A2 Hosting web hosting review

A2 Hosting is usually listed among the many best web hosting companies because of its give attention to efficiency, aggressive costs, and versatile number of hosting options. However, our A2 Hosting review revealed some fascinating and surprising info about this supplier, exhibiting that it’s not fairly pretty much as good as it could seem.

A2 Hosting review: Snapshot

A2 Hosting is a widely known web hosting supplier that provides the whole lot from fundamental shared hosting to totally managed devoted servers. Its costs are aggressive, although costly on renewal, and it has among the best customer support groups we’ve seen. 

Creating a brand new web site with A2 Hosting is extraordinarily simple as a result of inclusion of the Softaculous one-click installer. However, it doesn’t stay as much as its popularity as a high-performing host. During testing, each its uptime and its common server response time fell nicely under the thresholds we’d anticipate for a dependable shared host.

At the top of the day, A2 Hosting is a viable choice that’s removed from distinctive. It’s actually higher than overly simplistic hosts akin to HostGator and Bluehost due to the variety of options it consists of. But in case you’re on the lookout for a extra superior choice, we’d suggest paying barely extra for a high-end supplier like Hostwinds or SiteGround. 

Score: 3.5/5

Read on for the total review. 

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A2 Hosting’s rivals

A2 Hosting: Key options

A2 Hosting presents nice transparency, outlining the whole lot you’ll be able to anticipate from its companies in a transparent, easy-to-understand method. One factor that stands out is the corporate’s anytime money-back assure. 

With this, you’ll be able to basically request a refund if, at any level throughout your subscription, you’re not pleased with the service you’re receiving. Unless you cancel within the first 30 days, you’ll solely obtain a refund for the rest of your subscription, nevertheless it’s nonetheless a neat little function.  

Another enticing device is A2’s free website migration service. With this, you’ll be able to deliver an present WordPress web site to your new A2 hosting account with a minimal quantity of fuss. Simply fill within the supplied migration request type, and your website will likely be transferred inside 48 hours. 

To hold its shoppers blissful and shielded from malicious third events, A2 Hosting makes use of a collection of safety instruments. For starters, it makes use of the HackScan device to proactively monitor all accounts, detecting and blocking assaults earlier than they will have damaging impacts. DDoS safety is obtainable, and you’ll even profit from a twin firewall and an on-demand virus scanner.

A2 Hosting: Key options and highlights

There’s additionally a collection of knowledge assortment and evaluation instruments accessible by means of the A2 Hosting cPanel. You can monitor issues like bandwidth utilization and website errors, whereas holding observe of customer numbers and varied different viewers statistics. 

Last however not least is A2’s customer support, which stands out as wonderful. All customers can have entry to 24/7 cellphone, electronic mail, and stay chat help. The crew prides itself on speedy, educated responses, and also you shouldn’t have to attend quite a lot of seconds for a stay chat reply.

A2 Hosting: What’s new?

A2 Hosting does a terrific job of holding its clients updated with new developments. In reality, it has a whole part of its weblog devoted to product updates, and you’ll anticipate a minimum of a few posts a month. 

As lately as September 2021, A2 Hosting added the WordPress Toolkit to the cPanel management panel. This is available in Deluxe and Standard type, and features a suite of administration instruments that can assist you get probably the most out of your WordPress website. 

In August 2021, the AlmaLinux working system was made accessible for brand spanking new clients as a result of upcoming retirement of CentOS. Support for the Magento ecommerce CMS was additionally added to A2’s managed hosting options, and there are a great deal of different small updates that you may take a look at.

A2 Hosting: Pricing

A2 Hosting presents four shared hosting plans, with costs starting from $2.99 to $12.99 a month with an preliminary three-year subscription. These costs enhance considerably after your preliminary time period, and you’ll anticipate to pay $10.99 to $25.99 on renewal. You pays the equal to the renewal value if you need to subscribe on a month-to-month foundation relatively than for a long term upfront. 

Along with its shared hosting options, A2 Hosting presents quite a few different choices. These embrace managed WordPress (from $12.99 a month), managed and unmanaged VPS (from $4.99 a month), and unmanaged and managed dedicated server hosting ($129.99 a month) choices.

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Testing A2 Hosting

To decide how simple A2 Hosting is to make use of, and the way nicely it performs, we undertook two separate checks. First, we created a easy WordPress web site linked to our hosting account. Performance was monitored utilizing Pingdom’s uptime monitoring instruments over a two-week interval.

How simple is it to create a WordPress web site with A2 Hosting?

Creating a brand new A2 Hosting account is an easy course of. The checkout is tidy, offering clear details about the corporate’s value construction and any introductory/long-term reductions. There are quite a few fee strategies accessible, together with credit score/debit card, PayPal, PayULatam, and financial institution switch. 

When you log in to your A2 Hosting account, you may be taken to the account administration dashboard. This is intuitive, although it has a barely dated look. Here, you’ll discover hyperlinks to each your cPanel management panel and the Softaculous one-click installer. 

To get began with a WordPress web site, merely click on on the Softaculous button. You will see WordPress as one of many first accessible scripts to put in. Follow the prompts, and you must have your website up and working in minutes. No particular technical or web growth information is required, and we had no points in any way.

How nicely does A2 Hosting carry out?

After making a small WordPress web site and monitoring it with Pingdom’s uptime-monitoring instruments, we had been very stunned with the outcomes. Nearly the whole lot A2 Hosting does is completed with efficiency in thoughts, and it closely advertises its “turbo” servers.

This made us much more stunned to see A2 Hosting’s common server response time are available at 822ms, which is nicely outdoors of the 200–400ms vary we anticipate from shared hosting. With gradual servers like this, you’ll have numerous hassle attaining a good web page load time, and the consumer expertise will undergo. 

A2’s uptime didn’t stay as much as expectations both. Despite providing a 99.9% uptime assure, we had been left with a sub-standard 99.42% uptime determine after two weeks of testing. Our server skilled two outages for a complete of two hours down. This isn’t a be-all and end-all take a look at as a result of quick time interval, nevertheless it actually raises questions on A2 Hosting’s long-term reliability.

Alternatives to A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting is a well-liked choice that has constructed a popularity for efficiency and feature-rich hosting packages. However, it simply didn’t stand as much as our expectations, and we’d suggest contemplating a number of options. 

For instance, Hostwinds boasts wonderful efficiency throughout the board. With its most cost-effective plan beginning at $5.24 a month, it is a bit more costly than A2 Hosting. But it’s identified for its feature-rich options excellent for bigger web sites and companies. 

Like A2 Hosting, Hostwinds comes with the Softaculous one-click script installer, making it extraordinarily simple to start out a brand new WordPress web site. It additionally boasts 24/7 stay chat, electronic mail, and on-line ticketing help. You will even get a free area identify with all subscriptions. Read our full Hostwinds review to seek out out extra.

SiteGround is one other wonderful choice for these on the lookout for a high-end host with a give attention to efficiency. It boasts a tidy native management panel, relatively than the cPanel dashboard most hosts go together with. You will be capable of choose from varied knowledge middle areas.

In addition, SiteGround’s 24/7 help crew is thought to be educated and responsive. Prices begin at a aggressive $3.99 a month, though you will want a long-term subscription to entry the very best costs.

*These characterize the bottom introductory costs for every supplier. Expect to pay extra on renewal and for short-term subscriptions

A2 Hosting: The verdict

All issues thought of, A2 Hosting presents first rate hosting options which can be let down by one easy factor—its poor efficiency. Its costs are aggressive, it’s backed by a collection of fantastic options, and its customer support is among the many greatest we’ve seen. If solely its uptime and server response occasions got here in slightly higher, A2 Hosting could be up there with the very best hosts we’ve used. 

All A2 Hosting plans do include a collection of enticing options. Those with an present web site will love the free website migration service, the anytime money-back assure is the very best we’ve seen, and there’s a neat set of safety instruments to maintain your website protected. 

In addition, it is possible for you to to select from a number of shared, VPS, WordPress, and devoted server plans. Shared hosting begins at simply $2.99 a month for an preliminary subscription, which is up there with a number of the extra inexpensive choices we’ve seen. 

Creating a brand new WordPress web site is a really simple course of. A2 Hosting makes use of a cPanel management panel coupled with the Softaculous one-click installer, enabling you to put in a brand new WordPress website in just some minutes. 

The backside line: If you’ll be able to look previous A2 Hosting’s poor efficiency, the whole lot else about it’s nice. There are choices for companies of all sizes, and there’s each likelihood that you’ll expertise higher efficiency than us in case you have a high-end shared plan or a VPS server.

Further studying on web hosting

Check out our guides to the best VPS hosting, the best cloud hosting, and the best unlimited hosting accessible right now. Or, you would possibly wish to learn extra about the ideal traits of a web hosting service provider and the ways hosting impacts web security.