Are you looking for the right hosting provider for your website? Let’s find out whether A2 Hosting is perfect for your website or not.
A2 Hosting is one of the oldest web hosting services that offers products ranging from shared hosting to dedicated servers. They are also considered as one of the best shared hosting providers for beginners.
Are you thinking of setting up a blog or website?
A2 Hosting is a great option because they offer affordable plans with plenty of space and bandwidth, even for new users. Additionally, their pricing starts at less than $3/month which is quite affordable for most people.
Overall, it’s a great choice for businesses on a tight budget.
But, I understand that it’s hard to decide on a hosting provider without knowing all the details. In fact, you don’t want to make a mistake.
Once you pick a host, it’s usually a long -term commitment.
You’ll need to understand the strengths and weaknesses (if any) of the hosting company before signing up, so you can make an informed decision.
In this A2 Hosting review, we’ll be taking an in-depth look at all of the important details about this hosting provider before giving the final verdict on whether it’s the best hosting option for your business.
So, without further delay, let’s get started!
A2 Hosting Overview
A2 Hosting is one of the popular web hosting providers which was founded back 2001 by Bryan Muthig, a talented UNIX systems administrator. Its original name was Iniquinet and later back in 2003, it was changed to A2 Hosting. The company is head quarted in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States.
The company offers a variety of hosting services such as shared, WordPress, VPS, reseller, Dedicated and also the domain name. And apart from that, they provide free SSL certificate, unlimited disk space, and bandwidth.
They offer you a variety of website scripts which you can install in just a single click such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento, and OpenCart. Well, WordPress is the most popular (used by over 50% of the web sites) CMS among these but you can use any other that suit your needs.
Pros of A2 Hosting
The following are some of the biggest advantages of using the A2 Hosting for your website. Hopefully , it will help you to make an informed buying decision about whether this is the right hosting provider for you.
1. Fastest Shared Hosting Provider
A2 Hosting is well known for their ultra-fast loading speed i.e. 317 ms. Your site speed is one of the most important things after uptime. It can show you a solid impact in terms of bounce rates and visitors’ satisfaction rates.
Most people go back and leave your website if your website pages take longer than 5 seconds to load.
The reason is quite simple – people are impatient and they will leave your site as soon as they notice that it’s taking a long time to load.
Without a good reason, people have no reason to wait.
So, the loading speed of your website can affect your conversion rates. A fast loading site can help you increase your conversion rates by up to 7%. So, even a 1-second delay can show a negative impact.
In order to increase the loading time of your website, A2 Hosting uses various tools like CDN, Solid State Drive’s (SSD) and your choice of the data center that will help your website to host closer to your visitors.
You can even get up to 20X faster-loading speed but this is available only if you decide to use their Turbo plan.
2. Exceptional Customer Support
Whether this is your first website or not, you’ll be able to access it comfortably as their services are extremely user-friendly.
Their control panel makes it easier for you to manage your files, websites, email, database, and many more things.
They also provide you a tool called Softaculous that will help you install the most popular software like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc. in just 1 click.
A2 Hosting also offers you good customer support through live chat, email and phone calls. Their guru crew support will be available 24/7 to assist you with any questions you have.
Their support team is friendly and knowledgable. They’ll answer every question you ask directly within 30 seconds.
3. Uptime Guarantee
Not every hosting provider gives you the uptime guarantee but A2 hosting does provide you ultra-reliable service.
They provide you the commitment that their uptime will never go down to 99.9% in any circumstance.
If you use shared hosting where many users share the same servers at one time have the potential to lower down your website uptime when something happens to the website of another user.
Even in this situation as well, you can rely on the expert team of A2 Hosting who will make sure that your server is up and running all the time.
4. Free Website Migration
A2 Hosting offers free website migration that means you can transfer your site from one hosting server to another for free.
Site migration is available in every plan.
You’ll be able to move only a single website for free if you have a shared hosting plan. While if you are using other hosting plans like VPS, reseller or dedicated, then you’ll get 25 free site migrations.
In order to do site migration, all you need to do is to contact their guru crew support team and leave it on them. They will move your site for you. In most cases, they do site migration for free but sometimes they may take a small fee.
5. Money-Back Guarantee
Like other hosting providers, A2 Hosting also offers you a 30-day money-back guarantee. Not only this but they also offer a prorated refund at any time after that. A2 Hosting has changed its policy over the last few years.
So, if you are using their services and they aren’t that good enough, then you can refund your money back without giving any excuse.
You’ll get your money back within 30 days.
So, you can easily use their services without taking any risk.
Also, you need to keep in mind that other services like domain, setup fees or even migration fees are non-refundable.
Cons Of Using A2 Hosting
The following are some of the disadvantages of using A2 Hosting.
1. Not the Best Uptime
Uptime is an important performance factor of any website.
Over the last few months, I’ve noticed that the uptime of A2 Hosting is not always up to the mark. The uptime of A2 Hosting is 99.93%.
Even though they provide you an uptime guarantee of 99.9% but there are some other web hosting providers like Cloudways that doesn’t only have a high uptime percentage of uptime but also offering uptime guarantee.
2. Limited Bonus Features
Although they provide some amazing features like unlimited SSD space and transfer, free and easy site migration, automated backups, etc. but they don’t offer you enough especially if you buy the starting plans.
Unlike other web hosting companies, A2 Hosting does not offer a free domain along with hosting. Their starting plan does not offer 20X faster loading speed like the Turbo plan. Although they offer you free automated backups in Swift and Turbo plans but if you want to create your own backups, you need to purchase their on-demand backup add-on.
Pricing And Features
A2 Hosting offers 4 types of hosting plans which include shared hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting and dedicated server. You need to decide which one will be best for your business. Although if this is your first ever website, I highly recommend you go with shared hosting.
Now let me tell you about each plan and the features they offer.
Shared Hosting
Their shared hosting plan provides you high speed and the best performance which should be enough for every beginner.
A2 Hosting offers 3 different plans for its shared hosting.
Lite Plan
This plan starts at $2.96/mo which is quite affordable.
This plan offers you to access only 1 website, 5 subdomains and 25 parked domains.
It also offers you some other features like unlimited SSD and storage, 25 email accounts, 5 databases, free site migration, free Cloudflare CDN, Cpanel control access, free SSL, 24/7 support, 99.9% uptime guarantee and anytime money-back guarantee.
Swift Plan
This plan starts at $3.70/mo. If you want to run more than a single website then this plan is the best for you.
It offers you unlimited websites, subdomains, parked and add-on domains.
This plan also offers you unlimited SSD and storage, unlimited email accounts, unlimited database, free site migration, free Cloudflare CDN, Cpanel control access, free SSL, free automated backups, 3 data centers, 24/7 support, 99.9% uptime guarantee, and anytime money-back guarantee.
Turbo Plan
This plan starts at $7.03/mo. If you want to scale up your business to another level then this plan is the best for you.
It offers you unlimited websites, subdomains, parked and add-on domains.
This plan also offers you unlimited SSD and storage, unlimited email accounts, unlimited database, free site migration, free Cloudflare CDN, Cpanel control access, free SSL, free automated backups, 3 data centers, 24/7 support, 99.9% uptime guarantee, and anytime money-back guarantee.
This plan offers you a special feature i.e. Turbo server (up to 20X fast loading time) and A2 optimized Magento features.
Reseller Hosting
This hosting is designed to make it easy to host your own customers without worrying about hardware or setup.
This hosting comes with 4 different plans which are as follows:-
Bronze Plan
This plan starts at $9.80/mo.
This plan offers limited features like 30 GB storage, 400 GB transfer, 20X Turbo option, free SSL and SSD, WHM control, Free eNom Reseller Account, and Anytime Money Back Guarantee.
Silver Plan
This plan starts at $13.72/mo.
This plan offers limited features like 75 GB storage, 600 GB transfer, 20X Turbo option, free SSL and SSD, WHM control, Free eNom Reseller Account, Anytime Money Back Guarantee and free WHMCS.
Gold Plan
This plan starts at $18.13/mo.
This plan offers limited features like 150 GB storage, 1000 GB transfer, 20X Turbo option, free SSL and SSD, WHM control, Free eNom Reseller Account, Anytime Money Back Guarantee and free WHMCS.
Platinum Plan
This plan starts at $30.38/mo.
This plan offers limited features like 200 GB storage, 2000 GB transfer, 20X Turbo option, free SSL and SSD, WHM control, Free eNom Reseller Account, Anytime Money Back Guarantee and free WHMCS.
VPS Hosting
VPS hosting is a little bit better than shared hosting which comes with both managed and unmanaged hosted options.
Managed VPS hosting
This hosting comes up with 3 hosting plans which are as follows:-
Power+ Plan
The plan starts at $25/mo.
This plan offers 4 GB RAM, 75 GB storage, 2 TB transfer, 4 cores, free SSL and SSD, free site transfer, control panel access, and anytime money-back guarantee.
Prestige+ Plan
The plan starts at $35/mo.
This plan offers 6 GB RAM, 100 GB storage, 3 TB transfer, 6 cores, free SSL and SSD, free site transfer, control panel access, and anytime money-back guarantee.
Pinnacle+ Plan
The plan starts at $50/mo.
This plan offers 8 GB RAM, 150 GB storage, 4 TB transfer, 8 cores, free SSL and SSD, free site transfer, control panel access, and anytime money-back guarantee.
Unmanaged VPS Hosting
This unmanaged hosting comes up with 3 hosting plans which are as follows:-
Entry Plan
The plan starts at $5/mo.
This plan offers 20 GB storage, 1 core, 2 TB transfer, 512 MB RAM, free SSL, root access, and anytime money-back guarantee.
Mid Plan
The plan starts at $10/mo.
This plan offers 30 GB storage, 1 core, 2 TB transfer, 1 GB RAM, free SSL, root access, and anytime money-back guarantee.
Elite Plan
The plan starts at $15/mo.
This plan offers 50 GB storage, 4 core, 2 TB transfer, 1 GB RAM, free SSL, root access, and anytime money-back guarantee.
Dedicated Server Hosting
This hosting is generally preferred by large websites and business owners.
A2 Hosting offers both managed and unmanaged hosting options depending on their requirements.
Managed Hosting
Managed Server hosting comes up with 3 plans which are as follows:-
Sprint Plan
The plan starts at $141.09/mo.
This plan offers 8 GB RAM, 2X500 GB Storage, 10 TB Transfer, 2 Cores, Intel 3.1+ GHz, Free SSL, Free cPanel Control Panel, Free & Easy Site Transfer, and Anytime Money Back Guarantee.
Exceed Plan
The plan starts at $207.49/mo.
This plan offers 8 GB RAM, 2X500 GB Storage, 15 TB Transfer, 4 Cores, Intel Xeon 2.4+ GHz, Free SSL, Free cPanel Control Panel, Free & Easy Site Transfer, and Anytime Money Back Guarantee.
Mach Plan
The plan starts at $290.49/mo.
This plan offers 16 GB RAM, 2X1000 GB Storage, 20 TB Transfer, 8 Cores, 2X Intel Xeon 2.1+ GHz, Free SSL, Free cPanel Control Panel, Free & Easy Site Transfer, and Anytime Money Back Guarantee.
Unmanaged Hosting
Unmanaged Server hosting comes up with 3 plans which are as follows:-
Sprint Plan
The plan starts at $99.59/mo.
This plan offers 8 GB RAM, 2X500 GB Storage, 10 TB Transfer, 2 Cores, Intel 3.1+ GHz, and Anytime Money Back Guarantee.
Exceed Plan
The plan starts at $165.99/mo.
This plan offers 8 GB RAM, 2X500 GB Storage, 15 TB Transfer, 4 Cores, Intel Xeon 2.4+ GHz, and Anytime Money Back Guarantee.
Mach Plan
The plan starts at $248.99/mo.
This plan offers 16 GB RAM, 2X1000 GB Storage, 20 TB Transfer, 8+ Cores, 2x Intel Xeon 2.1+ GHz, and Anytime Money Back Guarantee.
How to Set Up Your Website on A2 Hosting Step by Step?
You can easily set up your website with A2 Hosting within a few minutes. Just follow the below steps and you’ll get to know.
- How to choose and register the domain name
- How to select the hosting for your website
- How to install WordPress on it
The steps that I’ll be going through do not require any in-depth technical knowledge. This can be done by a beginner as well.
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Step#1 Go to A2 Hosting.com
The first step is to head over to their official website and click on the “Get Started” button.
Step#2 Select the hosting plan
You’ll see that A2 Shared hosting has got 3 different plans that you can select from.
A2 hosting offers free SSL and SSD in all their plan. The reason why I am saying this is because in 2018 Google has made an extremely important announcement that the websites that do not have an SSL certificate will rank lower in the search engines and will be marked as unsafe by the chrome as well.
So, whenever someone visits your landing page Google will show your website “not secured”.
So, let us come back to their hosting plans. You need to select the plan that will be best for you. If you are a beginner and this is your very first website, then I highly recommend you select with the cheapest plan i.e. Lite which is $2.96/mo, earlier it was $7.99/mo.
You can scale up whenever you want and you’ll also be receiving a huge discount i.e. 63% off in every plan as of now.
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Step#3 Register A New Domain
Once you select your hosting plan, you’ll be moved to another page. Now you need to enter a domain name and select the domain extension.
The majority of people choose “.Com” as it is generally used for commercial businesses.
Once you enter the domain name, you need to click on the “Check” button and it’ll show you whether that domain name is available or not.
If it is available, you then need to click on “Continue”.
Step#4 Check Your Order Summary
Once you click on continue, you’ll proceed to the next page where you can see your order summary.
You’ll see all the features that come with the plan you have selected. On the right-hand side, you’ll see the total price along with the discount.
You can select the number of months according to your choice. I recommend you go with at least a 12-month plan.
Once you do that you need to scroll down where you’ll see server location. They will only provide you 4 options and you need to choose the one which is the most closest to you.
Below this, you’ll see the A2 website builder option which you can select as “None”. You don’t really have to pay anything for this.
When you scroll down a little, you’ll see “Auto-install application”.
So, what you need to do is to select “WordPress-A2 Optimized”. This way you’ll tell A2 Hosting to install WordPress for you.
They basically provide an additional layer of security to your website which you can do by yourself by clicking on “None” as well or let them do that for you.
Although in this article, I’ll be covering how to install WordPress as well.
Once you do that, you can leave the rest of the settings as default and then click on “Continue”.
Now you’ll be directed to a new page where you can see some other options. If you want to have these addons on your website then you can select accordingly otherwise just leave that page as default and move on to another page by clicking on “Continue”.
Now you’ll proceed to the “Review and Checkout” page where you’ll see the total price i.e. including hosting and domain name and then click on “Checkout”.
Step#5 Fill up the Checkout page
Now you need to enter your personal information i.e. the name, email address, phone number, company name, street address, city, country, and postcode.
You also need to enter your billing information.
A2 Hosting offers you a variety of payment methods like PayPal, Skrill, credit card, debit card, bank wire transfer, and check.
Once you enter your billing information, then select “I have read and agree to the terms and service” and click on “Complete Order”.
Now A2 Hosting will create a website for you.
You’ll receive an email where you’ll find the login credentials of Cpanel and also some other useful information that you need to finish up the process. Now you need to click on the link that will give you access to the Cpanel dashboard.
Step#6 Create an Addon Domain
Once you logged in to the Cpanel dashboard, you’ll see “Addon Domains” option, just click on that and you’ll be moved to the new page where you need to type in your new domain name and click on “Add Domain”.
Step#7 Installing WordPress
Once you create an addon domain, it’s time for you to install WordPress on your site. When you go back to your Cpanel dashboard and you’ll scroll down a little bit, you need to click on the “WordPress” option as you can see below.
Once you click on WordPress, you’ll see different scripts here that you can use to install WordPress.
Now click on the “Install Now” button and proceed to the next step.
Once you click on the install now button, now you need to do some site settings.
Choose the protocol and the domain name that you have registered and leave the in directory space blank.
Now when you scroll a little bit you need to enter your site name where it has written “My blog”. You also have to enter the site description which is basically the tagline line of your site.
Now scroll down further and you’ll see admin account.
This is where you need to enter the username and password of your WordPress website. So, every time you want to login to your WordPress dashboard you need to enter these details and make sure the username and password should be strong and rememberable. You need to enter your email address as well in order to get updates.
Now you need to select the language in which you are comfortable and then click on the “Install” button.
Once you do that, you’ll move to the congratulations page where they’ll provide the link of your website and also administrative URL that will help you move to your WordPress dashboard.
Note- The easiest way to login to the WordPress dashboard is to type in your domain name and slash wp-admin. For example- Google.com/wp-admin.
You can also anytime login to your WordPress dashboard by clicking on the “Login” button present on your A2 hosting Cpanel.
This is how you can set up WordPress on your site using A2 Hosting.
Final Verdict on A2 Hosting
Yes, we do recommend A2 Hosting as it is a well-known hosting provider due to its ultra-fast speed, affordable, and 24/7 support.
This hosting comes at the 3rd position in our list as they are high powered, ultra-reliable, and also a user-friendly hosting provider.
In addition, they offer a number of features like One-click WordPress install, free SSL certificate, unmetered bandwidth, and unlimited disk space, anytime money-back guarantee, etc.
Although if we compare A2 Hosting with Cloudways and Bluehost, then it offers relatively fewer features especially in their cheap plans.
Overall I’ll give 4.5/5 stars to this hosting.
