The web hosting industry has raised the bar to exceptional levels. 99.9% uptime and solid security are almost default standards for the top hosting companies. There is practically no room for errors! Nowadays, the loading speed of the hosted websites seems to be a differentiating factor for hosts. In addition to costs and cool perks for users, the servers’ performance differentiates the hosts. Learn about A2 Hosting page speed, uptime, and much more in our A2 Hosting review.
A2 Hosting is a symbolic host that has passed the test of time. It’s well-known for top-class customer support and low introductory prices. Yet, the company is more than that; it’s one of the fastest WordPress hosting platforms.
Check out our detailed review of A2 Hosting for all the information you need.
A2 Hosting at Glance
The story of A2 Hosting started back in 2001 when Bryan Muthig decided to help webmasters by building a safe platform to host their websites. Curious about the strange name? It comes from the name of the business’s hometown—Ann Arbor, Michigan. Fast forward, the company scaled up and added international data centers in Singapore and The Netherlands in 2015. It introduced managed WordPress hosting in its list of services in 2018. Bare metal dedicated servers were introduced in 2021 to ensure the best performance for users.
110,000+ people from 223 countries use A2 Hosting services, and 200+ remote employees do their best to serve these customers. It’s worth mentioning that A2 Hosting is carbon-neutral and deeply connected to reforestation and other green initiatives. While it has nothing to do with website performance, it’s uplifting to know that you are contributing to a better environment.
A2 Hosting isn’t only a top-class WordPress host platform; it’s a hub for launching and maintaining websites. It supports WordPress and many other platforms, like PrestaShop, Magento, Drupal, OpenCart, and Joomla.
WordPress Shared Hosting
Need a cheap plan for a personal website or an entire server just for your enterprise project? Are you a one-man show, or do you want someone watching your back? A2 Hosting is a reliable solution in all cases.
Shared WordPress hosting starts at $2.99/month, which isn’t the cheapest host on the market, but it’s certainly one of the most affordable alternatives. The startup, the cheapest shared hosting plan, is for one website. This introductory price is available if you commit to a three-year plan or $6.99 for a one-year commitment. A more exciting plan is Drive, which starts at $5.99 for a three-year commitment and $9.99 for one year. It comes with an unlimited number of websites to host, in addition to unlimited storage space. This plan is perfect if you manage multiple small and mid websites.
The superior plans—Turbo Boost and Turbo Max—are ideal for two categories of
users:
- Webmasters who what their website loads instantly;
- Solopreneurs and design agencies that maintain a few clients’ websites. Both plans come with an unlimited number of websites and storage capacity.
WordPress Managed Hosting
Managed Hosting means that the hosting platform is involved in running your website. No need to worry about improving performance and strengthening security; A2 Hosting does it for you. It also includes premium perks, like clone and staging websites, automatic core updates, and secure automated backups.
The names of the plans are original and eye-catching: Run, Jump, Fly, Sell. Run costs $11.99/month for one website, 50GB NVMe Storage, 4 GB RAM, and Jetpack Free. Jump sets you back $18.99, and you may host up to five websites. It includes 250GB NVMe Storage, 4GB RAM, onsite and offsite backup, and Jetpack Premium. Fly and Sell plans have an unlimited number of websites and storage capacity. Additionally, they have many useful premium features, like daily malware scans, traffic surge protection, and multi-site management.
Be aware that these prices are for a three-year commitment and are seriously discounted. Check out this page for a complete report on the A2 Hosting renewal prices.
Is A2 Hosting the Fastest Host?
Nobody likes an answer that starts with “it depends.” Yet, it’s impossible to provide a clear yes or no verdict. That’s because each speed test has its own particularities and it’s irrelevant to compare against other tests. Besides, A2 Hosting has four shared hosting plans, while other competitors may have three or five shared hosting plans. Should we compare only the cheapest plans? If so, how is it fair to measure the cheapest plans of hosts with three, four, or five pricing plans?
Altogether, by studying the technology used by A2 Hosting and reading all the reviews (both on the A2 Hosting site and third-party review websites), we are sure that A2 Hosting is indeed one of the fastest hosts. People are biased by their nature, but it’s impossible that thousands of people would recommend A2 Hosting for its speed without a solid reason. A2 Hosting is fast enough as it has almost unanimously satisfied the users. On top of that, the stack used speaks for itself. Turbo Server is a feature for premium plans ensuring a 20X faster loading speed than competitors. Few users on each server, many resources allocated for each account, a performant cache system, and a dedicated optimization tool make your website blazingly fast.
A2 Optimized is an optimization tool not only for WordPress websites but also for Drupal, Magento, PrestaShop, Joomla, or OpenCart. It does, amongst other things, page caching, code minification, image optimization, and gzip compression. A2 Optimized takes the shape of a plugin for WordPress sites and makes cache and performance improvement.
It is worth mentioning that A2 Hosting uses solid-state drives (SSD) for enhanced website performance. All these features make A2 Hosting a relevant player in the WordPress hosting industry.
Additional Features for a Loading Fast Website
We can’t do an A2 Hosting review without checking their page speed. Another method of delivering site content extremely fast to visitors is the usage of a content delivery network (CDN) and a suitable data center. Luckily, A2 Hosting offers both! A strong CDN makes sure that all sites hosted on A2 Hosting are delivered to users from the closest point to their locations. For instance, your website is hosted on a server in the US, and a European user visits it. The user’s browser will send requests to the host in the US, meaning a lot of wasted milliseconds. In the hosting industry, milliseconds are like days. A content delivery network caches your site’s files and delivers them to the user from the closest position. A2 Hosting offers this service for free!
A2 Hosting data centers cover almost a global audience. They are based in the US, Europe, and Asia. The customers may select the data center to host their sites, so they may choose the one closest to their audience.
Anycast is another A2 Hosting feature that speeds up site loading. In layman’s terms, it duplicates DNS records in its global network and delivers the browsers’ requests faster than competitors.
A2 Hosting Noteworthy Features
Speed is a capital factor in the final decision of selecting a hosting platform. Yet, there are a bunch of other perks and features that can entice users to look closer at a hosting platform. Fortunately, A2 Hosting comes with a few noteworthy features that attract the customers’ attention. Below are some that piqued our interest.
99.9% Uptime Commitment
You want your site online as much as possible. You’re leaving money on the table when your site is down. A2 Hosting ensures a 99.9% uptime, and it has a policy of giving back money if your site’s downtime is more than expected. Read this uptime commitment guide for a better idea of this policy.
Advantageous Money Back Policy
A2 Hosting management knows that their services are top-class and do everything possible to convince their customers. The money-back policy is a great example. Practically, you can test the suitability of A2 Hosting services risk-free! You get a full refund within the first 30 days of usage. Unlike many competitors, A2 Hosting offers a prorated refund after the 30-day trial. Your risk is minimal if you don’t like the company’s services!
Enhanced Security
Any time you purchase hosting services and upload the site files, you put your online reputation in the hands of the host. A hacked site is a disaster for your business’s reputation. The chances of getting hacked are almost zero with A2 Hosting, thanks to the skilled team permanently monitoring your site’s activity and scanning for malware. Plenty of security systems are active on servers that minimize the success of DDoS and brute force attacks. On top of that, a powerful firewall protects sites from harmful requests. Pretty impressive, isn’t it?
Free SSL Certificate
Another good thing about A2 Hosting is that they offer free SSL certificates. It saves you a few bucks and makes your connection browser-server encrypted. It further reduces the chances of a successful hacking attempt.
Free Email Addresses
Want to use a professional email address for your online business? A2 Hosting ensures unlimited free email addresses. The shared plans include unlimited email addresses, storage, and spam protection.
Free Website Transfer
Migrating to a new host is a troublesome activity, and many webmasters aren’t comfortable doing such a job. A2 Hosting experts will complete your site transfer free of charge. With A2 Hosting, you don’t have to be concerned about moving your website.
Staging Website
A staging website is an offline copy of your website, and it’s of much help to webmasters. Use it to update themes and plugins and test new features. Performing these jobs directly on the production site might result in bad user experiences and may even put down your website. Most hosting companies offer staging websites only for superior plans, but A2 Hosting adds this feature to all their plans, including the cheapest shared hosting plan.
Excellent Customer Support
A2 Hosting is well-known for its excellent customer service. No matter your issue, a kind, and professional support agent will provide you with the proper guidance. You can submit a ticket, send an email, call, or chat with an agent—it’s totally up to you how to ask for help. Forget about working hours; a team of agents is always ready to help customers in need.
Things to Improve
It’s pretty difficult to find a negative aspect of A2 Hosting. However, it’s good to mention that many users felt that they were cheated at renewal. The introductory prices are massively discounted, and people often don’t look at this. They expect the same renewal prices and are disappointed by the large difference in price. It’s not necessarily a bad thing; plenty of companies offer discounted prices for first-time customers. Still, it’s better to make it clear and bold — make customers aware that what they pay for the first time is extremely discounted.
Over to You
We strongly believe that A2 Hosting is an excellent choice for hosting your sites. It’s a super fast platform, the customer support is excellent, the uptime is above average, and security is a top priority. On top of that, it comes with some excellent perks, like free site transfer, unlimited email addresses, and a staging website.
Are you an active customer of A2 Hosting, or did you purchase hosting services in the past? We are eager to know your impressions of A2 Hosting, so leave a comment with your experience.
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