As it was originally created with developers in mind and yet we are no developers, we thought we would explore A2 Hosting as the average everyday users and see if it is viable for the not so technically-advanced crowd.
Kids (and adults), if you ever find yourself low in spirit and desperately in need of some inspiration to keep hustling, just look at A2 Hosting.
Founded by Bryan Muthig in 2001, A2 Hosting was initially launched under the name Iniquinet in a two-room office in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
While it remains relatively low-profile (especially in comparison to flashier hosting providers like Siteground, Host Gator, and GoDaddy), A2 Hosting now has data centers around the world and has won numerous hosting awards.
It was one of our recommended best web hostings after we look into these 14 checklists.
Originally designed to handle a small number of customers, A2 Hosting is now a provider with a comprehensive line of products when it comes to web hosting.
Among other things, it offers shared hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting, and WordPress hosting.
But for today, we will be (for the most part) discussing its shared hosting— which is offered via three plans: Lite, Swift, and Turbo.
Let’s find out.
1. Speed
You will notice that A2 throws around a lot of words to emphasize its speed: “blazing fast web hosting”, “20X Faster Turbo Web Hosting”, “Swift”, “Turbo”, and (our personal favorite) “screaming fast”.
There is a reason for this as any sort of delay — even as short as 1 mere second — is detrimental to customer retention.
Yup, that is you that quickly switched to another site when the first site you visited to find out who has the best bubble tea did not load fast enough.
True to its promises, A2 Hosting is indeed fast.
One of the factors contributing to its fast loading speed is A2 Hosting’s usage of Solid State Drives (SSDs) in its servers which are significantly much faster than plain old regular hard drives.
Besides that, A2 Hosting claims that its Turbo servers in its Turbo plan load pages up to 20X faster than standard hosting.
Definitely, the fastest shared hosting from our data here with server response time averaging 1.59 milliseconds.
This is courtesy of a few factors including fewer users for each server and also because Turbo servers handle connection faster and more efficiently which we find out during our A2 Hosting review.
2. Locations
Part of the reason why A2 Hosting can very rightfully brag about its speed is that it has data centers all over the world.
A2 Hosting has centers in Michigan (USA), Arizona (USA), Amsterdam (Europe), and Singapore (Asia).
The significance of these locations is that the closer the servers are to your visitor’s location, the shorter the loading time will be.
You can pick your Server location during checkout as to where you want your website files to be hosted.
For example, if the visitors to your website are in Malaysia, you know that they will be able to quickly load your page because of their proximity to the data center in Singapore.
With its four data centers, A2 Hosting has the Americas, Europe, and Asia covered.
3. Uptime
Now, let’s talk about A2 Hosting’s uptime.
It does not matter if you are using your website as your online portfolio, to advertise your company, or to blog.
What you want and need is for your site to be accessible to your visitors 24/7.
While you cannot completely get rid of downtime (oh well, perfection is overrated, anyway), you do want to aim for as little downtime as possible.
Here is where A2 Hosting comes in: it promises an uptime of 99.9%, which translates to around 9 hours of downtime per year.
Pretty impressive.
From our continuous monitoring of the uptime performance, A2 is churning out 100%.
It seems that this is because A2 Hosting limits the number of users on each server to prevent clogging it — not unlike the way they restrict visitors to Disneyland.
In any case, if you see downtime (outside of routine maintenance and scheduled upgrades) of more than 0.1% of your total time that month, A2 Hosting will compensate you for it.
That is what we would call a win-win situation.
4. Support
A2 Hosting’s customer service team is lovingly called the “Guru Crew Support”.
They can be contacted 24/7 via live chat, by phone, and by submitting a ticket.
The good thing about A2 Hosting’s support is that it appears that they are not outsourced.
The Gurus are not only able to answer basic questions easily and quickly but they also appear unfazed by advanced technical queries.
Our only slight complaint is that at certain times of the day, it takes a marginally longer time for the Guru to join the chat.
However, the wait time is still acceptable at around three minutes.
On the other hand, if you are a more figure-it-out-yourself person, A2 Hosting has hundreds of articles to provide quick solutions or at least direct you to the solutions, too.
It has everything from installing and configuring WordPress to add-on services.
Besides that, we find that its blog is chock-full of useful information and tidbits, too.
5. Green Web Hosting
For those of you into environmentally-friendly solutions (which we all should be).
You would be glad to learn that A2 Hosting has partnered with Carbonfund.org to extend its support for renewable energies and reforestation.
Better yet, it also has a “FutureServe” green hosting initiative to offset its carbon footprint.
Since 2007, A2 Hosting has been 100% carbon neutral in its day-to-day operations.
It’s the least we can do for mother earth by supporting a green tech company.
6. Freebies
So what is A2 hosting review throwing in ‘free’ to sweeten the pot?
First, email addresses are free and unlimited for Swift and Turbo plans but limited to 25 accounts for Lite.
Which, frankly, is still more than enough for most people.
Besides that, for those of you with the Swift plan or Turbo plan, A2 Hosting is very helpful and offers backup and restoration.
These can help to protect against accidental deletion, mistakes, and data corruption.
This is done via its file recovery program, Server Rewind.
Plus, all three plans come with an easy site builder to get you started.
What’s more, to make everything easier, there are drag-and-drop tools.
Perfect for beginners.
If you are not starting anew but are migrating an existing site, instead, sit back and let A2 Hosting do the migration for you.
It has an expert team dedicated to website transfers and this service is available for all three plans.
In addition to the above, A2 Hosting also partnered with Let’s Encrypt to deliver free automated SSL Certificates.
You and your visitors can enjoy enhanced security without ever needing to set it up.
It is already set up for your domain by default.
7. Price
Time to talk about pricing for our A2 hosting review now.
A2 Hosting’s plans start at an affordable $5.99 per month.
One thing worth keeping in mind is to never pay full price to sign up with A2 Hosting.
We have seen it constantly offering discounts of around 51% to 67%.
At the time of writing this A2 Hosting review, the discount offered is 67% off.
Which brings the $5.99 per month down to the extremely low price of only $1.98.
On the flip side, be aware that you most likely will have to pay full price to renew your contract upon the end of the subscription.
However, unlike many other providers, A2 Hosting’s renewal prices are still somewhat reasonable.
Nevertheless, it will still be a little painful to fork out a much higher amount.
Especially after paying the discounted price right before this.
To counter this, opting for the longest term possible would be wise.
After all, you have the option of a refund.
If you ever decide that A2 Hosting is not for you and you want to bail, there is a hassle-free anytime money-back guarantee.
No, your eyes did not deceive you: anytime.
Any cancellation within 30 days will receive a full refund.
If you exceed the 30 days, you can still cancel and get a prorated refund for your unused service.
A2 Hosting is looking very attractive right about now.
Verdict: Is A2 Hosting for You?
Is A2 Hosting for just about everyone?
If you are looking for a “screaming fast” hosting provider, you really will not go wrong with A2 Hosting.
YES, it was initially made with web developers in mind but, today, it is as useful and beginner-friendly as the other providers in the market.
Fast, easy, affordable, and ethical, we would happily recommend A2 Hosting.
As for an overall awesome experience of hosting, make sure you did not miss out on our Siteground review.
We even have extra tips on saving some cash with them!