A2 Hosting focuses on offering high speed services, a good cost-benefit and excellent customer support. And this can be seen in hundreds of reviews in many other languages.
Among the services they offer are Shared Hosting, WordPress Hosting, Reseller Hosting, Dedicated Servers, Domains and more.
Let’s start with the review.
Table of Contents
The positive of A2 Hosting
In this section of our A2 Hosting review, I will focus on the positive opinions of users about A2 Hosting, including its popularity in speed, customer support and features.
Let’s see what I found.
1. Excellent performance and availability time
A2 Hosting highlights that it has an availability time (Uptime) of 99.9%, and that many of its plans are accelerated with a “turbo”.
And let me tell you that it is so.
A2 Hosting maintains a stable Uptime at 99.99% during the entire test performed with Uptime Robot. And the response times I’ve seen have been below the industry average (553 ms), with some peaks here and there, A2 Hosting has achieved an average of 450ms of response time.
In terms of server performance, A2 Hosting is better than any other average hosting. How is this?
There are certain qualities that improve speed:
- In each A2 Hosting plan you will find storage on SSDs, which significantly improves speed compared to the traditional mechanical HDD.
- All plans include a CloudFlare content distribution network (CDN).
- A2 Hosting has an optimized tool for memory caching of websites.
All these features (and some more) provide a positive impact on the performance of A2 Hosting servers, and this has been markedly reflected in the test I have done previously.
A2 Hosting has been very concerned in this section, also offering with any plan free DNS Anycast to increase performance, reducing latency.
And if you are more geek and want to know the engine behind each plan, then you can rest easy since each server has a minimum of 12 cores and 64GB of RAM. In a shared hosting this is a great respite to know that you have secured a good portion of resources.
2. Choice of server location
Another factor that helps A2 Hosting have excellent performance is the ability to choose the location of the server where you will be hosting your website.
A2 Hosting has its locations in the US (Michigan and Arizona), Europe (Netherlands) and Asia (Singapore), covering virtually the entire northern hemisphere of the globe.
Why should you worry about this?
When you have a target audience located in a region then it is good to place your website’s servers near them, so that they can achieve very high page loading speeds. In this way, communications do not have to travel long distances or go through too many routers, thus lowering performance.
3. Security features included
One of the features that most caught my attention was the possibility of having a free SSL certificate regardless of the plan you choose, in addition to other security issues that are included.
Another security feature you will have with each plan is free account protection called Patchman.
Patchman allows you to automatically detect if a software is outdated, preventing hackers from taking advantage of these vulnerabilities.
And if a file is infected and detected, Patchman automatically quarantines it for 24 hours to prevent its dispersion.
A2 Hosting also offers the DropMySite functionality to make external backups (on a physical device separate from the server) so that you have your secure website, regardless of the hosting plan you have decided to pay.
Wow, A2 Hosting really cares about the safety of its customers. And let me tell you this is not all.
You will have a complete hacker protection suite called HackScan to block attacks before they reach your website that includes enhanced DDoS protection.
What else do you want? In A2 Hosting you can feel really safe.
4. Compatibility with eCommerce and online stores
Regardless of which A2 Hosting plan you choose, with all of them you will have compatibility with e-commerce sites and online stores.
In fact, A2 Hosting has countless installable applications with just one click, including Magento, OpenCart, PrestaShop and WooCommerce.
You just have to keep in mind that despite having the ability to quickly install an online store, you will also need additional resources if your business becomes popular. And the basic plan does not include Turbo, or some performance enhancement applications.
But if all you want is to have a blog with a small store selling products, this will be perfect. A2 Hosting would be the cheapest shared hosting service to start in ecommerce.
You can have PayPal trading accounts, integrated into your store.
5. Notable customer support
A2 Hosting support does not fall short and is a section to highlight. You can contact them in many ways, including 24/7 tickets, online chat and telephone support. You can also have a broad knowledge base and extensive guides that cover multiple topics such as cPanel, WordPress optimization, how to start your website, etc.
After less than 1 minute of waiting you will be contacted to an agent. Once the agent has answered your questions, you can choose to have the transcript sent to your email. This way, if the questions you have asked have instructions or steps to take, you can always have it available from your inbox.
6. Excellent cost-benefit ratio
The cheapest shared hosting plan of A2 Hosting is called LITE, and costs € 2.65 per month , being one of the cheapest entry plans I have found in relation to the benefits offered. However, to get the full power of A2 Hosting you must hire the TURBO plan at € 6.30 per month , which is not too expensive and offers a performance 20 times higher than the other plans, in addition to having security with HTTP / 2, and Web page load time improvements up to 143% faster with the Railgun Optimizer. Other average plans of other companies usually cost the same amount or more so you will have good features for the price offered.
Because with this cheap plan you will also have SSL, unlimited storage, unlimited transfer, and even free migration.
What is the difference between the plans?
- LITE offers 1 website, 5 databases, 25 email addresses and parked domains;
- SWIFT includes unlimited websites, as well as databases, emails and backups;
- TURBO has all the unlimited features included, plus Turbo optimized servers, Railgun HTML optimizer, and LiteSpeed cache memory management extensions.
You can see the comparison of plans here:
Image.
he only thing that is not included with the A2 Hosting plans is the domain.
Beyond that, at A2 Hosting you will find everything you need to launch and scale your website.
The negative of A2 Hosting
This all seems great doesn’t it?
While the performance, features and support of A2 Hosting are great, we will also find some negative things in this hosting provider.
Let’s see a little.
1. A free domain is not included
While many companies include a free domain, at least the first year, A2 Hosting is not one of them.
To do this we must search for a domain, using the A2 Hosting search engine that will suggest those available and their corresponding prices.
A .com domain will cost much more expensive with them than with another entity, about € 13.42 per year.
Although we will have very good characteristics, the cost of the domain makes everything more expensive. Luckily there are registration entities like NameCheap or GoDaddy that offer to register domains for a much lower cost, so you save a little cost.
If for some reason you cannot hire a domain you can use a free A2 Hosting sub-domain, however I do not recommend it because it is not something that benefits you professionally or the SEO of your website.
2. Expensive renovations
Another fault that I have found in A2 Hosting is its high renewal prices.
After the plan you have contracted ends, what will you find?
First of all, you will have 14 days to renew the plan or your account will be deleted (renewals are automatic, but delays in payment processes may occur).
In addition, renewal prices do not include bonuses or offers:
- The LITE plan goes from € 52 per month to € 7.17 per month
- With the SWITH plan you will go from paying € 39 per month to paying € 8.97 per month
- In TURBO the cost will go from € 35 per month to € 17.05 per month
This is almost double the original price. And, while A2 Hosting is worth its initial cost for the features offered, I don’t think it’s as eligible with those high renewal prices.
3. Additional sales and restrictions
Additional sales, also known as upselling, are a very common practice in hosting providers and it is something that A2 Hosting has not avoided.
For those who start, the advertised prices are only for 24 to 36 month plans.
But look. When you choose the plan, the actual price without promotion appears in the cart.
And be careful, since there are many options with additional cost.
For example: if you want Turbo Boost to increase the speed of your website you will have to pay an additional € 1.80.
Or if you need an anti SPAM Firewall to protect your domain, you will get € 2.69 in a single domain.
A2 Hosting Review – Latest Comments
After having made a deep tour of the services offered by A2 Hosting we have reached the point of closing and concluding.
Yes, A2 Hosting is a hosting provider with excellent performance and availability time . A2 Hosting includes a very good amount of security features and its customer support is remarkable.
However, it is not the best of all.
So, we can say that A2 Hosting impresses with its speed but when it comes time to take out your wallet you should read the fine print very carefully.
Have you had any experience with A2 Hosting? Tell us in the comments.
Pros
- Unlimited plans
- Free SSL certificate in all plans
- Free backups
- Friendly and fast customer support 24/7
- Free migration
Cons
- High renewal prices
- Plans do not include free domain
- There are no terms longer than 36 months