s shared and WordPress hosting plans provide unlimited features such as bandwidth, email accounts, and domains for a lower cost in most cases, while Westhost includes a mix of storage and website limitations. For users seeking VPS and Cloud hosting, Hawk Host presents more affordable options with extensive storage and bandwidth, whereas Westhost’s plans, though slightly higher in price, offer fewer CPU cores. This makes Hawk Host more appealing for users after high-performing, low-cost hosting solutions.