A web hosting company maintains a safe and efficient spot for your website on the internet.
But no two web hosting services are exactly alike. Some have lightning speeds, others have excellent customer support, and some have promises of 99+% uptime, just to name a few differences.
A2 Hosting is our top pick for speed. If loading time and quick navigation are your priorities, you won’t find many services that beat A2 Hosting. Of course, there are many other factors to consider in a web host, like hosting types, site migration, storage space, and security.
How does A2 Hosting stack up against other web host companies in its options, pricing, and offerings? We put it to the test to find out.
Compare A2 Hosting to The Best Web Hosting Services
A2 Hosting stands out with its speed. It’s even on the front page of its website: Blazing Fast Hosting. And we agree that this statement is more than a marketing ploy.
When considering what companies deserved a spot on our list of the best web hosting companies, it was a no-brainer that A2 Hosting needed to rank as the speedster. See all of our top picks to learn more about some other top options and who they’re best for.
A2 Hosting: The Good and The Bad
The Good
Reliable Uptime: With its 99.9% uptime commitment, A2 Hosting makes it clear to customers that reliability is its priority. A2 Hosting provides service credits to customers during months that they’ve experienced unscheduled downtime for more than 0.1% of the total time that month.
Fast Speeds: A2 Hosting consistently outperforms other web hosting companies in terms of speed. In addition to offering reliable and speedy servers for all plans, the company has additional Turbo and Turbo Boost servers for max speeds.
Free Automatic Backups: Most plans include free automatic backups for your website, its files, and your MySQL databases. That means less work and worry for you in ensuring that your site remains intact and functional.
Money-Back Guarantee: Sometimes, we expect a great fit but don’t get one. If that happens when you try A2 Hosting, you can receive a full refund if you cancel within 30 days.
Create with SiteBuilder: Need a little help getting your site up and running without spending loads of money on a designer? Try the SiteBuilder. It’s included with all Shared Hosting plans as a simple way to get your site on the web.
Detailed Price Summary: When you order from A2 Hosting, you’ll get a detailed summary of everything you’re buying, along with the price you’ll pay for renewal. The company takes the guesswork out of web host pricing.
The Bad
Limited Starter Plan: The most affordable A2 Hosting plan is its shared hosting Startup plan. While affordable, it lacks many of the features that make A2 Hosting stand out, like unlimited SSD storage and free automatic backups.
High Monthly Prices and Renewals: This drawback is a common flaw of web hosting, and the same holds true with A2 Hosting. You’ll pay much more if you choose a monthly plan rather than reserving your plan for one year or three years. And, expect to pay more than double your starter fees when it’s time to renew annual plans.
Unreliable Customer Support: A2 Hosting offers 24/7 customer support through phone, live chat, and ticketing. However, it’s a common complaint of customers to have long wait times to get their issues addressed, which could lead to massive problems for your website and its visitors.
A2 Hosting Pricing and Options
A2 Hosting Pricing
A2 Hosting offers such a wide variety of hosting plans and prices that it would be nearly impossible not to find one that fits your budget.
Shared hosting and WordPress hosting are on the lowest end of the price range, starting at just $2.99 per month when you pay for three years at a time, or $10.99 per month on a monthly plan.
Unmanaged VPS hosting sits at the next pricing tier, followed by managed VPS hosting, which, not surprisingly, is much pricier. You can opt for Turbo servers on any VPS plan for an additional cost.
A2 Hosting’s reseller plan pricing sits between unmanaged and managed VPS plans. Again, opting for Turbo reseller plans just about double the price but give you more SSD storage and transfer capacity.
The most you’ll pay is for dedicated hosting, which gives you your own server for the fastest performance and maximum server control. A2 Hosting offers both unmanaged and managed dedicated hosting plans, with the latter being just over $41 more per month than unmanaged.
Here’s a look at unmanaged dedicated hosting:
And here are the prices for managed dedicated hosting:
Like most web hosting companies, A2 Hosting shows what you’ll pay “per month” for most plans, when in reality, these prices are for a full year or three years. If you want to pay monthly, you’ll spend significantly more.
For instance, the Lift 4 managed VPS plan works out to $33.99 per month when you buy it for three years. Switch to monthly pricing, and you’ll pay $69.99 per month.
Renewals also come at much higher rates than when you first buy, which is why it’s a good idea to pay for longer terms, if possible. Thankfully, A2 Hosting does have an easy-to-understand, detailed summary of your costs and expected renewal prices when you check out.
A2 Hosting Speed Solutions
A2 Hosting outshines much of its competition with its speeds for each one of its web hosting offerings, including VPS, reseller, and dedicated hosting. For reference, when I mention speed, I’m talking about page load times, which is a crucial aspect of low bounce rates, good SEO, and the overall user experience.
Not only does A2 consistently outperform others with its built-in speed solutions available for all hosting plans and types, but it also offers additional options for giving your site a boost. From CloudLinux hosting to LiteSpeed Cache for Joomla, Drupal, and more, you can get faster results around every corner. Here’s a glimpse of some of the speed-focused products A2 Hosting offers:
One of the most popular options for A2 Hosting is its Turbo hosting. Turbo offers page load speeds up to 20x faster than regular hosting speeds. These plans can also handle up to nine times more traffic than regular plans while maintaining high conversion rates and low bounce rates.
And then there’s Turbo Boost. Third-party speed tests show a 47% reduction in average click time and 68% reduction in Time to First Byte (TTFB), or the time it takes to connect to a server to show the page, over A2 Hosting’s Turbo plans.
A2 Hosting is fast enough in itself. But add Turbo or Turbo Boost, and you’re likely to find your visitors happily blazing through your site.
A2 Shared Hosting
Shared hosting with A2 Hosting is best for beginners and smaller sites that don’t require the bells and whistles that other types of hosting, like VPS and dedicated, provide.
Still, most people will probably want to skip right past the Startup plan, which allows just one website and 100 GB SSD storage. All other shared hosting plans feature unlimited storage and websites, plus free automatic backups of your files and MySQL databases.
You can also migrate your existing sites over to a shared hosting plan for free, and A2 Hosting will make the move for you. All servers—even those on the Startup plan—fall under the company’s commitment to 99.9% uptime and optimized speed performance.
A2 Hosting WordPress Hosting
A2 Hosting’s WordPress hosting plans fall right in line with its shared hosting plans in terms of pricing and offerings. Additionally, you’ll get free WordPress installation included with your plan, so there’s one less step you’ll need to take to use WordPress.
A2 Hosting offers managed WordPress plans, too. Managed plans include update staging to test updates before going live, Turbo optimization, and simple WordPress backups.
In our opinion, the best perk of A2 Hosting’s WordPress plans is probably its free Jetpack personal license. Jetpack is a plugin that adds speed, security, and spam protection with a host of features, scans, and available integrations. The screenshot below shows regular Jetpack pricing, so you can get an idea of how much you’re saving:
A2 Hosting VPS Hosting
Choose between unmanaged and managed VPS hosting with A2 Hosting. VPS hosting is best for website owners with large sites or those wishing to scale in the future. These plans offer tons of space, speed, and control over your site.
Unmanaged VPS hosting is an ideal option for experienced developers who don’t require a lot of oversight and support. If you’re newer to the site-owning scene and want backup in case problems arise, choose a managed VPS plan. A2 Hosting includes 24/7 support, access to your cPanel, and automatic updates and patches with managed plans.
One caveat of the company’s VPS plans: You can only get Turbo servers with top-tier plans. Still, all plans include SSD Speed Boost to keep everything running quickly.
A2 Hosting Reseller Hosting
Reseller hosting gives you flexible options for hosting multiple sites within your hosting plan. Your number one priority for reseller hosting should be reliability to ensure an excellent hosting experience for your clients. Thanks to A2 Hosting’s 99.9% Uptime Commitment that backs each reseller plan, you shouldn’t have much to worry about there.
Reseller plans also start with 60 GB of SSD storage, a free site transfer, and the Blesta billing management system. Higher-tiered plans include your choice of Blesta or WHMCS, giving you an important option that other companies don’t.
Your reseller package can come with or without Turbo servers, which run between $11 and $15 more per month than non-Turbo plans. That’s a small price to pay when it comes to speedy servers for clients hosted on your plan.
A2 Hosting Dedicated Hosting
Keeping in line with its plethora of options for website owners, A2 Hosting delivers your choice of unmanaged, core, or managed dedicated hosting. Choose which one appeals to you based on your developer skills—or lack thereof.
The primary difference between core and managed dedicated hosting is that core servers come with root access while managed plans don’t. Therefore, core plans give you a good balance between control and assistance.
Core and managed plans work out to about $50 more per month than unmanaged plans. But these plans give you the satisfaction of knowing that the support team is there to provide help 24/7 for your network, software, servers, and everything else that keeps your site running.
A2 Hosting Cloud Hosting
Cloud hosting doesn’t appear to be a primary service for A2 Hosting. In fact, it’s not even linked as part of its main navigation menu. But it’s there for those who want it.
A2 Hosting’s cloud plans are technically unmanaged VPS plans, so they include the same features and pricing tiers. You can also customize your hosting with your choice of Linux operating systems, including Ubuntu and Slackware.
Your account comes with the Webuzo control panel, a relatively straightforward and easy-to-use dashboard for managing databases, tweaking settings, and more.
A2 Hosting Email Hosting
Most A2 Hosting plans include free email hosting with unlimited email addresses. Some other web hosting companies limit you to one email account or only offer this as an additional service, even though it’s a necessity for most business websites. We like that A2 Hosting adds this in for free, along with email necessities.
Your email hosting gets SPAM protection and all the settings you’d expect from a decent email provider, like email forwarding, auto-responders, contact form integration, POP3/IMAP/SMTP, and your choice of email software.
A2 Hosting Domain Registration
If you prefer to keep your hosting and domain together, you can register a domain or transfer yours to A2 Hosting.
Unlike several other web hosting companies that offer a free domain for your initial plan purchase, A2 Hosting keeps these separate. You also won’t get a discount for your first year like many domain registrars offer. If you’re looking for low prices, try Domain.com or Namecheap.
Pricing from A2 Hosting does reflect the industry standard for regular-priced domains, with many popular options sitting at $14.95 per year. Domains include theft protection, 24/7 support, DNS management, and the option of keeping your personal information private in the WHOIS database.
Comparing The Best Web Hosting Services
A2 Hosting is on our list of the best web hosting services, but we invite you to check out our comparison guide to explore your options.
- Bluehost – Best web hosting overall
- HostGator – Best for scaling your small business
- Web.com – Best for simple business websites
- Hostinger – Best if you need a lot of storage
- DreamHost – Best for simple hosting
- SiteGround – Best for keeping uptime above 99.99%
- InMotion – Best price for hosting two websites on one plan
- Nexcess – Best for experienced WordPress users
- A2 Hosting – Most dependable web hosting for global traffic
A2 Hosting is one of the better options for a speedy and reliable website. Visitors can access your website at all times, and its available Turbo servers are some of the fastest on the web. Plus, A2 Hosting is great for delivering your content to international visitors. Renewals can be pricey, though, so be sure to check the detailed summary of your order to understand your expected costs when it’s time to renew.
