Despite its lack of name recognition, A2 Hosting boasts extraordinary web hosting.
The independently owned hosting company has developed itself as a reliable and speedy solution for websites for almost 20 years.
A2 has high rates of uptime and excellent customer support. A2 is second to nobody when it comes to velocity.
A2 and Fast Web Hosting are synonymous. In reality, on my list of the best web hosting providers, I named A2 Hosting as the most reliable and fastest host.
Analysis of A2 Web Hosting
A2 needs to be taken into account, whether you’re new to web hosting or looking to change web hosting providers. To give you a more in-depth overview of A2 ‘s plans, features , and benefits, I created this guide.
Is web hosting nice for A2? Check out my answer below.
The benefits of using A2 Web Hosting
Speed Ultra-Fast
A2 delivers quick, blinding pace. In fact, when placed head to head, they beat their competitors.
Take a look at this comparison chart for rpm.
Think like golf about it. This is one graph where being at the bottom indicates that you are the best. A2 clocks in approximately 150 ms.
That is more than twice as fast as common providers such as Bluehost and GoDaddy. It is evident with plan names such as “Swift” and “Turbo” that A2 plays to this benefit.
If you’re leaning towards a shared hosting service, no matter which choice you select, you’ll be happy with the speed. But the Turbo plan is going to take you to the next level, really.
When we also look at their VPS and dedicated servers, A2 ‘s pace continues to be unparalleled. So if you have a platform where conversions are powered by pace (such as an e-commerce site), then A2 is a great choice for you.
Great Service for Customers
When it comes to web hosting, decent customer service should be a priority. In times of need, your platform is too critical for your provider to ignore you.
You probably won’t need to contact your provider in most instances. So, right now, customer care may not be at the top of your priority list. But I can assure you that in the case of an emergency or occasions when you want some extra help, it will change.
A2 has live chat, phone , email, and ticket assistance 24/7. I prefer live chat, so I tried to see how easy and reactive it would be.
In less than five minutes, I was linked to an agent, which is a little late for my taste. But it was smooth sailing from there, once I was linked.
The agents are polite, professional, and are prompt to react. If you look up consumer feedback on the web for A2, you can see plenty of endorsements for their encounters with customer service.
In their knowledge base, A2 Hosting has a comprehensive list of articles and guides as well. For those of you who prefer choices for self-help, this is perfect.
Protection improved
HackScan and KernelCare come with all A2 Hosting plans. These are both aspects of the perpetual protection initiative of A2.
Essentially, HackScan is malware security. It runs 24/7 to avoid attacks on your website from occurring.
KernelCare is an extension of the program. This helps A2 to upgrade the protection of their kernels every day without any servers needing to reboot. With KernelCare, quicker updates and no downtime during updates will benefit you. This ensures that the latest security software is always up to date with your kernel.
Basically, both HackScan and KernelCare are preventive protection measures on your website against malicious attacks.
Utilities For Developers
Some of the plans for A2 are certainly targeted at developers. More precisely, developers will possibly choose the unmanaged VPS plans or one of the dedicated servers with root access. Reseller plans are also a great choice for developers as you can gain access to servers at the admin stage.
For all big content management systems, A2 functions. Some instances include:
With WordPress
To Magento
Joomla a Joomla
About Drupal
With only a few taps, and without the assistance of a developer, you can install a CMS.
A2 Hosting also has its very own website builder. As a novice, this is a user-friendly way to create a website. Bear in mind, the site builder’s pricing is a little different from the base price for the shared hosting plans.
Your A2 hosting plan is also compatible with Cloudflare CDN. To keep loading times as short as possible, this will keep larger files apart from your server.
Migrations for Free Site
A2 ‘s team can switch your site to their servers for free if you are currently using another web hosting service. Everything you need to do is contact their help for their customers.
For this service, most hosting services charge $100 or more, so it’s certainly a big added value.
There’s just one catch there. The number of sites that can migrate for free depends on the plan you have chosen. All the shared plans come with a migration to a single location. For 25 free migrations, the reseller, VPS and dedicated server plans come for 25.
For this to go smoothly, you need to be able to provide A2 with your current cPanel credentials. Otherwise, for the additional work, they can need a small fee.
Friendly for the Setting
Green Hosting A2
A2, which is also known as ‘green’ hosting, is carbon neutral. To ensure that every server is carbon neutral, they’ve collaborated with Carbonfund.org.
While this may not be a dealbreaker, I think using a web hosting service that cares about the environment is good. You can then turn this around and even use it for your website as a marketing tool.
If the servers of A2 are green and you use their web hosting services, that means that your website is by default environmentally friendly.
This could be an enormous selling point. Seventy-three percent of millennials claim they are willing to pay more for sustainability, according to a new survey.
But marketing and sales aside, promoting an eco-friendly company is an additional advantage of using A2 for web hosting.
Other Reflections
There are a few other factors that you should bear in mind before you sign up for an A2 hosting contract. I’ve found a couple of drawbacks or downsides to using A2.
Large rates of renewal
Unfortunately, the industry norm for web hosting tends to be low promotional prices and high renewal pricing. A2 also applies this strategy.
So don’t plan to eternally pay the same price. You’re not going to get an offer better than your original contract. You need to pick a 3-year contract to get the lowest possible cost.
There’s one aspect of their pricing strategy that doesn’t sit well with me at all. Your plan will be automatically extended under A2’s terms of service unless you contact them by email at least 15 days before the renewal date.
You also have the choice via their customer portal to send a request to cancel.
There’s a fair chance you could fail to do this 15 days before your contract is up, if you’re signed up for three years , which means you’ll be forced to renew at full price no matter what.
The Uptime
Surprisingly, A2 doesn’t have the industry ‘s highest uptime rates. Throughout the year, I have seen several months where their uptime rates slipped to 99.6% or 99.7%. Those numbers aren’t bad, but they are certainly adequate below.
Fortunately, a 99.9 percent uptime rate is assured by A2. If they fail to fulfill this pledge, for every hour that your site is down, they will refund you 5 percent.
Although the loan is a nice way to illustrate their devotion to customer support, I would rather just pay full price and have high uptime rates.
Plan Limitations
Since the shared plans are so inexpensive, some of you could be drawn to A2 Hosting. But if you consider the options for Lite (the cheapest plan), you should realize that there are some limitations.
The plan is only for a single website and the fastest servers do not come with it. If you want to use their cheapest website builder, you only have the option of building a single page. Obviously, it isn’t enough to create a whole website.
Any other affordable web hosting plans are out there that are not so restrictive and have considerably lower rates.
Plans for A2 Web Hosting
A2 provides several different hosting choices, much like most web hosts. It is possible to segment the proposals into four separate categories:
Shared Hosting A2
VPS Hosting A2
Reseller Hosting for A2
Dedicated Hosting for A2
For each of these plans, I will go over the pricing and features as we proceed.
Shared hosting
Some of the best shared web hosting plans on the market today are available from A2 Hosting. The decisions are competitively priced, and offer many advantages. In terms of results, A2 ‘s shared plans certainly deliver as well.
To choose from, there are three distinct shared plans. Here is a short description of each one.
A2 Plans for Joint Web Hosting
For less than $3 per month, with a small single website, the Lite package might seem enticing to some of you. But with that said, at the very least, I would suggest the Swift strategy.
For an additional $0.75 a month, you can get twice the funds. The Swift plan is just $2 more a month than the Lite plan, even when it comes time to renew it.
You will have to sign up for the Turbo plan for those of you who want the quickest shared hosting plan on the market.
Do not get me wrong; in terms of shared hosting, the Lite and Swift plans are both quicker than average. But the strategy for the Turbo is as fast as it comes.
The A2 Turbo is up to 20 times faster than the shared hosting facilities of its rivals. The concept behind Turbo is clear. For sites on this shared plan, A2 allocates more bandwidth per user and less users per server. You get blazing fast shared hosting speeds if you combine that with the improved performance over Apache.
All shared plans from A2 include unlimited storage, unlimited transfers, free SSL, and free migration to the platform.
Hosting VPS
If you’re looking for a move above shared hosting, a virtual private server may want to be considered. A2 provides VPS plans, both managed and unmanaged.
A2 Hosting Plans for VPS
Just one or the other is provided by most web hosting companies, so it’s good that A2 has both to satisfy the needs of a wide variety of clients.
VPS unmanaged
Entry- Beginning at $5 a month
Mid-Starting at 10 dollars a month
Elite-starting at 15 dollars a month
VPS Handled
Power+ Beginning at 25 dollars a month
Prestige+ Beginning at 35 dollars per month
Pinnacle+ Beginning at 50 dollars a month
A2 also has something called plans for a “Central VPS.” The rates for these are exactly the same as the plans being handled. The only difference is that root access comes with the Core VPS.
While the pricing for the unmanaged VPS plans may seem tempting, these are not for the owner of the daily website. An unmanaged VPS is for advanced developers who want complete customization over their virtual server.
Developers can pick exactly how much RAM, storage, and other resources they want with an unmanaged VPS. But you’re just going to end up paying what you need.
Your choice of Linux OS comes with all unmanaged plans. But at any time, you can change this on demand.
For the majority of websites, the managed VPS plans are more fitting.
At 8 GB of RAM, 150 GB of storage, and 8 vCPUs, resources max out. This should be more than enough to satisfy a website that is rising.
Hosting Reseller
Reseller hosting could be the best choice for you if you are a developer, web designer, or have an agency.
If you want to sell web hosting plans to your customers, you should consider the A2 reseller plans. For you, this is a perfect opportunity to raise some extra cash while supplying your current services with more value.
Here’s a rundown of the pricing and functionality of the reseller plans for A2.
Plans for A2 Reseller Hosting
If you read my guide to the best hosting plans for resellers, you can see that these rates are very competitive.
I wouldn’t suggest a proposal for the Bronze. So we can remove that right away as a choice.
It’s the only package that doesn’t come with free WHMCS, which you’ll need to handle your customers effectively. For an extra $10 a month, you may still purchase it separately. But it’s easier to only upgrade to Silver or Gold with your contract.
Plus, 30 GB of capacity would probably not be enough for more than a handful of customers to handle. For less than $5 extra a month, the Silver kit provides more than double the storage.
Overall, my top pick is the Gold Reseller Plan. It can handle up to 250 websites, with 150 GB of storage and 1,000 GB of transfer speed. This gives you plenty of time to scale up the services of your reseller.
Dedicated Hosting service
In web hosting, dedicated servers are the top of the line.
There is probably no need for a dedicated hosting plan for most of you. Such servers are made for websites with high monthly traffic volumes. Enterprise-level hosting is not generally required by small businesses or medium-sized websites.
Since server resources such as bandwidth, RAM, storage, and CPU output are not shared with any other sites, large e-commerce stores are good candidates for a dedicated server.
A2 has four separate dedicated hosting plans, as you can see.
A2 Plans of Dedicated Servers
Root access is only supported by the Unmanaged Flex Server and the Core Flex Server. Root access is really intended, similar to the VPS plans, for developers who want full control and customization over their server.
I will go with the Discount SSD server, personally. It has more than enough tools for an enterprise-level website to manage. Compared to other dedicated servers on the market , the price is very competitive as well.
You can go with the Core Flex Server if you want the optional root access. It is still completely controlled, but if the day comes that you need it, the root access will be there.
The dedicated servers from A2 Hosting offer some of the fastest speeds we’ve seen.
Completion
For web hosting, do we suggest A2 Hosting? Completely. Completely!
A2 is a pioneer in pace in the industry. We are respected as a trustworthy and reputable supplier with excellent customer service.
A2 is a top choice to consider for any category when it comes to shared web hosting, VPS plans, dedicated servers and reseller plans.
