This A2 hosting review has been divided in to below mentioned 5 parts. To get a clear idea about quality of web hosting provided by A2 hosting, take a look at every part in a systematic manner.
- 1st part of A2 hosting review : Overall quality score
- 2nd part of A2 hosting review : A small introduction
- 3rd part of A2 hosting review : Advantages or pros
- 4th part of A2 hosting review : Disadvantages or cons
- 5th part of A2 hosting review : Conclusion
A2 HOSTING’S OVERALL QUALITY SCORE :- 9.4 / 10
PRICE 9
RESOURCES & FEATURES 9
SPEED & UP-TIME 10
SECURITY 10
CUSTOMER SUPPORT 9
( Scores given above are out of a maximum possible score of 10 )
A SMALL INTRODUCTION OF A2 HOSTING
In this part of A2 hosting review, we will take a look at few basic details about A2 hosting to know about its background and reputation in the web hosting industry.
- A2 Hosting is a web hosting company located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA .
- It was founded in 2001 and was called Inquinet at that time. It got the name A2 hosting in 2003.
- At present it provides hosting service to thousands of customers spread across Asia, Europe and America.
- Highly reputed international rating agency BBB has given their A+ rating to A2 hosting. This is the highest possible rating on a scale of A+ to F.
- It provides Shared, Managed VPS, Cloud VPS, Reseller, Dedicated server hosting as well as Managed wordpress hosting.
- A2 hosting is praised for its exceptional speed, high uptime and efficient support system.
ADVANTAGES OR PROS OF A2 HOSTING
In next part of this A2 hosting review, we will take a look at advantages or positive aspects of the hosting service provided by it.
1 ) Very high Speed and Up-time :-
We have a testing website hosted on A2 hosting from september 2016.
Below mentioned speed and uptime data belongs to the same testing website.
a) SPEED
- Above image shows Speed data of a testing website hosted on servers of A2 hosting.
- Speed of A2 hosting is excellent as it remains in the range of 150 – 250 milliseconds.
- I am testing more than 25 top web hosts like bluehost, hostgator, ipage, inmotion, siteground, dreamhost etc. But no web host other than a2 hosting has an average speed of less than 300 ms.
- Most of the web hosts have speed of more than 500 ms.
- Few top hosts like bluehost have speed of more than 1000 ms.
b) UPTIME
- Above image shows Uptime data of a testing website hosted on servers of A2 hosting.
- For a duration of 4 months, A2 hosting has provided up-time of above 99.99%.
- It has suffered a single downtime of just 5 minutes during last 4 months.
- This is well above the industry standard of 99.9% and can be called truly excellent.
Speed of this host must be mentioned as a positive aspect in any honest A2 hosting review.
It provides such great speed by limiting the no. of websites hosted on a shared hosting server.
A2 hosting also uses a caching technology which stores the information of a website in people’s browsers and makes it load faster.
To enjoy exceptionally high speed, you will have to buy its turbo server plan, which is quite expensive ( $9.3/month, after discount) .
Its smaller plans are also very fast and far better than other top web hosts.
But, turbo server plan brings astonishing speed with it.
A2 hosting is also appreciated for the way it handles major security attacks.
It honestly informs the customers about any security threat it is facing and try hard to avoid any significant downtime for the websites.
2 ) Strong security system :-
A2 hosting provides few helpful and important security features to keep your website safe from online hackers, viruses, technical threats etc.
It provides HackScan, a free service including virus scanning, brute force defence, dual web hosting firewall and 24/7 security monitoring.
HackScan blocks security attacks before they occur.
A2 hosting strictly prevents unauthorized editing of themes and plugins from wp-admin. As, it can harm the safety of a website.
It also prevents a website from spam comments by filtering them through use of captcha.
A2 hosting provides one more free security software called Patchman.
Patchman detects out-of-date software, quarantines infected files, and it automatically takes care of any security issue in WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal.
Overall, security arrangements done by it are very strong.
Anyone can remain worry-free about his website’s security, if it is hosted on A2 hosting.
3 ) Top class customer support system :-
A2 hosting provides phone, chat, email and ticket support to every customer.
Its support system is US based and is available 24/7.
Customers praise its support staff for being friendly, patient and for having good technical knowledge.
If you face any technical or other type of trouble, then you will get fast and efficient help from A2 hosting’s support team.
I must appreciate their dedication towards the quality of support system, through this A2 hosting review.
4 ) Wide variety of plans :-
A2 hosting provides a very wide range of hosting plans.
These plans include Shared, VPS, Dedicated server and Managed wordpress hosting plans.
In shared hosting plans, TURBO plan is very special.
It provides very fast speed and high quality overall performance, but it is a bit expensive.
The Turbo plan also allows customers to enjoy the benefits of fewer users per server and more resources per user.
Optimized WordPress hosting provided by A2 hosting is actually created by combining customized settings and different third-party plugins.
It makes wordpress websites more secure and fast.
In VPS plans, you can choose between managed and un-managed VPS hosting plans.
Unmanaged VPS hosting is good if you’re a developer and you want to have full control over your server.
On the other hand, managed VPS hosting is advised for people having low technical knowledge.
In short, A2 hosting provides sufficient variety for different types of websites.
From a small personal site to a huge business website, there is a plan for all of them.
Let’s move ahead and reveal more crucial details in this A2 hosting review.
5 ) Cloudflare CDN and Free website transfer :-
A2 hosting provides free Cloudflare CDN with all the shared hosting plans.
It improves the speed and security of a website in a significant way.
It is rare for a budget web host having plan costs under $10/month to provide Cloudflare CDN for free.
Most web hosts either do not provide it or they charge some extra money for it.
Your website will be transferred to A2 hosting for free, if your current web host uses Cpanel.
Most of the web hosts uses Cpanel as their control panel, these days.
Free website transfer is a clear advantage.
Many web hosts charge fees ranging from $30 to $150 for transferring a website.
6 ) Following extra features and services :-
In this part of A2 hosting review, i will mention other important features and services provided by it :-
- They offer unlimited Bandwidth and unlimited storage space under their shared hosting plans.
- In all shared hosting plans, Solid state drive (SSD) servers are used instead of regular hard drive severs, to boost the speed.
- The smallest shared hosting plan allows 25 email accounts with unlimited storage. Other 2 plans offer unlimited email accounts.
- They have data centers around the world in the US (Michigan), Europe (Amsterdam) and Asia (Singapore).
- You can choose any one data center which is closer to the location of your visitors. It will provide better speed and uptime to your website.
- Installing popular content management systems like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, OpenCart, and Magento is a simple, ‘1-click’ setup.
- They also provide a free in-house Do It Yourself SiteBuilder tool.
In above part of this review, i mentioned positive sides of the hosting service provided by A2 hosting.
In next part of this A2 hosting review, we will take a look at the negative sides or disadvantages of this web host.
Let’s continue our journey to explore this top class web host …..
DISADVANTAGES OR CONS OF A2 HOSTING
A2 hosting is an extremely good web host.
As per our testing, analysis and investigation, it is the best web host which provides hosting at an affordable cost.
But, it also has some minor disadvantages, which are not very big.
But, for making right decisions, it is good to know them.
A2 hosting has following negative sides or disadvantages :-
1 ) Restrictions on Cheaper Plans :-
You can host only 1 website and 5 sub-domains on the smallest shared hosting plan.
So, multiple website owners will have to go for larger plans which allow you to host unlimited websites and sub-domains.
Turbo server, which is reputed for providing excellent speed to a website, is available only with the largest shared hosting plan.
In my view, it is not a big concern for those who do not want to buy the expensive Turbo server plan.
Our testing has revealed that even without the turbo server, shared hosting of A2 hosting is very fast.
How ?
Due to use of Cloudflare CDN, SSD servers, multiple data centers, latest technology and by keeping no. of users per server within the limit.
Even smallest plan of A2 hosting provides better speed than other top web hosts like Siteground, Inmotion, Bluehost, Hostgator, Ipage, Dreamhost, Arvixe, A small orange etc.
2 ) Server migration fees :-
If you would like to move your website from 1 data center to another data center without upgrading your account, there is a $25 migration fees.
Charging a fees for changing the data center is not a standard practice in the web hosting industry.
So, A2 hosting definitely deserves some criticism for it.
But, despite being strange, it is not a serious disadvantage.
Now, this review has mentioned both the positive and negative sides of the hosting service provided by A2 hosting.
Let’s move ahead to next part of this A2 hosting review .
Let’s find out THE CONCLUSION…
A2 HOSTING REVIEW : CONCLUSION
Before declaring a conclusion of this entire review, let’s do a short and brief flashback.
It will remind you things which you have read above and will help you to take a better decision.
A2 hosting has following advantages :-
- Speed in the range of 150 – 250 milliseconds and up-time of above 99.99%
- Strong security features to keep a website safe from online hackers, viruses, technical threats etc.
- 24/7 phone, chat, email and ticket support to every customer.
- Wide range of hosting plans which include Shared, VPS, Dedicated server and wordpress hosting plans.
- Free Cloudflare CDN with all shared hosting plans to improve the speed and security.
- Your website will be transferred to A2 hosting for free.
- Unlimited Bandwidth and storage space in all shared hosting plans.
- In all shared hosting plans, Solid state drive (SSD) servers are used instead of regular hard drive servers.
- They have data centers around the world in US (Michigan), Europe (Amsterdam) and Asia (Singapore).
Disadvantages of A2 hosting are following :-
- You can host only 1 website and 5 sub-domains on the smallest shared hosting plan.
- Turbo server is available only with the largest shared hosting plan.
- To move your website from 1 data center to another data center without upgrading your account, there is a $25 migration fees.
On honestly reading this A2 hosting review, anyone can understand that positive side of A2 hosting is very strong.
Its disadvantages are fewer in number and are not very serious for most of the website owners.
Most important thing is that A2 hosting performs extremely well in the field of speed, security, support and uptime.
These 4 things are known as pillars of web hosting service.
I have tested and analyzed all the highly popular web hosts like Bluehost, Hostgator, Ipage, Siteground, Inmotion, Dreamhost, Arvixe, Godaddy, A small orange etc.
A2 hosting proved to better than every other host in terms of speed, security, uptime and overall features. It shows that A2 Hosting has an excellent work culture and they give lot of importance to customer satisfaction.
Their hard work and dedication is the primary reason behind their exceptional service quality. They are simply one of the best.
In the end, i can conclude this unbiased, honest and detailed review with the following lines :-
A2 hosting provides Fast, Reliable and Affordable web hosting.
I strongly recommend it as a web host for your website/blog.
Here, this detailed and honest A2 hosting review comes to end.
PRICE : 9
RESOURCES & FEATURES : 9
SPEED & UP-TIME : 10
SECURITY : 10
CUSTOMER SUPPORT : 9
( Scores given above are out of a maximum possible score of 10 )
NOTE :- I am an affiliate of some of the web hosting products mentioned on this blog. I will receive a small compensation, if you buy web hosting plans through the links provided on this page. Click here to read the full Affiliate disclosure.