A2 Hosting Review 2024: Is 20X Faster Web Hosting A Real Thing?

A2 Hosting is an excellent WordPress site hosting provider that offers high-quality services and features. A2hosting’s prices are reasonable, and they provide excellent discounts for first-time buyers.

Their customer support is fantastic, and they provide a diverse range of hosting options to meet everyone’s demands.

When I first picked to create my blog website a long time ago, one of the most important hosting aspects was performance. Because I want to provide my blog readers with the best possible user experience, the high-performance promise in many A2 Hosting reviews attracted my interest.

After several years of hosting with the vendor, I have enough expertise to assess their hosting services accurately. I understand how tough it can be to choose the correct hosting company from so many possibilities. This is why I put A2 Hosting through a thorough web hosting review.

In this A2 Hosting review, I’ll be evaluating the service based on the hosting aspects you’re most concerned about:

• Pricing: How much would the A2 Hosting WordPress plan cost you? Are you receiving the most value for your money?
• Performance: Is the seller reliable? Will your WordPress site visitors have a great user experience?
• Features: Do you get free domain registration, SSL certificates, and site transfers?
• Customer Support: Can A2 Hosting’s technical support assist you when you need it?

Now that you know what to expect in this A2 Hosting review, let’s cut to the chase.

A General Overview of A2 Hosting

Most site owners may be familiar with WordPress hosting providers such as Bluehost and SiteGround. However, A2 Hosting has also established itself as a major player in recent years. The web hosting service focuses on performance.

This is apparent in its brand tagline, “Our Speed, Your Success”.

Regardless of your web hosting requirements, A2 Hosting will simply provide a dependable and sturdy solution. The site host rarely falls behind in any department. If you’re looking for fast server response times, top-tier security, and a plethora of other web hosting services, you’ve come to the correct spot.

A2 Hosting’s plans are also extremely scalable. They provide value-packed shared, Virtual Private Server (VPS), reseller, cloud, and dedicated hosting.

Regardless of the size of your project, at least one of their layouts will be an excellent fit. Furthermore, each of these plans is powered by servers that boast industry-leading capabilities.

In any case, A2 Hosting is not without issues. Though the company promises a lot in terms of performance (and partially delivers with server speeds), they can improve their uptime. We’ll get into more detail about this in the performance section.

In general, A2 Hosting positions itself as an all-inclusive web hosting solution. And it’s difficult to disagree: the supplier outperforms the industry average in practically every category I tested. If performance is your first goal, this is an excellent alternative that I would gladly suggest.

A2 Hosting Pros and Cons

Pros

• Fast WordPress-optimized servers
• Unlimited SSD storage.
• Free SSL certificate, automated backups, and site migration.
• Stress-free money-back guarantee
• Hosting plans are competitively priced.

Cons

• Uptime could be improved.
• Outdated control panel.

Pricing

A2 Hosting’s pricing is ordinary – competitive but not the cheapest. As a WordPress site owner, you can purchase their unmanaged WordPress hosting options, which begin at $2.99 per month for the Startup plan. However, for the best user experience, consider the more expensive managed WordPress services, which begin at $11.99 per month.

Managed vs. unmanaged WordPress hosting

The primary distinction between A2 Hosting’s unmanaged and managed WordPress services is that with unmanaged hosting, you are fully responsible for maintaining your WordPress website. In other words, you’ll have to pay more for items like site staging environments, a JetPack personal license, and simple backups.

Also, all managed WordPress plans include turbo-optimized servers, an advanced Plesk control panel, and high-priority support.

Here are the four available unmanaged (shared) WordPress plans and the server resources on offer:

• Startup ($2.99): includes 1 website and 100GB of SSD storage.
• Drive ($4.99): offers unlimited websites, SSD storage, and free automatic backups.
• Turbo Boost ($9.99): offers unlimited websites, NVMe (turbo) storage, and free automatic backups.
• Turbo Max ($14.99): offers unlimited websites, NVMe (turbo) storage, free automatic backups, and other features.

Each of these options includes a free SSL certificate, unlimited email accounts, free CDN, and free site transfer. However, only the two top-tier unmanaged WordPress plans provide fast speeds, thanks to the new industry-leading NVMe storage technology!

The three managed WordPress hosting plans, on the other hand, are a little conservative with their server resources.

Here’s basically what you get:

• 1-Site ($11.99): 1 website and 10GB NVMe (turbo) storage.
• 3-Sites ($18.99): 3 websites and 25GB NVMe (turbo) storage.
• Unlimited ($18.99): unlimited websites and 40GB NVMe (turbo) storage.

Keep in mind, however, that all of the prices indicated in this A2 Hosting review are only accessible for a two-year subscription. For example, the cheapest Startup plan is $8.99 per month when billed every month.

Interestingly, on all hosting plans, you can request a refund for resource usage at any moment! However, to receive a full refund, you must request it within the first 30 days of your subscription.

Other Website Hosting Plans

If WordPress isn’t for you, A2 Hosting has other options. There are three types of hosting plans: VPS, reseller, and dedicated. Here’s the kind of pricing you may expect:

• Unmanaged VPS: from $5.00/month to $15.00/month
• Core/Managed VPS: from $25.00/month to $99.99/month
• Reseller: from $13.19/month to $61.99/month
• Unmanaged Dedicated: from $99.59/month to $299.99/month
• Core/Managed Dedicated: from $141.09/month to $349.99/month

Whatever of which A2 Hosting plan you choose, you can be confident that you’re getting a good value. This is especially true if you use the discounts on long-term membership plans.

Now to the feature that A2 Hosting is so proud of!

Performance

One thing is certain: A2 Hosting pays special attention to performance!

The server speeds I recorded during my tests are convincing evidence of this! I chose to test server response times for three months. And for shared hosting, the results are among the best I’ve seen.

When reading this A2 Hosting review, you’re possibly most concerned about the “20X faster” claim. The truth is that I never expected that claim to hold up. You may be confident that when compared to competitors in the same category, A2 Hosting can occasionally provide turbo server speeds that are up to six times quicker.

After testing their server for more than three months, I recorded the following results:

An average response time of 443ms is quite impressive. Any value less than 450ms is likely to provide excellent performance. At its worst, server response times reached 689 ms.

Unfortunately, the uptime documented did not provide as much confidence. There were 12 outages totaling 42 minutes of downtime in around three months.

To clear the air, A2 Hosting meets its 99.9% uptime guarantee. However, with competitors (hosts such as Hostinger and DreamHost) consistently achieving 100% uptime, A2 Hosting could undoubtedly improve. Otherwise, it will be difficult to proclaim them the performance kings they claim to be.

In addition, I ran an A2 Hosting test site through a page speed test to evaluate how it performed in real time.

A2 Hosting Features

When it comes to features, A2 Hosting has some of the most extensive options I’ve seen from any web hosting service. If you own a WordPress site, the seller will set you up in no time. If you’re a more experienced developer, its ‘developer-friendly hosting’ supports a wide range of development frameworks and programming languages.

WordPress: A2 Optimized

A2 Hosting, like the vast majority of web hosts, caters to WordPress developers. And they do it fairly efficiently. They let you set up your cPanel with WordPress preinstalled. You may utilize the Softaculous App Installer to install many additional essential apps, including WooCommerce, Elementor, and others.

You can set up WordPress during the checkout process. Once you’ve chosen your domain, all you have to do is enter your personal information and click Install. This easy technique for WordPress installation will save you a lot of time and stress.

It’s difficult to recommend a hosting company if the CMS installation process is lengthy and time-consuming. In this evaluation, A2 Hosting easily wins key points. It is not uncommon for web servers to offer one-click WordPress installation, but it is always beneficial. Even inexperienced users will find it easy to navigate.

With the A2 Optimized for WordPress plugin, your web pages will run exceptionally well. The plugin optimizes your WordPress site’s speed and security by utilizing custom settings and third-party functionalities. The Softaculous App Installer also makes it simple to set up.

Similarly, you may set up your professional email, add a domain name, and do other activities directly from your control panel. Though the interface is rather outdated, you should have no trouble navigating your way about.

A2 Hosting Security Features

A2Hosting also excels in terms of security. The vendor includes an extensive range of tools to assist you run a tight ship. What about SSL certificates, firewall and DDoS protection, and two-factor authentication? A2 Hosting includes them all.

Fortunately, these capabilities are available for free. Let’s Encrypt powers the free SSL certificate included with their hosting options. I believe the level of protection provided will suffice for the majority of websites. If you have a large-scale project that requires more, you can select from different-priced solutions.

DDoS protection is also enabled by default. As a result, your website will always be protected against some of the most common types of cyberattacks. With the fully integrated Cloudflare Content Delivery Network (CDN), your site’s visitors will always have access to top-tier security and performance.

Other notable security features include 24/7 HackScan protection, a dual firewall, PatchMan software, and so on. Without question, A2 Hosting has a lot to offer and can be completely trusted in terms of security.

Backup Feature of A2Hosting

However, some of the progress made in the security section of this A2 Hosting review appears to have been lost in terms of backup. Although the company provides free automatic backups, their backup policy simply does not cut it for me.

In my opinion, the terms are stated quite thoroughly. What is the point of using a web server if they cannot guarantee that all of my files will be backed up? Nonetheless, most site owners will find the 50GB backup limit acceptable. Otherwise, I recommend that you download and keep your cPanel backups locally. After all, the web host appears to suggest the same.

With such extensive security features, A2 Hosting appears to target the upper echelons of business. I believe they could hit the target even better if they updated their automated backup strategy.

Other Interesting A2 Hosting Features

Their “20X faster” claim may be overstated, but A2 Hosting does include numerous options aimed at making your site load quickly. Probably the most crucial is the use of SSD storage disks on all of their servers. SSDs outperform traditional HDDs in terms of server speeds and energy usage.

Things improve even more with the newer NVMe discs, which are used on all managed WordPress plans. Most hosting providers have yet to adopt this technology, even though it provides multiple advantages. This is why A2 Hosting promotes turbo server speeds in their marketing materials.

Developers also have a lot of features to play with here. The provider supports almost every major Content Management System (CMS) and development framework or programming language out there.

So, if you want to use Drupal, PHP, Python, or Ruby on Rails in your next project, they make it simple, even for beginners. If you’ve ever had to manually install frameworks or dependencies on your website, you’ll love this functionality.

Overall, this web server provides a wide range of functions. It’s always refreshing to discover a supplier that supports a wide range of development tools and offers many safety features for free.

Customer Support

There are five ways to contact help. You can use live chat, phone assistance, email ticketing, or the knowledge base. Based on my experience, the knowledge base is always a good place to start.

I’ve always found the information base beneficial. You can quickly search or explore through the many categories. They also have a blog with many useful posts.

However, if you truly need to speak with tech support professionals, you might not have the ideal experience. Though live chat and phone help are available 24/7, responses are not always immediate (at least in my experience). However, when you finally reach out to a support staff, they are always courteous and informed.

If A2 Hosting could improve their help speed, I’d probably give them more kudos in this area. For the time being, my only recommendation is the large number of articles in the knowledge base.

For further reading:

• Top 7 Free Hosting Providers For Beginners Learning WordPress.
• 6 Affordable & Cheap WordPress Hosting Services (2024).

Final Thoughts: A2 Hosting Review

To summarize my research, I would rank A2 Hosting with BlueHost and SiteGround as a top web host. They provide possibly the finest server speeds on the market at a competitive price. However, performance is not their exclusive strength.

All of the vendor’s hosting plans contain a comprehensive set of security features and software solutions. For the amenities on offer, you’re undoubtedly receiving one of the finest deals available, especially if you subscribe to their long-term contracts. Nonetheless, even the monthly pricing remains fairly competitive.

On the downside, uptime could be improved. Although keeping to their uptime commitment, many consumers may find the significant downtimes annoying.

Overall, A2 Hosting is a strong, feature-rich web hosting provider suitable for both beginners and experts. Regardless of the size of your project, at least one of the available scalable plans will be useful.

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