A2 HOSTING – EXPERT REVIEW

In this article, i’ll provide you with an honest review of A2 hosting and its features. This will help you understand whether the A2 hosting provider is the right fit for you.

Would you not like your website to load superfast? Loading up in an instant for your visitors?

Of course, most of us would like our websites to impress our visitors with quick loading and navigation. If you have designed a great looking website with quality content, then you only need solid performance for it to attract the maximum amount of traffic.

This is where a hosting provider like A2 Hosting helps you. The A2 web host has changed the way webmasters look at shared hosting services and even offers amazing speed with shared hosting.

Well, this is not to say that speed is the sole criteria on which you determine the selection of your website’s host. There is no single hosting company that can claim to be the best for all webmasters and websites. Depending on your needs, you will find a particular hosting provider to be a better fit than others. Hence, it does not always make sense to just go to the first Google search result page for the top hosting companies to select one for yourself because there are so many web hosts like A2 that may just be the perfect fit for the requirements of your website.

A2 Hosting Company Background

This web hosting company has been around for longer than you may think. It was launched in 2001 as Iniquinet, a web hosting startup. The business was based in Ann Arbor, MI. As the startup picked up a good pace, they changed the company’s name to A2 as a tribute to their base location.

It has always been supportive of the latest technology, which is a major reason for its ever growing success. For example, A2 became one of the first web hosting providers to support PHP5 in 2004.

In 2013, A2 introduced Solid State Drive (SSD) hosting to support its SwiftServer platform. By adopting SSDs for shared hosting as well, A2 managed to raise the speed for all other shared hosting providers.

This company then started making use of turbo servers towards the end of 2014 to offer much quicker page load speeds than several other web hosts.

In a nutshell, A2 has grown into a reliable and high-speed web hosting company.

A further validation of its trustworthiness comes from the fact that A2 has received a rating of “A+” (on a scale of A+ to F, with A+ being the highest) from the Better Business Bureau (BBB).

A2 Hosting Features

Now that you know a little bit about the company’s history and how it has evolved, it is time to take an in-depth look at the various hosting features offered by A2. You can pay special attention to the features that matter most to you when selecting your ideal web host.

Performance – Speed and Uptime

Well, one of the prime areas of focus when selecting a web host should definitely be the uptime of the host. Irrespective of the type of your website or your business, you would definitely want your site to be available to your visitors for the vast majority of the time, with as little disruption as possible.

This is where A2 offers you what you want! It claims to provide a 99.9% uptime guarantee and most of the existing customers confirm this (if the reviews are anything to go by). In fact, one of our websites run on this host and it has been offering 100% uptime for the last six months.

One of the ways that A2 hosting ensures that uptime is maximised, is by taking measures to limit the amount of people on a shared hosting server. Taking steps to prevent overstuffing reduces the demand placed on a server with any spikes in traffic or resource requirement. This is further enhanced through caching to store information in people’s browsers so they don’t have to pull information from your website every time they visit, some of the resources are saved in the browser cache.

Apart from the considerably high uptime, the good part about A2 is that the company has been completely transparent about it. Their server uptime statistics is publicly revealed as they are being tracked by a third-party, such as WebsitePulse.

As far as website performance and speed is concerned, it is one of their biggest USP. A2 loves speed which explains the use of SSDs and turbo servers (up to 20x faster) to maintain extremely high page load speeds at all times.

The SwiftServer platform of A2 also ensures the smooth functioning of your site, irrespective of a heavy traffic load.

Data Centres

Another reason for the solid performance of sites with A2 hosting is that their data centres are spread across three continents. A2 has data centres located in Michigan (USA), Singapore (Asia) and Amsterdam (Europe). You thus get access to the server that is located closest to your location. This enhances the speed and performance of your site.

These servers are furthermore monitored round the clock. Also, since these servers are exclusively owned by A2, you can rely on their security.

Security and Backup

A2’s data centres are SSAE16 certified. It involves a gated parking lot with security key entry. Also, a security key is required to enter the data centres. The physical security is further enhanced with video surveillance.

A2 also offers a server rewind backup facility, which allows you to recover data from (automatic) saved account backup snapshots.

A2 provides a few key security tools, one of which is called HackScan which is part of their Perpetual Security initiative. Another is their dual web hosting firewall, complemented by virus scanning, security monitoring and a brute force defence mechanism.

These are not just optional addons, where you have to set everything up, bolt it on and manage them yourself as you find with some hosts. A2 manage these seamlessly in the background for you so can have peace of mind and get on with running your site knowing that they are managing security in the background.

It also uses CloudFlare for many of their hosting packages which has a multitude of performance and security protection elements to help you deliver content at a fast pace without the worry of malicious threats reaching your site. You can see all the properties of what CloudFare offers on A2’s CloudFare hosting page.

In addition, A2 offers a security solution labelled “Patchman” for all shared SSD accounts and some HDD servers.

This security tool helps to detect out-of-date software versions, infected files (which is quarantines) and so on. It even helps to patch any security issues with Drupal, WordPress and Joomla.

Customer Support

A2 has a reliable customer support team labelled “Guru Crew Support”. They are extremely good because they do not outsource their support facility to save money, instead they provide you ‘in-house’ knowledge and expertise.

They have also formed their support team with the best professionals who have good technical knowledge. That is the reason why the A2 support team is able to not only answer your basic hosting queries with ease, but also able to answer any advanced technical queries.

If you are a developer, you would still receive good support from the A2 support team for trying out advanced features on your site. The name “Guru Crew” is clearly apt for this team!

Their support team is furthermore there for you whenever you need as they are available 24×7 and 365 days a year!

You can connect with them via chat, phone calls, and emails or by simply submitting a ticket! Their response time when compared to other hosts, is impressively quick as they do not believe in keeping their customer waiting for long.

Control Panel

A2 will suit both the experienced and the newbie webmaster who knows nothing about web hosting. To make matters easy for you, it offers the industry standard control panel in the form of cPanel.

This control panel is extremely easy to use, even for first-time users, and you can easily navigate through all the elements to manage and control your website completely.

With options like Softaculous, you can install WordPress script or scripts of other CMS with just a few clicks. You can also easily access Joomla, Drupal and many other applications from the control panel.

It further offers you a shopping cart for your eCommerce platform, if you have any requirement for this. A2 offers support for some highly effective eCommerce tools, including PrestaShop and Magenta. Also, the one-click cart set up functionality does not involve in any complex coding.

If you wish to get a hosting account with root access, then A2 even allows you to install open source control panels, such as ZPanel, Ajenti and ISPConfig. There are both managed VPS and Dedicated hosting core packages that offer root access.

Developer Features

The A2 hosting provider is unique as it offers a lot for developers as well. So, if you are a programmer or like coding, you will enjoy the kind of support that A2 offers for various programming languages or tools.

Your A2 account will always be loaded with the current versions of the most popular developer software.

For example, A2 was also one of the first PHP7 hosting providers (apart from the PHP5 one in 2004). Moreover, you get performance tuned databases, such as MySQL, along with several hosting frameworks for Perl, Ruby and Python.

Tools with a Linux based solution:

• PHP 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, 7.0 or 7.1,
• MySQL 5.6,
• PostgreSQL 9.4,
• Python 2.6, 2.7 or 3.2,
• PERL 5.10, Apache 2.2,
• js,
• FTP / SFTP,
• Free SSH Access,
• SSL & Free SSL

This is just a sample of the key tools and languages available for use in the developer suite for Linux packages as published by A2.

Tools with a Windows based solution:

• NET 2.x, 3.x & 4.x,
• Microsoft SQL Server 2014,
• Windows Server 2012,
• Access Database,
• MVC 4 or 5,
• Classic ASP,
• .NET Core 1.1,
• Silverlight 4 or 5,
• FTP / SFTP,
• SSL & Free SSL,
• MySQL 5.6,
• PHP 5.6, 7.0 or 7.1

This is just a sample of the key tools available for use in the developer suite for Windows packages as published by A2.

Satisfaction Guarantee

A2 offers you a risk-free trial accompanied by an anytime money back guarantee. You will get a hassle-free refund from A2, and if you cancel your account within 30 days, you will get a full refund. You can always tell how much a company believes in their products by how much they are willing to ‘bet their own money on it’ so to speak.

You can even get some pro-rated refunds based on your usage if you cancel your A2 hosting account after the initial 30 days. This is something you won’t find often at all with other hosting companies. In fact, even the SSL certificates that have to be purchased enjoy a seven-day refund cycle from the date of purchase.

Clearly, A2 believes in offering the maximum convenience to you! They believe in their products and they believe you will too.

A2 hosting is well-known for their ultra-fast and reliable WordPress hosting, and guru technical support. It is an excellent choice for webmasters who need 99.9% uptime guarantee and plenty of room to scale.

After trying their hosting plans, here’s what we liked about A2 hosting’s hosting:

• Blazing fast web hosting: You have the option to host your site on A2 hosting’s turbo server, which provides a drop-in Apache replacement that loads pages up to 20 X faster than traditional hosting.
• Free SSD: All plans come with free SSD storage, which has been proven to boost your site’s performance.
• Two great OS options: No matter your hosting options, you can choose from Linux or Windows operating systems.
• Anytime money back guarantee: In addition to their 30-day money back guarantee, they also provide an anytime money back guarantee. That means after the first 30 days, you’ll be eligible for a prorated refund of any unused services.

Performance

A2 Hosting Speed Tests and Uptime Guarantee

Choosing a reliable web host is the first step towards making your site ridiculously fast.

To test the performance of A2 hosting’s hosting servers for our A2 hosting review, we’ve created a test site with WordPress, using the default Twenty Eighteen theme, including images.

We used 3 different testing tools – Pingdom, Load Impact, and Bitcatcha – to see whether A2 hosting lived up to their promise.

According to our Pingdom’s website speed test, we found that our test site loads in just under two seconds for a user based in New York. That means the site is faster than 84% of all tested sites.

We also wanted to analyze whether A2 hosting could handle a traffic surge during peak load.

For our traffic surge test, we used a popular testing tool, Load Impact, and sent some virtual users (VU) to our site. They gradually built up to 50 visitors at a time to see how the server handled it.

In the chart below, you can find blue (VUs active) and green lines (VU load time) which represent the number of virtual visitors sent to the testing site and the time it took to load the web page for the respective number of users on the site.

Our test site performed consistently until there was around 40 visitors on the site. It slowed down for a while and then returned to normal.

A2 Hosting Server Response Time

From the above two tests, we’ve analyzed how our site performed, and also recorded the uptime and response time. In those tests, we loaded all the content of our web page, including images (which can also have an impact on page load time). This makes those tests slightly inaccurate when measuring a server’s response time.

To test the server’s response time, we’d have to conduct a more accurate test by ignoring the content of our site.

We decided to run a test using a tool called Bitcatcha, which works a bit differently from other website speed testing tools. With Bitcatcha, you can analyze server response time around the globe by ignoring the content of the site.

It averages the loading speed from eight different global locations: New York, LA, London, Brazil, India, Singapore, Japan, and Australia. The speed for each location is measured three separate times, and then the results are averaged.

With this test, we’d get a broader overview of how our server responded globally to the page requests.

Here are the results:

The response time was particularly great in the United States. However, it was comparatively slower in Asian countries.

A2 Hosting Plans and Pricing

No matter which of A2 hosting’s hosting plans you’re choosing, you’ll get a 99.9% uptime guarantee along with 24/7/365 guru crew support.

To make it even better, they’re offering our users an exclusive discount if you use our A2 hosting coupon code.

When you’re starting out, you can choose their shared hosting plan. As your need evolves you can upgrade to a higher plan.

PLAN	DISK SPACE	BANDWIDTH	PRICE
Shared Hosting Lite	Unlimited	Unlimited	$3.92 / mo.
WordPress Hosting Lite	Unlimited	Unlimited	$3.92 / mo.
Unmanaged VPS	20 GB	2 TB	$5 / mo.
Unmanaged Dedicated Flex Server	2 x 500 GB	10 TB	$99.59 / mo.
Reseller Bronze	Unlimited	Unlimited	$13.19 / mo.

Final Recap

A2 hosting is a well-known web hosting provider due to their ultra-fast and reliable hosting, and guru technical support. It’s a developer-friendly hosting provider that provides you with all the flexibility and features you need to build a website. Whether you’re a small website owner, a startup that anticipates growth, or a developer, you’ll find A2 hosting’s plans immensely helpful.

What we really like about A2 hosting is that they provide endless possibilities to choose a customized hosting platform for your individual needs. They also offer the industry’s leading anytime money back guarantee, which gives you peace of mind when subscribing to a hosting plan.

If you’re looking for a blazing fast and reliable web host that offers excellent customer support, A2 hosting could be the best bet for your needs.

• High performance turbo servers
• Free SSD
• Two great operating system options
• Anytime money back guarantee
• Regular price $7.99 / mo but our users pay $3.92 / mo!