A2 Hosting: Web Hosting Service

A2 Hosting company is known to be one of the fastest shared web-hosting providers around. Hence, it’s no surprise they landed at the top of our speed tests. A2 Hosting offers the fastest page load speeds thanks to their A2 optimized plugin for WordPress, LiteSpeed webserver, and SSD drives on all of their hosting plans. They also have excellent customer service and an anytime money-back guarantee.

This A2 Hosting review will cover the pros and cons of A2 Hosting. Having been around for almost two decades, A2 is one of the most reputable web-hosting providers, although some of its competitors have taken over the top spot in recent years.

On top of that, A2 Hosting does its best not to overlook email deliverability and keep your web business running smoothly by delivering top-quality developer tools and strong uptime. If you're shopping for fast shared hosting, give A2 a try. We're big fans of A2 Hosting.

Знімок Екрана 2022 06 22 О 19.57.40

About A2 Hosting Company

Bryan Muthig started A2 Hosting, Inc. in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1998 as a small-scale web hosting company. SSD and NVMe turbo servers made 20x faster web loading speed possible and allowed A2 Hosting to outperform its competitors. Clients have flocked to A2 Hosting company, attracted by its outstanding features, top speed, free site migration, and up to 15 TB monthly transfer.

A2 Hosting builds the scope of its services on speed and reliability. Top speed is available for premium paid plans as much as for more affordable shared hosting. Whatever your size and ambition, you can get started quickly and easily. Newcomers can build a new site from scratch using the A2 SiteBuilder, while businesses with an established online presence can move their existing sites hassle-free.

A2H’s various hosting plans underscore that the company can tailor its offering to the needs of many clients. In addition to the core hosting packages, there are also add-ons available if you want more features or support than what comes standard with your plan. A2 Hosting optimizes all its plans for WordPress users right out of the box.

A2 Hosting Features

From the basics to advanced features, A2 Hosting offers you so many impressive hosting solutions that describing them would take hours. A2 Hosting’s super-fast loading speed is its top feature. Here’s just a short list of what else A2 Hosting has to offer.

Web Hosting

Bloggers and small business owners can choose shared hosting and host a website on a server shared by other websites, dividing server resources, such as CPU time, memory, and disk space, among other sharers. VPS Hosting is a feature for those who want to have more server resources yet at a lesser price than a dedicated server. A2 Hosting offers WordPress Hosting for those who are looking for added benefits like server caching, enhanced security, and staging. Dedicated Hosting is an option for enterprise-level companies that need a private server to have complete control over the functions of the server. Also, renting and subletting server space is possible in Reseller Hosting. Finally, the option of Cloud Hosting makes your website high-performing as it can switch between remote servers when one is down, and the other looks after security and control over data.

Solid-State Drives (SSDs)

A2 Hosting offers SSDs in almost all of its hosting packages and for a good reason. SSDs are much faster and more reliable than traditional hard disk drives. When you host your website with A2 Hosting, you benefit from SSD drives. SSDs store information such as read and write requests in microchips, while traditional HDDs use a mechanical arm to process data from one location to another. That’s why you will notice a dramatic increase in speed when switching from an HDD to an SSD.

RAID-10 Storage

RAID 10 is a storage configuration that uses multiple hard drives to ensure that data is backed up to other drives in case one drive fails. In the event of a corrupted drive, it will be replaced. And you won’t lose your data. Thus, A2 Hosting provides a RAID-10 storage configuration, which ensures the safety of your data at all times.

Modern Developer Tools

A2 Hosting offers content management systems and development tools created by the best minds in the industry. A2 Hosting will keep you up-to-date with the latest and greatest developments and releases, so you don't have to worry about staying current. If you’d like to have all your development needs managed, choose a plan that gives you access to A2 Hosting’s team of experts.

Bandwidth Allowance

Bandwidth refers to the amount of data (usually measured in megabytes or gigabytes) that you and your visitors can upload and download over a given time. If your site reaches its allotted bandwidth, A2 Hosting will charge an additional fee for each additional increment of bandwidth to accommodate web traffic.

Email hosting

A2 Hosting allows you to manage your email accounts through a built-in or third-party email interface. A2 Hosting provides POP3 and IMAP email protocols to access email.

Web Framework Support

A2 Hosting offers support for various server-side coding languages, including PHP and ASP.NET, as well as multiple versions of the web framework Ruby on Rails.

e-Commerce Integration

A2 Hosting makes it easy to install e-commerce tools, such as shopping carts, third-party services like PayPal or Stripe, etc., onto your website. If you'd like to sell digital products like eBooks or software downloads, you can use the built-in shopping cart tool A2 Hosting. Or, if you'd like to use a third-party shopping cart system (like Shopify or BigCommerce), A2 Hosting can also help.

However, you should know that A2 Hosting is not compatible with PCI. You have to use a secure third-party API shopping cart (not A2 Hosting API). For some A2 Hosting integrations, there may be an additional fee associated with them.

Database Support

A2 Hosting offers support for various database types, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, and more. You can choose your database type when you sign up for hosting and use the control panel to manage your database.

Security Tools

Each hosting plan goes with a variety of security features. A2 Hosting's security features include site malware detection tools, firewalls, spam detection, backup, and more.

How to Connect A Domain and Install Word Press on A2 Hosting Image3

A2 Hosting Pros and Cons

It is essential to weigh the pros and cons of choosing A2 Hosting as your new web host if you want to ensure that the service will meet your hosting needs.

Pros

  • Top-speed page load time. If you check A2 Hosting’s average speed, you will see that it never exceeds 300 ms. Throughout winter-spring 2022, A2 Hosting has demonstrated an amazing average speed of 279 ms. Pick any tiers starting from Turbo Boost and use performance-enhancing plugins.
  • 99.9% uptime. A2 Hosting achieved an uptime of 99.99%, meaning that the servers were up and running 100% for almost every month of the year. If A2 Hosting’s uptime is perfect at 100% at least 10-11 months out of 12, that’s pretty impressive.
  • 24/7 server monitoring without slowing down. A2 Hosting can provide additional security features like extra firewalls, scanning, or layers of encryption without compromising server performance. A2 Hosting's servers are protected by a 24/7 monitoring service that scans for malware, and their data centers are scalable to prevent denial of service attacks.
  • Free site migrations. A common situation is: that you dislike your current web host and would love to switch to A2 Hosting but migrating all your data to a new server is so difficult and expensive. Fear not! A2 Hosting doesn’t charge for moving a single existing website over to their servers. If you have more than one website, pay $25/site in addition to the shared hosting plan OR use 25 free site migrations if your plans include the Reseller, Dedicated hosting, or Managed VPS hosting.
  • A2 Hosting support 24/7. First, A2 Hosting support staff are English-speaking. Second, they can meet your needs wherever suits you best: chat, email, phone, ticketing, or a knowledge base.

Cons

  • Email deliverability. If you look through A2 Hosting reviews online, some users complain that their clients are not receiving their emails because A2 Hosting uses MailChannels as an email server that blocks outbound emails. If you use email marketing a lot, you will likely need to pick a specialized tool from the best email marketing tools to handle deliverability issues.
  • Anytime money-back guarantee. A2 Hosting promises to cancel your plan anytime and return what’s left of your paid plan. However, for one, A2 Hosting refund only through PayPal. And also, you can refund ‘additional’ A2 Hosting services like domain name, domain registrations, migration, or setup fees.
  • Hidden fees and clauses. After the ‘honeymoon’ period with lower prices ends, the regular price is renewed automatically. You can cancel the automatic renewal 15 days before the new term, but if you miss the deadline, you will be charged for the next month and won’t get a refund. Do your best to meet the 15-day window.
  • No support for some software and system modules. A2 Holding doesn’t support Mod_perl, Plexum, Adobe ColdFusion, HTMLDoc, MS SQL, and PDFLib.
  • Oriented mostly to North America and Europe. A2 Holding has data centers in Europe and the US. If you target an audience in other regions, it would require you to pick another nearer service provider.

A2 Hosting Pricing

As for A2 Hosting costs, the company offers paid plans starting from $2.99 up to $599.99. The plans differ by hosting type (shared, VPS, and dedicated servers, and WordPress and cloud hosting), disk space (from 50 NVMe GB to unlimited), and bandwidth (from 2 TB to unlimited).

When choosing a plan, factor in restrictions. For example, if you pay $2.99/m, you only get a single website and 100 GB of SSD storage. However, the next tier plan at $5.99/m gives you server rewind, unlimited websites and SSD storage, automatic backups, and 2x more resources.

Mind that the domain name is not free and is nonrefundable.

A full refund is available within the first 30 days. Then refunds are prorated for unused services.

A2 Hosting Support

A2 Hosting provides support 24/7 via all available means. If you prefer to contact friendly customer support staff, dial +1 (734)-222-4678. Visit a2hosting.com to live chat or submit a support ticket. Or look up your questions on A2 Knowledgebase.

A2 Hosting Review: Conclusions

A2 Hosting delivers on its promises. The top load page speed is consistent. Server uptime is reliable. A free SSL certificate and free site migration are available in all paid plans. Customer support is helpful and friendly. And refunds are given as promised too.

Based on A2 Hosting pricing and features, A2 Hosting is a decent option for hosting multiple websites if you’re on a budget. While their renewal rates are high, they do have some generous terms after the initial period. You can host unlimited websites in all shared hosting plans, but if you want to host them with the most potent plan (“Turbo Max”), they only give you one free site migration. 

However, suppose you’re a small business or individual looking for something to complement the best cold outreach tools in your tech stack. In that case, you may find renewal rates too high, and the strict terms after the initial period too stingy. Plus, if you're paying for the most expensive shared plan to host unlimited websites (“Turbo Max”), they still only give you one free site migration. Not to mention that a free domain name is not included in any of their shared hosting plans.

We also hate that none of A2 Hosting’s shared hosting plans include a free domain name.

That said, A2 Hosting's Turbo Max plan is reasonably affordable at $14.99 per month when bundled with an annual plan. This gives you unlimited storage space and bandwidth and 30GB of hosted domains.

As for A2 Hosting alternatives, check out HostGator or GreenGeeks.