A2 Hosting has been in business for over 20 years. The company don’t seem to be slowing down. This cannot be more true as they pride themselves as a niche leader for fast website load speed.
Founded by Bryan Muthig in 2001, A2 Hosting has maintained independently ownership. More so, the speed of A2’s hosting has been its most prominent feature and key selling point.
Quick Review
Here’s our quick review of A2 Hosting
- Very good uptime
- Very good page load speed
- Excellent customer service via phone, live chat, online help and knowledge base articles
- Easy 30-day money-back guarantee that can be prorated after 30 days
- 1 website migration allowed. $10 per site transferred.
- Low introductory price, but higher renewal rates
- cPanel available
- Secure server with free features like SSL, CDN, DNS and more.
Overview
A2 Hosting server speed is by far one of the quickest. The service offers very reliable uptime and this is endearing to everyone that enjoys fast page load speed.
Google acknowledges fast websites. In turn, Google rewards them (fast websites) with organic traffic. In addition, these fast loading websites develop better SEO rankings, lower bounce rates and higher conversion rates. A2 Hosting provides high-performance hosting solutions to customers who are keen on site speed so their customers enjoy these benefits.
In addition, the Guru Crew Support team provides support 24/7 via live chats, email and phone. Their swift, friendly and knowledgeable customer support can prove to be very beneficial for newbies who may need regular help when they run into issues.
Everyone likes to know how their money is being spent. It is most assuring when you know that you can easily get your money back if you are not satisfied with the service offered. Even more, you can still get your prorated refund after 30 days if you are not satisfied.
Of course, there is always a flip side. In this case, it is the cost of renewing your hosting plan. After your first run-period, the rate increases. A2 Hosting is however still very ideal if you plan to scale up your website in the future. A2 Hosting offers a low introductory price pegged at less than $2.99 per month.
This is an overview of the advantages and disadvantages of A2 Hosting’s services after you must have signed up.
A2 Hosting Pros
Among all other hosting companies, A2 Hosting is one of the best out there. Their service is extremely user friendly, their uptime and speed are top-notch, they are conscious of the environment and their refund policy is quite flexible.
Let’s discuss some advantages of A2 Hosting and why this provider may be the one you need.
1. Very fast page load time
It is safe to say that A2 Hosting’s core strength is speed.
For many years, A2 Hosting has been tested and trusted as the quickest shared hosting provider. Most times, the basic difference between keeping a customer or losing them to the competition is the page loading times.
2. Dependable uptime of 99.98%
In addition to the bolting speed of A2 hosting, they are incredibly reliable.
A few years ago, A2 Hosting’s uptime had troubles meeting up with industry-standards (99.94%). Their service surmounted this challenge and attained an average uptime of 99.98%. Two hours is the total downtime their servers have experienced so far.
3. Sociable & cooperative customer support
The knowledge database of A2 Hosting is grossly loaded, so if you are the type that chooses to help yourself through your issues or probably learn something; the self-help database is just right. There is also a 24/7 live chat, email, and phone support.
Before you reach an agent, you would have to provide some basic contact information and that is fine. Connecting to the customer support staff over the live chat feature happens in under a minute. I asked several straightforward questions and direct answers were provided to all of them.
In all, it was an amazing customer help experience.
4. 24/7 Server monitoring and malware scanning
Mitigating issues before they come up is the most effective way of keeping your site safe. However, threads of encoding and firewalls usually slow users down. This does not occur with A2 Hosting. While giving users tons of additional security, their service still functions at the optimum level.
“Hackscan” is the 24/7 security feature that A2 Hosting adopts. It regularly scans for malicious files and malware. In cases where a denial-of-service attack (DDoS) occurs, the user is protected; this is because A2 Hosting’s data centers are scalable. A DDoS attack seeks to bombard your servers with undue traffic to throw your site offline. All these cannot happen on A2 Hosting’s watch. It is dependable service.
5. Free site migration
Without spending anything extra, A2 Hosting allows you to move already existing websites to their servers.
For just $10/site, you can easily move existing websites with their shared hosting plan. Users get to migrate for free, 25 sites, if they go with the Reseller, Dedicated, or Managed VPS hosting. A2 Hosting’s T&C elaborates on all you need to know.
If you intend to maximize these opportunities, all you have to do is give your cPanel details to their customer support unit. If they are working on other backend panels than cPanel, they may charge a little extra.
6. A2 Hosting optimized CMS
With A2 Hosting you can gain backend level access on servers, rewind backups, and endless varieties of PHP, Ruby, Python, Apache and so much more. This is especially useful when you need to host a lot of websites on one platform.
Although not included in the basic hosting plans, A2 Hosting has a site builder.
7. CMS and developer-friendly tools
Content management systems work very well with A2 Hosting.
Just like basic plugin installation on websites, you can install WordPress, Magento, OpenCart, or Drupal without the help of a developer.
A2 Hosting has different plans such as “Turbo Boost” that helps improve the performance of your website. They also give a Cloudfare CDN that comes free with all its hosting packages, this also helps in speeding things up.
8. Green Web Hosting
A2 Hosting’s operational quarters is located in Ann Arbor, a location popularly known for their numerous parks and trees.
A2 Hosting is not just passionate about providing superb hosting plans to users; they are also very interested in the environment. They are partners with Carbonfund.org; an organization that encourages the use of renewable energies and reforestation.
Trusting an organization that cares about your environment tells a lot about how they’ll host your websites.
9. Anytime money-back guarantee
This is one of the most prominent features of A2 Hosting when compared to other hosting platforms. Other hosting platforms usually have a timeframe for their guaranteed moneyback feature, but for A2 Hosting, it is “anytime”.
What this means is that, within 30 days, you can cancel the existing plan if you are dissatisfied with the service. You could still stop an existing plan anytime you choose to and receive an estimated amount for the time left. There are certain T&Cs though.
PayPal is used to process all payment requests that come after the first 120 days. All extra charges are non-refundable. For example, extra charges on domain registrations, setup, migration, and so on are not paid back.
A2 Hosting Cons
As there are always two sides to a coin; here are some of the downsides of A2 Hosting.
1. High renewal rates
Just like many other web hosting providers, A2 hosting attracts new customers with low introductory prices.
This ends when it is time to renew your plan. The automatic renewal will be charged at the regular price. The real turn off is that this new pricing is approximately double the amount you first paid.
Furthermore, for your active subscription to be canceled, you have to mail their customer portal at billing@a2hosting.com 15 days before the plan’s expiration.
If you are unable to make this 15-day window, you will be automatically charged for the renewal and you will not be eligible for a refund.
2. Startup plan has limitations
The “Startup” hosting plan is currently fixed at $2.99/month and this is a 66% discount on the normal price. That is quite amazing.
But there are several limitations to this plan. You only get to host one website, a storage space of 100GB, no automatic backups or server rewinds. All these features are readily available on their next hosting plan fixed at $4.99/month.
This kind of negates the whole idea of cheap pricing because all the basic tools needed to create a site comes with their advanced plans which cost more. This is also true for their website builder plan.
Summary
Web Host Bros recommends A2 Hosting. Especially if server speed and customer support is important to you.
For several years running A2 Hosting has reliably offered top-notch hosting services. They have upgraded their server uptime and you can rely on it. They have great customer relations and their shared plans afford you one free migration and an SSL certificate.
If you’re looking for high performance speed for your websites, A2 Hosting might be the right solution for you. A good alternative to A2 Hosting is Bluehost.