A2 Hosting Review 2024: Features, Pricing & More

Is A2 Hosting the right website host for you?

Like any other web hosting provider, A2 Hosting has its pros and cons.

A2 Hosting launched its digital doors in 2001. It’s known for its super-fast server response time; it actually has one of the fastest page-loading speeds we’ve tested at just 295 ms.

On their website, you can read that 97% of their customers are satisfied and that they promise “up to 20x faster servers” – we’ll see later if their servers are as fast as the Road Runner.

Since 2015, we’ve monitored A2 Hosting and tested its performance, customer support, pricing, and other features.

A2 Hosting is known for its fast speeds, but what other areas does it excel in? Let’s dive-in and find out if A2 Hosting is the hosting service you were looking for.

1. An Overview of A2 Hosting

2. Super-Fast Page Loading Time

We conducted this review to research A2 Hosting’s response time from October 2022 to August 2023.

A2 Hosting claims to be “up to 20x faster” on their webpage. So we put that statement to the test.

A2 Hosting delivered an amazing average page loading speed of 284 ms. May was the best month, with an average response time of 253 ms—close to Google’s suggested server response time of less than 200 ms.

3. Great Uptime

Not only super-fast speed, A2 is also a reliable web hosting provider with an average uptime of 99.98% from October 2022 to September 2023.

Accordingly, A2 Hosting offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee, which it has kept throughout the last 12 months. It has also outdone other web hosting businesses, like Hostinger and Fastcomet.

4. Affordable Starting Price

A2 Hosting’s Linux-based shared hosting packages are divided into four tiers: Startup, Drive, Turbo Boost, and Turbo Max.

The initial pricing is affordable, with the cheapest plan starting at $1.99/month. This package offers a free SSL certificate, Easy Site Cloning and Staging, 100 GB of SSD storage, free Cloudflare CDN, and unlimited monthly data transfer. However, it limits you to a single website.

The Drive plan starts at $3.99/month and builds on the Startup plan by offering unlimited storage and websites.

The Turbo Boost plan, which starts at $5.99/month, outperforms the Startup and Drive plans. It opts for A2 Hosting’s AMD EPYC servers with nonvolatile memory express (NVMe) SSDs & preconfigured site caching, and 2 GB of physical memory.

Turbo Max, the most expensive option, starts at $11.99/month. This plan increases the web server’s available resources. The memory increased from 2 GB to 4 GB, and CPUs have 4-core instead of 2.
If you’re looking for better speed, we recommend skipping over the Startup and Drive plans when comparing A2 Hosting’s plans. That’s because of the lack of Turbo servers and faster NVMe storage in the Startup and Drive plans.

A2 Hosting puts all the cool stuff that makes your website run faster on its more expensive Turbo plans.

So, it would be better to go for cheaper alternatives like Verpex Hosting (starts at $1.99/month) or Fastcomet (starts at $3.25/month) if you’re running a personal or small business website. If you’re concerned about loading speed, A2 Hosting’s Turbo plans are your best choice.

It also offers other hosting options, including VPS plans, managed WordPress, WooCommerce hosting, and dedicated servers.

5. Anytime Money-Back Guarantee

Most web hosting providers offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, however, A2 Hosting offers an anytime money-back guarantee.

That is, the hosting company will give you a full refund if you find it unsuitable, and you can cancel your plan within the first 30 days. After 30 days, you’re also entitled to a prorated refund for any unused services.

6. Free Site Migrations

Migrating your site from a previous web host to A2 Hosting is easy. A migration team is dedicated to website transfers at this web hosting company. Plus, the team will help you migrate your website for free in many cases.

25 free website migrations are included with the dedicated, managed VPS, and reseller hosting plans. If you’re on the shared hosting plans and want A2’s support team to move more than 25 accounts, the company may assess a migration fee.

You can read A2 Hosting’s terms of service, which cover everything.

7. Traditional cPanel

A2 Hosting is one of the few remaining hosting companies that uses cPanel for web hosting management. Other web hosts, like Scalahosting and SiteGround, offer their own interfaces integrated with other tools.

Although the user interface seems a little daunting for beginners, it’s nonetheless one of the best control panels in terms of functionality.

More advanced users will quickly settle in A2 Hosting’s cPanel because it’s more familiar.

8. Plenty of Security Features

All its shared hosting plans include free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates. You don’t have to do anything to activate these SSL certificates.

In addition, a2hosting protects your server and hosted website with Imunify360, a 24/7 monitoring service that scans for malware and other attacks.

On top of that, A2 Hosting offers:

• Automatic backups for all plans except startup;
• Dual firewall for all its plans: ModSecurity and Config Server Firewall (CSF);
• Reinforced Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection;
• Two factor-authentication;
• Patchman is a malware/vulnerability detection and patching tool.

9. Developer-Friendly Tools and One-Click Installation of CMS and E-Commerce Platforms

Multiple e-commerce tools, like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, OpenCart, Magento, and PrestaShop are just a one-click setup that helps you get started with your e-commerce store quickly.

If you want to host multiple websites under one hosting provider, A2 Hosting also provides developer-friendly tools.

Some of the developer-friendly features include:

• Server Rewind backups;
• Admin-level root access on servers;
• Updated versions of the most popular developer tools, like MySQL, PHP, Python, Ruby, and Apache;

In addition, A2 Hosting’s website builder (A2 SiteBuilder) lets you quickly create a website using its professional templates.

A2 SiteBuilder, on the other hand, is only free for single-page websites. For multipage websites, you can buy it separately or add it to any shared hosting plan at checkout.

10. Disadvantages of Using A2 Hosting

1. No Free Domain

Most web hosting companies, like Fastcomet and Scalahosting, provide a free domain name (at least for the first year). However, A2 Hosting doesn’t.

This isn’t a must for any hosting provider to function correctly. But if you’re on a tight budget, it’s always nice to have the option of registering a free domain.

If you still need a domain name while signing up for A2 Hosting, you must pay $11.99/year for a dot-com extension that renews at the same price.

2.High Renewal Rates

A2 Hosting has low introductory prices for its new customers. However, the prices are roughly five times higher when renewing.

When you renew, for example, the Startup plan’s $1.99/month jumps to $10.99/month.

The starting price is also lower if you choose the 12-month plan. The rate almost doubles when you choose the 36-month plan ($3.99 instead of $1.99).

3.On-demand backups paid separately!

On-demand backups are limited to the tools that cPanel offers, which are a bit clunky.

4.Concurrent HTTP connections

All Shared Web Hosting accounts are allowed to use a maximum of six hundred thousand (600,000) inodes and thirty-five (35) concurrent HTTP connections to the server. Backups should be downloaded and removed after creation.

11. When to Use A2 Hosting

If you’re looking for a medium-priced provider with plenty of storage and bandwidth, A2 Hosting is a reliable choice.

Furthermore, it comes with some features that similar competitors don’t offer, for example, staging areas, built-in server-side caching, and speed optimization plugins for CMSs like WordPress, PrestaShop, and Magento.

Indeed, despite the fact that it’s not the cheapest option, these extra features meant that A2 did very well when we tested the best affordable WordPress hosting providers.

So, I imagine that A2 Hosting would be a good choice for new bloggers looking for a reliable host, digital solopreneurs (SEO consultants or WordPress developers) who need storage for their website and potentially their clients, and small and medium-sized businesses who’re after a serious hosting service.