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Our independent research projects and impartial reviews are funded in part by affiliate commissions, at no extra cost to our readers.
If you’re looking into hosting your own website, you may have heard of A2 Hosting.
One of the oldest hosting platforms on the Internet, A2 started in 2001 as Iniquinet. In 2003, it became A2 Hosting.
In this A2 hosting review, we will learn about the pros and cons of using A2 Hosting and what features they provide. Additionally, we’ll look at how they compare with their top competitors. Let’s dive in!
A2 is a web hosting company that was founded in 2001 by CEO Bryan Muthig in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Since then, A2 has grown into an influential company, with servers located worldwide.
A2 offers shared web hosting, Reseller, VPS, and Dedicated Server plans.
A2 stands out in particular for being a fast and reliable hosting provider with 99.9% uptime. According to their site, 97% of A2’s customers recommend A2 Hosting.
A2 stands out from its competitors with some attractive features. For example, A2 boasts an impressive 99.9% uptime guarantee, as well as green hosting options to minimize your carbon footprint. Even better, unlike many other hosts, they offer a 30-day money-back guarantee to ensure you’re satisfied with their hosting.
Furthermore, A2 Hosting is one of the best hosting platforms because it strikes the best balance between price, speed, storage, and bandwidth.
It is reasonably priced but still comes with amazing and unique features such as staging areas, speed optimization plugins, an excellent support team, and built-in server-side caching.
Hosting since 1998, NameHero has been around long enough to establish a solid reputation. In 2009, they moved all of their servers to the cloud, and they now claim to maintain 99.8% uptime, which is just slightly under A2 Hosting.
But how does NameHero compare to A2? Let’s see!
A good CMS can make building a website simple and fast. Fortunately, NameHero uses WordPress to make migrating and creating your website easy.
Unfortunately, NameHero only uses WordPress, unlike A2 Hosting, which provides plenty of alternatives, including Drupal, Joomla, Pligg, and more.
Like with A2 Hosting, each plan that NameHero offers comes with a different storage solution.
They have four levels: Starter Cloud, Plus Cloud, Turbo Cloud, and Business Cloud.
Even their most basic model, Starter, gives unlimited SSD storage for a single website and 1GB of Ram. Plus also has unlimited SSD storage, which you can apply to up to seven websites, and 2GB of Ram.
Turbo Cloud, which they say is their most popular package, has unlimited NVMe storage with 3GB of Ram. Their Business model also has unlimited NVMe storage but comes with 4GB of Ram.
No matter what plan you choose, NameHero gives you free and automatic SSL. However, once you hit the Turbo level, you’ll get enhanced security, perfect for an eCommerce store.
As a bonus, they give you what they call a “Security Shield,” which is automated security that learns to identify (and block) threats in real-time, keeping your website and your users safe.
Plus, NameHero gives complimentary backups. It isn’t an automated function, but you can create a full backup of your site every night through cPanel.
You’ll have to store it locally, which may require plenty of storage space, but it’s worth it to keep your website safe.
Because NameHero uses what they call “LiteSpeed Web Servers,” coupled with their SSD and NVMe storage, they’re fast.
You can expect to see downloads at 700 Mbps and uploads at around 659 Mbps. If you want to test their speed for yourself, they even have a speed test set up, so you can see their speeds for yourself.
Unfortunately, NameHero only has two data center locations: one in the USA, and then one in the Netherlands. If you want to cater to an Asian market, you’re better off choosing A2 Hosting.
Called “Superhero Support,” NameHero gives you three options to contact them, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can use their Live Chat, call them, or submit a ticket number.
Like A2 Hosting, NameHero has different kinds of hosting options, depending on your needs. You can get shared hosting, reseller hosting, and managed cloud hosting, AKA VPS hosting.
For shared hosting, their Starter plan only runs you $3.22 a month but scales up to $14.08 a month for their Business plan.
You have four levels with reseller as well, starting at Silver, then Gold, then Platinum, and lastly, Diamond.
Silver costs $15.47 a month, giving you 40 client accounts, and Diamond is $41.52 a month, with up to 100 client accounts.
Again, their VPS option has four levels: Hero 2GB Cloud, Hero 4GB Cloud, Hero 6GB Cloud, and Hero 8GB Cloud. 2GB Cloud starts at $25.97 a month, and 8GB goes all the way up to $57.17 a month.
Based out of Houston, HostGator has been operating since 2002. They have since expanded their reach and now have offices in Austin, Texas, and Nashik, India.
As with A2 Hosting, HostGator caters to the three biggest CMS platforms out there: WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla! This gives you plenty of choices when it comes to deciding which CMS will work best for your site, or if you’re looking to take advantage of HostGator’s free website migration service.
What amount of storage you get will depend on your plan. All of their options, including Shared Hosting and Dedicated Hosting, offer unmetered storage and bandwidth.
However, it’s important to be aware that there may be limitations on how much of HostGator’s resources can be used as per the company’s terms of services.
Besides its standard security features, you can enhance your site’s security by investing in SiteLock. It’s an add-on for HostGator that starts at $5.99/mo and includes daily scans, automated malware removal, and protection against bot attacks.
Likewise, HostGator offers an automated daily backup add-on named Codeguard, starting at $2.00/mo, that supports up to five websites, unlimited files and databases, and comes with a gigabyte of storage space.
Most of HostGator’s data centers are located in Houston, Texas, and Provo, Utah. Just like A2 Hosting, Hostgator has a 99.99% uptime guarantee. Should they not meet their promise, they offer a one-month credit reimbursement for your plan.
If you have US traffic, you’ll get an average response time of 32 ms for visitors from the west coast. However, since their data centers are situated in the United States, you may see a lot of lag if you get traffic from Europe or Asia.
All of HostGator’s plans come with 24/7 support, including phone, live chat, and server monitoring. Moreover, HostGator maintains an online resource center called Knowledge Base that provides tips and guidance for their plans, technical issues, and more.
HostGator has a tiered system, with costs that vary by what type of hosting you choose and what plan you want.
At the cheapest end of the spectrum is Shared Hosting. This comes in three tiers (Hatchling, Baby, and Business), with the Hatchling plan offering support for a single website at $2.75/mo.
If you’d prefer a website builder, then HostGator has you covered with three plans, starting at an introductory offer of $3.84 per month.
WordPress hosting also comes in three tiers, with the basic option costing you $5.95 every month. It’s optimized for a single site projected to get 100,000 monthly visits and comes with backup support up to one GB, an SSL certificate, and a domain.
Dedicated hosting is the priciest avenue at HostGator. It comes in three tiers, with the Value plan starting at $89.98/mo. The hardware you get will depend on your chosen option, but each plan comes with full root access, unlimited outgoing emails, and access to your own control panel.
VPS hosting has three tiers, with the basic Snappy 2000 having a monthly rate of $19.95. Meanwhile, HostGator has three Reseller options. These all offer unlimited websites and start at $19.95 for the Aluminum Plan.
Originally called Hosting Media, Hostinger was founded in 2004. It has since grown and expanded to include centers all over the world, including the USA, UK, and continental Europe.
In 2016, they went on to create a free cloud hosting service called 000webhost.com!
Like A2 Hosting, you can pick from a vast number of applications to build your website, including WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and more.
Hostinger has three types of plans, each with three different purchase levels. For basic hosting, they have Single Shared Hosting, Premium Shared Hosting, and Business Shared Hosting.
Single gives you 30 GB of SSD storage and 100 GB bandwidth. Premium allots 100 GB of SSD storage with unlimited bandwidth. Then, Business gives you 200 GB SSD storage, also with unlimited bandwidth.
Fortunately, each tier comes with a free SSL, which is the most basic form of security you need.
However, if you want to be able to back up your website, you need to spring for the business plan, which gives you daily backups.
Their speed is only okay compared to some of the others on this list, including A2 Hosting, at 356 ms (or milliseconds).
However, they boast data centers in seven global regions, including the USA, UK, Brazil, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Indonesia, and Singapore. That alone may make them worth consideration!
They offer 24-hour support, seven days a week, but only by chat, which may not be your preferred method of contact.
For shared hosting, plans start at $1.39 per month and scale up to $4.99 for their business tier.
WordPress hosting starts at $1.99 per month and then goes all the way up to $11.59 for up to 300 WordPress websites.
If you want to use their native CMS, the basic plan starts at $1.99, with their next tier, Unleashed, going up to a whopping $2.99 per month.
For the price, Hostinger is truly hard to beat.
Bluehost was created back in 2003, 
and they have since partnered with WordPress, making them a good choice if you rely on WordPress as your CMS.
Bluehost has two main options for a CMS: WordPress and their in-house builder, Bluehost Website Builder. Depending on what you’re looking for, these options may seem limited.
Bluehost has three hosting options: Shared, VPS, and Dedicated hosting.
They have four different tiers: Basic, Plus, Choice Plus, and Pro. Basic gives you 50GB SSD storage. Plus and up come with unlimited SSD storage, with no NVMe option available.
They also only have “unmetered” bandwidth.
No matter what tier you pick, you’ll get a free SSL certificate, but automated backups only appear in the Choice Plus and Pro tiers.
On average, you can expect speeds at 688 ms, but they don’t list where their data centers are. They likely have multiple centers in different regions across the globe, but we don’t have any way to actually know where.
If you need support, you can get it 24 hours a day, seven days a week through their chat and call center options.
If you get Shared hosting, plans start at $2.75 a month and scale up to $13.95 if you sign up for a 36-month contract.
VPS hosting starts at $18.99 a month and scales up to $59.99, and their Dedicated hosting comes in at $79.99 a month all the way up to $119.99 a month.
A2 Hosting has something called “Turbo Speed,” and it’s little wonder why. They offer servers with Solid State Drive (SSD), Cloudflare Content Delivery Network (CDN), and various upgrades (like Turbo Boost or Turbo Max) to get speeds even faster.
We’ve mentioned that A2 Hosting has a guaranteed uptime of 99.9%, but if they ever slip below that, even by a fraction of a percent, you’ll get a partial refund of five percent for every hour your site is down. That isn’t too shabby!
A2 Hosting has server locations in over 13 countries, giving you plenty to choose from. For example, if most of your website traffic comes from India, it makes sense to keep your servers in India to ensure increased speeds for your users.
By having plenty of choices, you can further bump your speeds.
While the lower-tiered hosting options have storage limits, when you get into the top three, your storage and bandwidth both will be unlimited. If you have an eCommerce store or a website that gets high amounts of traffic, you’ll need all the extra help you can get to keep your site speed fast!
Unlike many of their competitors, A2 does not include a free domain name for any of their shared hosting plans, which makes them lag behind their competitors significantly. Most hosts now offer a free domain name, at least for the first year.
Instead, you’ll have to purchase your domain separately.
A2 only has discounts for new package purchases. You will not be able to use a discount on a hosting package that already exists unless there is a special promotion.
Often, to stay competitive, hosts may provide Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), Solid State Drives (SSD), and a Content Delivery Network (CDN).
The SSL gives your website extra security, keeping your network (and your visitors!) safe. Unfortunately, A2 charges an additional fee for this, ranging from $49.99 up to over $269.
SSDs increase the speed of your website, but if you want that extra boost, you’ll have to pay for it with a monthly charge.
A CDN will make your site run faster and give you a nice boost in security. Unfortunately, just like with an SSD and SSL, you’ll need to buy this separately.
A2 has several plans available, with five standing out from the rest. You’ll be able to sign up for Shared Hosting and WordPress Hosting through their Startup, Drive, Turbo Boost, and Turbo Max plans.
If you don’t anticipate huge amounts of traffic to your website, shared hosting is probably the smartest option. Instead of paying for a unique server all on your own, the costs are split between you and other websites using the same server.
One of A2 Hosting’s most popular options is their Shared Hosting. We’ve discussed it a bit, but let’s take a closer look at their pricing options, and what each level entails!
Shared is excellent for smaller blogs, shops, and other less intensive websites, but if you want tougher security and stability, consider getting a VPS or Dedicated server.
VPS hosting, or Virtual Private Server hosting, is when an actual server is split into what is called virtual machines. Each virtual machine works separately from the others on the same server, giving you the benefits of a unique server without all the extra costs.
A Virtual Private Server (VPS) offers a hybrid approach to hosting. Essentially, it’s a combination of Shared Hosting and Dedicated Hosting. You get the low costs of the former while enjoying the increased resources, boosted performance, and enhanced security of the latter.
A2 Hosting offers both managed and unmanaged VPS hosting. If you opt for a managed plan, you won’t have to worry about dealing with many of the technical aspects of server administration.
That includes patching, updates, and troubleshooting any issue your site develops. Their managed VPS hosting comes in six tiers, with the basic model being Lift 4. It costs $39.99/mo and offers four GB of RAM, 150 GB SSD storage, two TB transfer, and two cores. The most expensive plan is Mach 32, which is priced at $134.99 per month.
All of A2 Hosting’s VPS managed plans come with free SSL certificates, website migration, and the cPanel control panel.
Of course, you may prefer having control over your site’s administration. If that’s the case, then you’ll have a selection of six-tier plans. Their basic model is Runway 1, which charges $4.99/mo and offers one GB of RAM, 150 GB SSD storage, two TB transfer, and one core. If you scale up to their most comprehensive option, Supersonic 32, you’ll be paying a maximum of $79.99 each month.
Choosing VPS hosting may be for you if you’re looking to keep costs down but want your site to have the benefits that would come with Dedicated Hosting.
A dedicated server hosting option is for those who need tons of space. Your website has large amounts of traffic, so you need your own server, not sharing it with anyone else.
If you have a website that demands a lot of resources, or you expect your website to need a higher degree of server support, then Dedicated Hosting might be the option for you. Of course, prices are going to be much higher, given that you’ll have access to significantly increased resources and your very own server.
Like other A2 Hosting plans, you get the option of either a managed or unmanaged Dedicated Service. If you opt for the managed version, you’ll get one of up to nine tier plans to choose from. The basic version, Warp 1, starts at $179.99/mo. It offers 16 GB of DDR4 ECC RAM, two one TB SSD storage drives, six TB transfer, and four cores/four threads. Each plan scales up in price and with what is offered, with Warp Turbo 9 coming in at a monthly rate of $619.99.
These plans come with their own CPUs, each calibrated to support the specific resource needs of your website. As with A2 Hosting’s managed plans, your unmanaged options come in nine tiers. The basic plan is Hyper 1 and provides 16 GB of DDR4 ECC RAM, two one TB SSD storage drives, six TB transfer, and four cores/four threads. At the other end of the scale is Turbo Hyper 9, which will cost you $569.99 every month.
Reseller hosting is like subletting an apartment. You buy the server space to launch your own hosting company, and then you can rent it out to other websites yourself. You’ll still get all the benefits of using them as a host, including A2 Hosting’s support team and their uptime guarantee!
Reseller hosting gives you the option to set up your own hosting company using A2 Hosting’s servers. So, you get to benefit from being a host to other websites without the technical strain that would come with launching your own independent hosting service. Instead, A2 Hosting ensures you have access to a dedicated support team and their
As with other plans, A2 Hosting’s Reseller options have a tiered pricing system, each offering increasing levels of benefits:
All of A2 Hosting’s Reseller plans include WebHost Manager (WHM), cPanel control panel, alongside free SSL certificates, and website migration. Both Blesta and WHMCS billing are available if you invest in either the Launch or Turbo Launch tier. Blesta is the standalone billing option for Kickstart and Turbo Kickstart.
WordPress is a popular Content Management System (CMS) used to actually create websites. The only kicker is WordPress doesn’t come with a domain or a hosting service.
Thankfully, A2 Hosting has some great options for WordPress hosting, including both managed and shared plans.
As we mentioned, WordPress is one of the most popular CMSs around. In fact, 64 million websites use WordPress to build their structure.
A2 Hosting facilitates pre-installed WordPress hosting, meaning you won’t have to worry about installing any software yourself to get your website up and running. Otherwise, you’d have to upload your site and configure it yourself. If you choose the “do-it-yourself” approach, you’ll manage your site through the cPanel control panel. A2’s managed hosting includes automated updates, backups, and patching, and a Plesk control panel.
If you’re looking for a CMS that is intuitive and easy to build, then a WordPress hosting package may work best for you. WordPress itself features a ton of plugins and themes that can enhance your website and provide solutions for your eCommerce needs.
Building a reputation needs constant communication with your customers. With 4 billion email users daily, email campaign has been one of the most effective strategies for businesses. Now hear this: A2 Hosting has got the best hosting plan for all your email marketing needs.
A2 Hosting offers Email Hosting that gives you the right resources to make customer relationships agile and professional. These features help give a unique identity to your emails so your brand can gain credibility and build trust with customers.
Now you don’t need to switch up your email strategies with this hosting plan for your email campaigns. It comes with a set of unique and powerful tools that work best for your email inbox. It provides multi-account access so you can maintain your account in one place, email migration tools and shareable contacts, and even advanced features that let you undo a sent email.
You can get this email hosting plan at $1.59 per month for a Professional plan which is good for 36 months. Its Pro Plus plan complete with more awesome features is priced at $2.59 a month if you avail for 36 months.
A2 has a lot on offer. Below, we’ve broken down the available plans as well as their prices. We’ve also highlighted who each plan is best suited to as, naturally, this can be quite an intimidating journey to start on your own.
A2 ensures that their selection caters to everyone no matter the level of their online presence. Of course, there are some less-than-stellar reviews, but as far as we can tell, the selection of plans hasn’t fallen into disfavor.
No matter which form of hosting you take, from WordPress to Shared, you’ll be given the choice to pick a different level. A2 Hosting offers four different levels, each with its own benefits and costs.
The Startup plan covers one website and gives you 100 GB SSD storage. It also features free site migration, so you won’t have to struggle moving it from your old host. If you buy a monthly plan, it will cost you $10.99 a month, but if you buy the one-year plan, you’ll pay $6.99 a month, and if you buy the three-year plan, it will only set you back $2.99 a month.
This is the best option if you’re starting off small and don’t want to commit to too many resources before you know how to use them. Plus, you can always scale up to a more comprehensive plan later on if you end up growing your web presence!
Even if you only have two websites that you want to maintain, the A2 Drive plan may be a better solution.
The Drive plan covers unlimited websites and gives you unlimited SSD storage. Like the Startup, this plan also offers free site migration, but in addition, you also get free automatic backups. This plan usually costs $12.99 a month, but if you buy the one-year plan, it’ll cost you $8.99 a month, and the three-year plan will cost you $4.99 a month.
In our opinion, the Drive plan obviously has a lot more advantages than the Startup plan, but we would recommend skipping ahead to the Turbo Boost plan—let’s discuss why.
The Turbo Boost plan covers everything that A2 Drive does, including unlimited websites, unlimited storage, free site migration, and free automatic backups. The most considerable difference is that the Turbo Boost plan offers Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) storage as opposed to the Drive plan’s SSD storage. It’s faster, which is always beneficial for your website.
In addition, however, the Turbo Boost has its ‘turbo’ features, giving you up to 20 times faster page loads. It can also handle up to nine times more traffic at once, among other extras. Remember, the faster your website, the less likely you are to lose traffic.
The monthly cost for this plan is $20.99, but if you buy the one-year plan, you’ll pay $14.99 a month, and if you opt for the three-year plan, it will only set you back $9.99 a month.
As a head’s up—this is our recommended plan, overall. We’ll discuss what you get in the Turbo Max plan just below, but the Turbo Boost plan is the sweet spot for most businesses and websites. It can handle substantially more traffic than the previous two plans and has more than enough resources for most businesses who own multiple domains and are still growing.
The Turbo max plan is A2’s fastest service yet. It covers unlimited websites, unlimited NVMe storage, free site migration, free automatic backups, and all the turbo features included in the Turbo Boost plan. It does, however, offer five times more resources than the previous plans, including 4GB of Cloudflare CDN Free.
This plan costs $25.99 a month, but the one-year plan costs $19.99 a month, and the three-year plan will only set you back $14.99 a month.
This plan is worth it for those who are experiencing a lot of traffic on a constant basis and need the extra resources to maximize their online presence. If you’re not there yet, consider the Turbo Boost one-year plan and reassess at the end of your contract whether it’s necessary to scale up to the Turbo Max or not.
These FAQs will help you determine if A2 Hosting is the right platform for you.
We briefly mentioned in the cons that A2 Hosting doesn’t provide a free domain, unlike many other hosts. However, that doesn’t mean A2 Hosting isn’t still a good decision, especially if you already own your domain.
With A2 Hosting, you’ll be able to transfer your domain or research and buy one if you don’t have one. They simplify the registration process, giving you different options at various price points, depending on what you need.
For example, if you want your domain to end in “.com,” then you can expect to pay about $14.95 per year. If you want it to end in “.in,” it will cost you only $11.95 per year.
Just know that there may be some location-based restrictions. If you’re located in the USA, you can get a “.us” domain. If you’re in Canada, you can purchase a “.ca” domain, and so on.
A2 Hosting lets you easily manage all your domains in one location, and they even have domain forwarding. Should you decide to change your domain, they’ll automatically forward traffic and emails to your new location, ensuring you don’t miss out on conversions!
A2 Hosting customer support is top-notch. Flexible and accommodating, A2 has communicative and helpful agents instead of bots.
A2 provides 24/7 customer service using email, help ticket, live chat, or phone. Their global support team is located in the UK, Brazil, Sydney, and Singapore.
Still have questions about A2 Hosting? We’ve got answers!
Usually, the more servers a hosting company has around the globe, the better. This translates to more uptime and fewer accidental outages!
Fortunately, you can choose from four different data centers on three different continents for your A2 Hosting plan. They have two in North America (one in Michigan and Arizona), one in the Netherlands (Amsterdam), and then one in Singapore!
Of course, there are even more server locations available should you require them, such as in Canada, Colombia, France, or Australia.
A2 Hosting may not come with SSLs, but you’ll get plenty of features that make them worthwhile. They offer carbon-neutral hosting, having partnered with Carbonfund.org, so you know that your website isn’t contributing to global climate change.
You’ll also get: Free Cloudflare CDN, 24/7 malware protection, free site migration, and more CMS options than you could ever hope to use.
Best of all, their up-time guarantee means that you’ll get a partial refund if they ever drop below 99.9%!
A2 is also compatible with tons of different software that you can use for analytics and to boost the functionality and visibility of your site. These include:
Any good online business, including a hosting service, has multiple options for payment methods. A2 Hosting is no different and offers several ways you can pay.
If you’re in a Latin American country (such as Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, or Brazil), then you can use PayU Latam.
Do you prefer using PayPal, UnionPay, Skrill, or Stripe? A2 Hosting accepts them as a payment method, as well as all major credit cards, like Visa, American Express, Discover, and Mastercard.
Lastly, you can make a bank transfer, money order, or write a check to them at the following address:
A2 Hosting, Inc.
PO Box 2998
Ann Arbor, MI 48106
To put it simply, a server is a large and complex computer. It links visitors directly to your website, no matter where they are in the world. It’s how people get to your website and where your website is stored.
As we mentioned, A2 Hosting has servers all over the world, in various countries and continents.
They also have data centers placed in four different locations, giving you a greater choice for where you want your website’s information stored. Remember, the closer your data center is to your primary client base, the faster their connections will be.
Yes. With A2’s Turbo Boost and Turbo Max plans, you will also get a Performance Plus, which will add an extra GB of memory and double your processing power.
Yes, A2 has its own website builder, which does not require you to know code. Like with WordPress, you can just click and drag to create your site. However, the pricing for the site builder is an increase from the price for the shared hosting plans.
Moreover, canceling your renewal term can be tricky according to A2’s terms. Namely, you’ll have to write a cancellation request to them through email or their customer portal 15 days before the beginning of the renewal term.
If you don’t write a cancellation request within that period, A2 will automatically renew the plan for you, and you won’t be eligible for a refund.
All in all, A2 Hosting is a great choice for companies that want many options to choose from. Unlike most of its competitors, A2 offers a wide range of plans to choose from.
Fast, reliable, and flexible, A2 Hosting is a great choice for bloggers, big companies, and online shops alike. Although it is a bit on the pricey side, A2 Hosting is a great bang for your buck!
