Expert Review by Charlie
- Unlimited Diskspace
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- Solid State Drives
- 1-click WordPress Install
- CPANEL
- Free SSL Certificate
- 30 Day Money Back Guarantee
From $3.92/mth
Based in Ann Arbor, MI, A2 Hosting has been around since 2001. Originally called Iniquinet, they changed their name to A2 Hosting in 2003 and haven’t looked back. They position themselves as developer-friendly and have a real focus on speed.
A2 Hosting Review
For our A2 Hosting review site we signed up for the A2 Lite plan which is also one of the cheapest from just $3.92/mth
A2 Provisioning and Installation
Signing up at A2 was easy, but I was frustrated by the wait for provisioning as I signed up outside of US office hours. If you are in the US it won’t be a problem, but if you’re outside the US you might have to wait for your order to be approved and provisioned.
Installation of WordPress on A2 is automatic and customized with A2’s own plugin which automatically installs and configures some popular plugins to optimize the performance of your site. For the purposes of our testing however we’ve installed the same stock installation of the WordPress across all the hosts to ensure that we are doing an apples to apples comparison.
A2 Systems and Support
A2 provide 24/7 phone and chat technical support which is great. Just note that provisioning only happens in US office hours.
A2 Load Test
A2 position themselves all about performance, and they offer an auto-optimized install of WordPress which is a great feature you should use if you choose A2. That said, to ensure an apples to apples comparison we didn’t use their auto-optimized install and instead cloned a stock standard install of WordPress across all hosts.
In our latest round of testing A2 performed OK, but not exceptionally. Average Load Impact user load time was 1.03 seconds, but as you can see in the chart above it did trend up over the course of the test ending closer to 3 seconds as the concurrent user count approached 100.
The test did also record some server request failures as the number of concurrent users reached the limit of our test at 100, which strongly suggests that the server was beginning to struggle as the number of concurrent users got to around 60.
We’ve said before that this is a lot for any entry-level shared hosting plan to cope with, but the fact is that other hosts did cope better. We have ranked all the best WordPress hosting companies.
A2 Page Speed & Uptime
| A2 Hosting | Result |
|---|---|
| YSlow Score | 75 |
| West Coast Load Time | 1.05s |
| East Coast Load Time | 0.909s |
| Average Page Load Time | 0.980s |
| A2 Hosting Uptime | 99.99% |
Our test site on A2 had a little downtime in the last period though well within the acceptable level. No host can guarantee 100% up-time so 99.99% is sound. That said, the average home page load time from the Pingdom West and East Coast data centers has improved bringing down the overall average to under 1 second which is great.
A2 scored 75 on the YSlow grade in our latest tests which is ok but not exceptional. It is an improvement by one point since we last tested. We totally expect A2 would score better if you were to opt for their auto-optimized install of WordPress, which is easy to do and recommended. We only avoid doing this during our testing for the purposes of a closer side-by-side comparison.
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About A2 Hosting
A2 Hosting is a web hosting service focused on WordPress, offering an SSD hosting option specifically designed for faster WordPress loads.
The company exclusively owns all their servers, with the primary data center location being near Detroit, with additional capacity in Reykjavik, Iceland.
In addition to WordPress, the company features hosting for Drupal, PrestaShop and Joomla sites.
They offer three standard hosting plans, Lite, Swift and Turbo, as well as a “Performance Plus” option for an additional fee, to “maintain speed during traffic spikes.” High-speed hosting options include US and European server locations (the top plan uses US servers only), and all plans come with a 12 core server minimum, 64 GB RAM minimums and 10 GBs redundant network.
All plans are offered Bing/Yahoo! ad credits, but not Google ad credits at this time, although A2 does promise that a customer’s site will be listed in Google within 24 hours using Attracta. All plans are offered Bidvertiser ad credits, as well as free iContact email marketing trials. Accounts above the most basic one come with unlimited databases, while the starter plan comes with five.
There are the usual hosting options of managed, VPS, web, dedicated, reseller and cloud offered, and the A2 QuickInstaller offers auto-install of such software as Zend Server, Tomcat and Django.
FAQ’s
What plans does A2 hosting offer?
There are Lite, Swift and Turbo plans. The Swift plan is a noticeable upgrade over the Lite but isn’t that much more expensive, while the Turbo plan is quite a bit more expensive than Swift, with the main difference being, as you might guess from the name, “turbo”-powered increases in page load quickness.
Does A2 hosting have a money back guarantee?
Yes. Just cancel your account and they’ll give you a full refund within 30 days, or a prorated refund for your unused service after 30 days.
Does A2 Hosting offer website transfers?
Yes, if you want to leave your current host, and switch to A2 Hosting, just If you use cPanel with your current host, they’ll transfer your site for you. Contact their Guru Support team for the details.
Does A2 Hosting have good security?
Yes — they have a product called HackScan, offered free on all hosting plans. Exclusive to A2, it’s hack protection scanning that helps block hacks before they can invade and damage your site, as company officials explain.
It’s part of what they call “Perpetual Security,” proactive protection against malicious hackers and security threats, “squashing threats before they potentially develop into something larger.”
It includes KernelCare – Daily, Automatic & Rebootless Kernel Updates, Dual Web Hosting Firewall, Brute Force Defense and Auto-Heal Hosting Protection.
What’s their domain hosting offer?
A2 says you can host as many domains as you want on their Swift Web Hosting and Turbo Web Hosting plans and manage them in your cPanel control panel.
You can also have unlimited subdomains and parked domains on those plans too.
Does A2 Hosting have SSDs?
Yes. “Some hosts claim to offer Solid State Drive Hosting but only host your OS or MySQL databases, not your files,” company officials say, adding “we use SSD for everything so you get the biggest speed boost possible.
That’s why our SSD Hosting loads pages faster than our competition, and why even we host our site on SSDs.”
What’s email hosting does A2 have?
Pretty standard, really. You can access your e-mail the way you want, be in via POP3 or IMAP. If you want to use webmail from RoundCube, Squirrelmail or Horde you can do that as well from within your cPanel control panel.
Does A2 Hosting have an up-time guarantee?
Yes. They promise the usual 99.9% uptime, saying their “24/7/365 support staff” includes “expert system admins hard at work ensuring your server runs at its peak,” and they “make sure your server includes the latest security patches.”
They offer a quadruple redundant network, featuring multiple global transit carriers with 10G Level 3, 10G CenturyLink/Saavis, 10G Cogent and 2.5G Comcast.
Is A2 Hosting good for WordPress websites?
Yes. A2 Hosting offer an in-house product called A2 Optimized, a WordPress plugin providing auto-configuration to improve WordPress performance with auto-optimizations like compression and caching.
In fact, they tout “6X faster page loads compared to standard hosting with A2 Optimized.”
A2 Hosting Comparison & Alternatives
| Rank | Host | Price | Action |
| 1 | |
From $20.83/mth | View Plans / Full Review |
| 2 | |
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| 3 | |
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| 4 |  |
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| 5 |  |
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| 6 |  |
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| 7 |  |
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| 8 |  |
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| 9 |  |
From $3.92/mth | View Plans / Full Review |
| 10 |  |
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| 11 |  |
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| 13 |  |
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| 14 |  |
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Disclosure
This page contains affiliate links which means we earn a commission if you click through and signup. This is at no extra cost to you and helps us maintain this resource for all webmasters’ benefit. We own and pay for all the hosting accounts we use in our reviews and performance testing. Read our full disclosure statement here. Thanks for your support.
Real A2 Hosting Customer Reviews
5 reviews on “A2 Hosting Reviews (2024)”
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I just recently migrated to A2 Hosting from a provider who I was loyal to but has degraded tremendously over the years. I’m not gonna put them down here publicly, they are on a downfall for sure though. What I really want to commend A2 for is their TERRIFIC uptime. This was my main issue with my previous provider and I made sure to get confirmation with A2’s CS on what mitigation strategies they do have in an eventual downtime. Their Support staff are also very knowledgeable so thumbs up to that as well. I’m still new with A2 but I am happy and I feel confident to be in good hands.
I love that A2 Hosting is very customer focused. I’ve tried a number of their competitors and they say that they are customer facing but they just pay lip service to that.
The level of communication from the moment you arrive on their site is solid. They don’t try to sell you all sorts of stuff you don’t need and they answer questions before you even have them – 10 points for that.
They are the only hosting service I’ve used that adds security features such as WP login masking by default rather than you having to ask for it or doing it yourself. The fact that they care about my security is big for me.
Lastly their service does seem to be a lot quicker and have better uptime than other services I’ve used.
Definitely recommend them highly.
a2hosting is a great hosting provider. their customer support is always there to help either phone or chat which is very convenient. they are really good communicating when there are downtimes and fix issues real quick. their value is higher than average, but is completely worth it. I have over 7 years as a web developer which 3 of them has been using only a2hosting as my hosting provider. my clients see the difference in speed. I have never regret from switching from a competitor to them. They even helped me to migrate my websites real quick.
I’m not too tech savvy, so I can’t say much about the features. But I will say that the service does everything I need it to; it’s super easy to install WordPress on.
I have had to contact customer service a few times to transfer my old website, and they have always been very helpful and responsive.
In terms of value, I couldn’t find anything better! I shopped around a lot. I considered going with BlueHost, but had heard a few bad things. Here, I get unlimited domains for about $10 a month, which the same as BlueHost, and a steal IMO when you consider their speed.
I haven’t had any uptime issues thus far. My site has been up 100% of the time, so no complaints there.
I have been hosting websites with A2 Hosting for a year and a half, and I could not be more satisfied. Their SwiftServers are feature-laden and developer-friendly. Uptime is excellent; I monitor my sites with Pingdom, and I once went for over five months without Pingdom’s detecting a second of downtime from anywhere on earth — and even that was just a blip. The pricing is more than reasonable, and I seldom find myself wanting more (except when I read about the features of their new Turbo servers, which look really excellent).
About support: I generally don’t like having to turn to people for help, but A2 Hosting’s support personnel are so clever, gracious, and lightning-fast that I actually look forward to having questions and requests for them. They have a knack for gauging how tech-savvy their customers are and expressing themselves accordingly, and I always feel in-the-loop. They have expertise in and control over their own systems, and they are also very helpful when I run into difficulties with third-party services.
I would recommend A2 Hosting to just about anyone who wants to have a high-performing, stable, and secure website. Its services will be particularly welcome to web developers and other people who want to have liberal use of the shell and control over configuration, but people who need more help with their websites will find themselves in good hands.