HostPapa vs GreenGeeks – Hard to Choose, but I Did 2024

HostPapa and GreenGeeks are both popular for budget-friendly prices. However, I was disappointed to find that HostPapa charges for add-ons that come for free with GreenGeeks.

To compare HostPapa and GreenGeeks, I thoroughly tested them across five different categories, including pricing, features, and performance. GreenGeeks defeated HostPapa in three out of five categories.

Click here to see GreenGeeks’ latest deals or keep reading to see what makes GreenGeeks the winner of this comparison.

1. Plans and Pricing

With GreenGeeks Shared and WordPress hosting are the Same Price, Unlike HostPapa

GreenGeeks offers shared, reseller, VPS, WordPress and CMS hosting, and dedicated servers. HostPapa has fewer hosting solutions in comparison – shared, WordPress hosting, reseller, and VPS.

Both hosts provide long-term billing options – annual, biennial, and triennial. GreenGeeks also has monthly subscriptions, but they’re naturally more expensive than the yearly alternative.

At first glance, HostPapa’s shared and WordPress hosting plans appear cheaper than GreenGeeks. However, you’ll find that HostPapa charges you for add-ons like automatic backups at checkout (except on the most expensive plan). GreenGeeks offers backups for free with Ecosite Lite, Ecosite Pro, and Ecosite Premium.

Also, HostPapa’s WordPress hosting packages are more expensive than its shared hosting plans. GreenGeeks offers the same prices for shared and WordPress hosting.

Both hosts offer free website migration, free CDN, a free domain name (with annual plans), and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

The winner? GreenGeeks. It is better value for money by providing inclusive features that HostPapa charges for. You also get shared or WordPress hosting for the same price.

2. Features

ِBoth Hosts Provide Excellent Features. It’s Almost a Tie

It’s hard to decide between HostPapa and GreenGeeks when it comes to features. Both hosts offer a boatload of features and freebies for shared hosting. These include free SSL certificates, free domain name, free CDN, SSD storage, free site builder, cPanel, and Softaculous application installer.

The most noticeable difference is the resources allocated with the starter packages. With GreenGeeks’ Ecosite Lite, you get one hosted website, unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited email accounts, unlimited databases, and automatic daily backups.

HostPapa’s Starter package gives you two hosted websites, 100 GB of disk space, unlimited bandwidth, 100 email accounts, and 25 databases.

Use this side-by-side table to compare HostPapa and GreenGeeks further:

The winner? GreenGeeks. Although both HostPapa and GreenGeeks provide lots of valuable features for shared hosting, GreenGeeks has more resource allocations, and unlike HostPapa, all plans come with daily backups.

3. Performance

GreenGeeks Has Faster Loading Speeds than HostPapa

While HostPapa has servers in the U.S.A. and Canada, GreenGeeks has servers in the U.S.A., Canada, and the Netherlands. In other words, GreenGeeks has a slightly more global presence.

Both HostPapa and GreenGeeks use SSD storage with all plans. SSD storage is preferable to regular HDD storage as it performs faster in terms of processing website data. In return, this reflects directly on your website’s loading speed and overall performance.

You’ll get Cloudflare CDN for free with all plans for both hosts. A CDN or Content Delivery Network boosts your website’s loading speed, among other benefits, by placing it on a global network of cloud servers.

Both hosts promise a 99.9% uptime guarantee, and fortunately, both exceeded this number with no major downtimes reported by users.

When we tested the loading speeds of HostPapa from different locations, it showed some promising numbers. Even though it didn’t score perfectly, it didn’t deliver slow speeds in many locations. The overall score on the Sucuri test was an A. Here’s our HostPapa review for more detailed results.

On the other hand, when testing GreenGeeks, it gave a perfect overall score, and no locations recorded slow speeds. Its overall speed score was a perfect A+. Check out this GreenGeeks review for more information.

If it weren’t for the small difference in loading speeds between hosts, it would have been a tie, but GreenGeeks outperformed HostPapa by a skinny margin.

4. Security

Both Hosts Take Security Seriously, but GreenGeeks Has Automatic Backups with all Plans

HostPapa and GreenGeeks take your website’s security seriously by offering a wide range of security features and measures that come as standard. Both have the following security features in common:

• Free SSL certificates
• DDoS/Brute-Force protection
• 24/7 server monitoring
• Server firewall
• Automatic app updates
• Spam protection
• Antivirus/antimalware

Also, both hosts use CloudLinux OS, which securely isolates your account from others on the same server to protect it against external threats. It also ensures the fair allocation of the server resources.

Both hosts provide Cloudflare CDN with all plans. Besides its performance-boosting capabilities, a CDN also acts as an additional security layer protecting your website from unwanted external threats, such as DDoS attacks.

HostPapa provides free automatic daily backups with its higher value plans and as an optional add-on with its lower value plans. On the other hand, GreenGeeks delivers this with all its plans as a standard feature.

Even though these two hosts are proactive when it comes to your website’s security, GreenGeeks’ wins this challenge by offering free automatic daily backups with all hosting packages.

5. Support

HostPapa Has More Support Channels and Free Training Sessions

HostPapa and GreenGeeks have extremely user-friendly websites and extensive knowledgebases. You’ll have no trouble helping yourself with most common technical issues.

HostPapa has 24/7 customer support which you can contact through phone, live chat, email, support ticket, and fax. I went for the live chat option and connected instantly to an agent who answered all my questions with hardly any pauses.

HostPapa also provides a free 30-minute training session with an expert.

GreenGeeks provides round-the-clock support through live chat, email, and support tickets. Additionally, you have the option to reach out to the support team via phone during their operational hours (Monday to Sunday, from 9 am to 12 am). I opted for the live chat, and, just like HostPapa, I received an immediate response, with all of my questions promptly addressed.

Both hosts are reliable when it comes to support, but HostPapa’s more expansive range of communication channels and free training sessions make it the winner of this round.

GreenGeeks Is the Champion

It was a pretty close match between HostPapa and GreenGeeks. Both services provide a variety of feature-packed plans for beginners and pros alike. However, HostPapa fell behind GreenGeeks in almost all categories, due to GreenGeeks’ economical prices, generous resources, reliable performance, and security.

GreenGeeks is also listed among the top 10 web hosting services.

FAQ Section

Which is better, HostPapa or GreenGeeks?

Despite HostPapa’s attractive and feature-packed hosting plans, GreenGeeks has a presence in more locations, has more hosting packages, cost-effective prices, and overall better performance. GreenGeeks is also among our expert list of the best web hosting services.

Does HostPapa offer cloud hosting?

No. HostPapa doesn’t offer cloud hosting. But it offers several VPS hosting packages and you can choose to manage your own server or let HostPapa’s team take care of it for an additional cost. Not sure about HostPapa for VPS? See my most recommended cloud hosting and VPS services.

Does GreenGeeks offer VPS hosting?

Yes. GreenGeeks offers three managed VPS packages. You can get SSD storage ranging between 50 GB and 150 GB, 4 to 6 vCPU cores, 10 TB data transfer, cPanel, and a free SSL certificate. Looking for more options? Check out these cheap and reliable VPS  hosting services.

Which GreenGeeks plan should I choose?

For shared and WordPress hosting, GreenGeeks recommends the Ecosite Pro plan. It gives you unlimited SSD storage, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited hosted websites, and freebies (SSL, CDN, daily backups, and a domain). I personally recommend the smallest plan to give it a try and you can always upgrade later.