A2 Hosting Review: The Best Shared Hosting
In this article, I will go through all the buzz about A2 Hosting with this A2 Hosting review. This will be the first of many web hosting reviews that are to come later.
That's the story of sometime in the future, for now, let's start with an ultimate A2 Hosting Review for bloggers and businesses starting in 2024.
Many people are saying A2 Hosting is the best and provides the fastest web hosting speed, but how true is that? I am certainly the best person to answer this question. I have been using their services for a few years now for my websites, and I have had enough experience with them! So, this is a true A2 hosting review by a real customer.
Table of Contents
About A2 Hosting
Located in Ann Arbor, the company was established in 2001 as the original name Iniquinet. In March 2003, as their business started growing, they had to rebrand with a more memorable name. That is when they renamed to A2 Hosting as a tribute to their hometown, Ann Arbor (A2).
2021 will mark the 20th year of A2 Hosting and the amount of success and trust they have gained in the last 2 decades is truly commendable. They may not be as effective as Hostgator/Bluehost but they proudly stand to be the fastest shared web hosting service on the planet. When opting for A2, you don't just get a great website hosting experience but also one of the finest customer support.
Let's dive into the review of hosting in detail.
A2 Hosting Review
Every product has some pros and some cons. Nothing is perfect. That's why bloggers and critics like me exist. We find the best and the worst of every product or service. A2 Hosting may be one of the best hosting services online, but even they are far from being perfect. Here are the pros and cons which you will encounter when you choose to host your websites on their servers.
The Advantages of A2 Hosting Over Others
I first started off my website by using their Startup plan for my WordPress website. As my website traffic increased, I upgraded my existing plan to Turbo. Having a great experience made me do the upgrade.
A2 provides a powerful hosting experience at cheap rates. If you are uncertain, you can try their services free of any issue as they offer a 30 day refund in case of any dissatisfaction. Until now, I had never experienced an issue that couldn't get resolved by their customer support. I'll go deep in with the technical details and everything but the summary is that A2 Hosting company is really doing an awesome job so far.
What Are the Features That Impressed Me?
A2 Hosting, in a nutshell, covers all the necessity for a website, speed, security, and support. You can’t go wrong in choosing them. Their exclusive hosting features, server uptime, security measures, and helpful support get the high praise from customers.
As I mentioned earlier, I had signed up with Startup web hosting plan and then upgraded to Turbo. Below are my key findings based on my hosting experience on A2 Hosting.
1. Super-Fast Web Hosting Speed
Website speed is the key to online success. A2 Web Hosting service is a high-speed shared hosting service. Your website will be hosted on an exclusive server platform with SSD and/or cloud server hosting support.
For those who are hosting HTML pages, you are also well taken care of by A2 Hosting. The high-speed Railgun Network Optimizer will boost your HTML load times up to 143% faster. If you think that is fast enough, A2 delivers even more than you expected.
2. Excellent Server Up Time
Server up time is one of the major reasons for me to choose A2 Hosting over others. A2 Hosting guarantee 99.9% of server uptime. They are transparent and confident with their product so much as they publish the real time 30-day up time statistics for the public to access.
Alternatively, you can view the report by Uptime.com for web servers and website monitoring services. As a move to support the confidence, A2 Hosting will provide a service credit in the amount of 5% of paid fee for the month, for every hour that your website is unreachable due to an internal network or equipment failure.
Sorry to say that I did not get to enjoy this credit. :(
3. Award Winning Support Crew
Good customer support means a good corporate image as they are the person who communicates directly with the customer. We all know what customer feedback means to a business.
A2 Hosting is providing 24/7/365 Real US-Based Guru Crew (never outsourced !! ) standby to assist you. I have been live chatting with their Gurus. They are very helpful and patient in answering all my questions like setting up my parked domain blog or tracking my refund. Although sometimes, I have to queue for my turn. Instead, you can choose to submit your ticket or email them at support@a2hosting.com. The support turn around time is among the fastest ones I have experienced.
4. Exclusive Web Hosting Features
If you take a closer look at the features of A2 Hosting, it is different from other providers out there. For the lowest price of $2.46 per month you can sit back and enjoy the exclusive features by A2 Hosting.
The exclusive features are as follows:
- Server Rewind backups – File recovery program to easily restore your data from saved snapshots when necessary. You are free from accidental deletions, mistakes and data corruption.
- Perpetual Security w/ Free Hackscan – Proactive protection against malicious hackers and security threats. This exclusive scanning helps block hacks before they can invade and damage the site. You are well protected before any potential threats happen.
- Cloudflare Content Delivery Network – With CDN, your page is expected to load 200% faster for your visitors. CDN works as a group of servers that connect worldwide to determine the shortest route to deliver content to your visitors.
- Solid State Drive – A2 Hosting is one of the industry's first offering SSD hosting solutions, which boost your page 300% faster in page loading when compared to traditional webhosts. This feature is included in the recommended plan with no extra charge.
- Free – All these exclusive come with free of charge. These are all included in Turbo hosting plans, the recommended A2 Hosting plan.
A2 Hosting Plans and Pricing
A2 Hosting offers five products, namely:
- Shared Hosting
- WordPress Managed Hosting
- VPS Hosting
- Reseller Hosting
- Dedicated Hosting
In addition to these 5, they also offer domain name purchases at affordable rates — making it a complete website hosting destination for bloggers, developers and businesses.
Let's see the plans in details.
A2 Hosting Shared Hosting Plans
Shared Hosting, also known as Web Hosting, is the one where they host multiple accounts on one server. This one is the most popular and the most affordable product that you can use to start a blog or start a website for your business.
A2 Hosting WordPress Hosting Plans
On A2, WordPress can be installed in two ways:
- By using Shared Hosting as listed above
- By using managed WordPress Hosting
Here are the rates for Shared WordPress Hosting:
| Plan Name | Starting Price $ | Features | More Information |
|---|---|---|---|
| Startup | $2.49 | 1 Website 100 GB SSD Storage Free & Easy Site Migration Money-Back Guarantee | Compare |
| Drive | $4.25 | Unlimited Websites Unlimited SSD Storage Free & Easy Site Migration Free Automatic Backups Money-Back Guarantee | Compare |
| Turbo Boost | $5.99 | Unlimited Websites Unlimited NVMe Storage Free & Easy Site Migration Free Automatic Backups Turbo (Up To 20X Faster) Money-Back Guarantee | Compare |
| Turbo Max | $12.99 | Unlimited Websites Unlimited NVMe Storage Free & Easy Site Migratiion Free Automatic Backups Turbo (Up To 20X Faster) 5X More Resources Money-Back Guarantee | Compare |
Here are the rates for managed WordPress Hosting:
| Plan Name | Starting Price $ | Features | More Information |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1-Site | $10.99 | 1 Website 10 GB Storage Free SSL Certificate Turbo (Up To 20X FasterPowered by Plesk Control Panel 1-Click Site Staging Easy, Automated Backups Free Jetpack Personal License Free & Easy Site Migration Money-Back Guarantee | Compare |
| 3-Sites | $19.99 | 3 Websites 25 GB Storage Free SSL Certificate Turbo (Up To 20X Faster Powered by Plesk Control Panel 1-Click Site Staging Easy, Automated Backups Free Jetpack Personal License Free & Easy Site Migration Money-Back Guarantee | Compare |
| Unlimited WP | $34.99 | Unlimited Websites 40 GB Storage Free SSL Certificate Turbo (Up To 20X FasterPowered by Plesk Control Panel 1-Click Site Staging Easy, Automated Backups Free Jetpack Personal License Free & Easy Site Migration Money-Back Guarantee | Compare |
A2 Hosting VPS, Dedicated and Reseller Plans
I have not used A2 Hosting's VPS and Dedicated Server plans, nor am I a reseller. So, to be honest, I cannot review VPS, dedicated and reseller plans. You can, however, try and review these on your own as A2 Hosting offers a 30-days money-back guarantee.
Here are A2 Hosting's various plans on:
Is A2 Hosting Right for You?
A2 hosting is suitable for anyone who is setting up an online business and looking for ultra-fast server. As you can see, they offer various products on different pricing plans, and packages along with some free goodies.
A2 supports installing popular CMS apps like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and more using Softaculous.
A2 Hosting
If you are running a blog, e-commerce or online business, A2 hosting is the right choice for you. Although the price is slightly higher compared to others, you will get what you pay for. If you have a large website with hundreds of pages and thousands or millions of page views, your website may need to host a different environment. A2 hosting does offer web hosting solutions for medium-sized websites.
Product Currency: USD
Product Price: 2.99
Product In-Stock: InStock
4.8