A2 Hosting is one of the oldest providers around. They are originally from Michigan and started in 2001 under another name (Iniquinet). Later on, in 2003, the name was changed to A2 Hosting.
On their website you can read that 97% of their customers are satisfied and that they promise “Up to 20x faster servers” – we’ll see later if their servers are as fast as the Road Runner (meep, meep) or whether A2 is more like the Coyote. On top of that, their (first-term) pricing seems like a bargain, but what about the renewal fees?
That’s exactly why I decided to review A2 Hosting and tell you all about their products, prices, advantages and flaws.
Let’s dive-in and find out if A2 Hosting is the hosting service you were looking for. But if you prefer to watch an overview of A2 Hosting.
What Products Does A2 Hosting Offer?
Like many other popular hosting providers, A2 Hosting has a lot to offer. Let me tell you what products you can get from them and when to use them.
Besides hosting plans, at A2 Hosting you can get domain names too, and their prices are fair. For example, a .com domain name will cost you $14.95 per year. Among other extensions, you can purchase: .com, .info, .net and .org domains. Country specific TLDs like .co.uk, .de, .fr, .es or .au aren’t available.
A2 Hosting is very popular for its shared hosting plans. Their renewal cost goes from $8.99 to $24.99 per month. It’s the one that most projects will need – unless you have a site with huge traffic or need a special server setup, that is.
They also offer managed WordPress hosting plans. These are shared hosting packages that are optimized for WordPress, come with some additional WordPress features (e.g. staging) and their support agents are WordPress experts. Managed WordPress hosting starts at $28.51 a month at A2 Hosting.
VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. It’s a way to divide a server into smaller individual (sub)servers. This means that you can configure it to your needs and you won’t have to share resources with other clients. They are a good match if you need something in between shared hosting and a dedicated server. A VPS at A2 Hosting goes from as little as $7.65 a month to around $200.
But if your site is likely to get hundreds of thousands of visitors per month, you probably need a dedicated hosting package. In other words, a whole server to exclusively host your project. These aren’t cheap, at A2 Hosting they start at $190 a month.
If you have clients of your own who require hosting, you can opt-in for the reseller program where you’ll be able to sell hosting plans (without A2 Hosting branding) to your clients. These plans start at around $35 a month.
But in this A2 Hosting review, I’d like to explore their shared hosting plans, so from now on, I’ll refer to those in my analysis.
A2 Pricing: What Do Their Shared Plans Include?
| Startup | Drive | Turbo Boost | Turbo Max | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Allowed websites | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Storage | 100 GB | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Max. number of Inodes(total files) | 300,000 | 600,000 | 600,000 | 600,000 |
| BandwidthSimultaneous HTTP connections | Unlimited35 | Unlimited35 | Unlimited35 | Unlimited35 |
| Databases | 5 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Email addresses | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Support | 24 hours | 24 hours | 24 hours | 24 hours |
| Performance | Regular | Regular | Turbo | Turbo |
| Resources | 0.7 RAM1 core | 1 GB RAM2 cores | 2 GB RAM2 cores | 4 GB RAM4 cores |
| Backup & restore | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| HTTP/3 | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| WordPress, Prestashop and Magento caching system | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| First-term prices for 1-year deals | $6.99 a month | $8.99 a month | $14.99 a month | $19.99 a month |
| Renewal price for 1-year deals | $8.99 a month | $11.99 a month | $19.99 a month | $24.99 a month |
A2 Hosting has monthly, 12, 24 and 36-month deals – the above prices are for a 12-month plan. Obviously, the longer the deal (e.g. 36 months) the cheaper it gets. However, be aware that you’ll be requested to pay the full amount in advance.
But let me tell you what each plan will get you:
Their entry plan, Startup, allows for only 1 website and 100 GB of storage. Sadly, it doesn’t come with the ability to restore the backups that A2 Hosting keeps for you. Bandwidth and storage are unmetered.
With the Drive tier, you are allowed to host as many websites as you want and the storage is unlimited. The backup restore features are enabled too. It also comes with more resources; 1 GB of RAM memory and 2 cores.
The main addition to the Turbo Boost package is its higher performance. Your server will work on HTTP/3, you’ll have fewer server neighbors and the caching options (A2 Optimized Site Accelerator) are available. Caching plugins for WordPress, Magento and PrestaShop are included too.
The Turbo Max plans have twice as much resources (RAM and cores) than Turbo Boost.
At checkout, they offer a bunch of add-ons that you can purchase separately. For example, if you’d like to create your own backups, you can get 5 GB of backup storage for $1.99 extra a month. Paid SSL certificates, spam filters and Cloudflare (a CDN) are also available.
A2 Hosting Pros & Cons
Let me talk a bit about its advantages and disadvantages so you know what to expect from this popular hosting provider.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Reliable speed: Even if A2 Hosting wasn’t the fastest provider when I tested them, every year their speed results have always been solid.Advanced features: Their higher plans come with interesting advanced options like staging areas or a server-side caching system.Uptime: Its uptime results are excellent.Server locations: You can choose to host your website in America (East or West Coast), Europe or Asia.Unmetered storage and bandwidth: Your storage is unlimited (for the highest 3 plans), although your total number of files can’t be more than 600,000 (or 300.000 with the cheapest plan). Bandwidth isn’t metered either. | On-demand backups paid separately: On-demand backups are limited to the tools that cPanel offers, which are a bit clunky.Confusing checkout: Even if they are not as pushy as other providers (e.g. iPage), their check out is loaded with add-ons that you most likely won’t need (e.g. paid SSL certificate).Concurrent HTTP connections: All shared hosting plans seem to be limited to 35 concurrent HTTP connections to the server. |
There are some cases where using A2 Hosting will be a smart choice, but other times it may make little sense to use this hosting provider. Let me clarify those for you.
When to Use A2 Hosting
If you are after a medium-priced provider that’s generous with storage and bandwidth, A2 Hosting is a reliable choice.
On top of that, it comes with some features that similar competitors won’t offer, for example, built-in server-side caching, staging areas and speed optimization plugins for CMSs like WordPress, PrestaShop or Magento.
I can imagine that A2 Hosting would be a good fit for new bloggers who need a reliable host, for small and medium-sized businesses who are after a serious hosting service, or digital solopreneurs (e.g. SEO consultants or WordPress developers) who need storage for their website and potentially their clients’.
When Not to Use A2 Hosting
However, there are a couple of limitations that make me reluctant to recommend A2 Hosting for larger projects. Having a concurrent HTTP connections limitation may be a deal-breaker for those getting more traffic.
