A2 Hosting review: is it as fast as promised?

A2 Hosting is one of the oldest web hosting providers that’s still extremely popular. What it claims to offer is the speediest performance you can get. So in this A2 Hosting review, I took the provider to the test. I want to see if it’s as fast as promised and if other crucial things like prices, features, ease of use, security, and customer support are worth your time.

“20x faster web hosting” is A2 Hosting’s claim that lures many new web hosting users in.

“Faster than what?” many more skeptical users like me would ask.

So really, it got me curious. Can this seemingly regular, average-priced provider show some extraordinary results?

More often than not, the providers’ homepage copy remains a far-fetched promise. But in the A2 Hosting case, it might be closer to the truth than we could’ve expected. Some of the A2 Hosting’s offered plans are truly hosted on some of the best enterprise-level hardware.

But speed is not the only topic I’m going to cover today. So stick around and let’s find out everything there’s to know about A2 Hosting before purchasing it.

As a last note, I must say this review gets into cracks and crevices of all that’s A2 Hosting, which makes it pretty long. So here’s a first-class ticket to the final verdict at the end.

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Pros and Cons of A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting video review

All the questions about A2 Hosting answered below:

A2 Hosting pricing

A2 Hosting prices range from rather affordable to entirely premium – shared hosting starts at $2.99/month and goes up to $14.99/month with 3-year subscriptions. Other options include managed WordPress hosting, VPS, and dedicated servers.

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The options are many. But as with most providers, A2 Hosting’s most popular solution is shared hosting, and that’s exactly what I’ll be focusing on for this review.

All of the shared hosting plans come with big SSD storage, free SSL certificates, unlimited email accounts, DDoS protection unlimited transfers, and unlimited subdomains. Unfortunately, none of the plans will get you a free domain. That’s an extra expense.

Now let’s break down each plan and what it has to offer.

Overall, A2 Hosting’s prices are pretty average. It definitely provides a lot of server resources and useful features. Therefore, the prices is reasonable too.

Now talking about value, I don’t think that Startup and Drive are worth considering, due to the lack of faster NVMe storage and Turbo servers. For personal or smaller business sites, cheaper providers like Hostinger or DreamHost may be a better option.

Yet if you need speed, Turbo plans are the real show-stopper. More specifically, the Turbo Boost plan as it comes for a rather affordable price of $6.99/mo and features the same stuff as Turbo Max. Simply put, you can easily host anything from a simple site to smaller eCommerce stores. The only difference is that the former is hosted on a server with more users on it.

One thing to note is that A2 Hosting offers an any-time money-back guarantee. What this means is that you are eligible for a prorated refund for any unused services. Additionally, there’s a standard 30-day money-back guarantee for a full refund.

All in all, A2 Hosting is more of a premium provider for those people who are looking for the best shared hosting hardware. That – it has. However, you got to be ready for big payment upfront. Do not forget to check out A2 Hosting Black Friday deals for a chance to pay less.

Hosting management – is it easy to use?

All that A2 Hosting uses for hosting management is the good old cPanel. It’s easy to use and functional. The downside – you’ll need to look at an interface that came from the early 2000s. Quite a downgrade in case you’ve tried something more modern.

To reach the cPanel, you’ll need to go through the account management panel. This is where you reach support, renew your plan, and add extra services.

Honestly, this looks quite outdated, so just quickly click on the cPanel Login button. I wonder how A2 Hosting gets away with such awful-looking interfaces and steep prices.

Fortunately, you don’t need to look at this for too long.

How does A2 Hosting control panel look like?

A2 Hosting uses the default version of cPanel with its many functionalities. It is the place where you start to develop your website. Here, you can add a domain, install WordPress, and set up an email account. Of course, more advanced features exist where you can go through files, databases, manage security settings, and do performance optimizations.

The interface may seem a little outdated, but it still is one of the best control panels out there in terms of functionality.

The specific features are all filed under different categories such as domains, email, metrics, and software, so it’s easy to navigate. In addition, on the right side, you’ll find the overall statistics of your account.

Having said all that, the cPanel remains a favorite of many as it still is an excellent option for hosting management. Actually, A2 Hosting is one of the very few providers left that uses cPanel-only for web hosting management. Others have started integrating their own tools

Adding a domain to A2 Hosting account

All domains purchased through A2 Hosting are added to your account and activated automatically. But it’s cheaper to purchase them elsewhere and manually add them to A2 Hosting.

That’s exactly what I did for my A2 Hosting review. It involved 2 steps – updating the name servers and adding a domain name through cPanel.

So if you purchased a domain name with another registrar, you’ll need to go to that registrar and find the DNS settings. What you’re looking for is the name servers field.

A2 Hosting name servers for shared plans are – ns1.a2hosting.com; ns2.a2hosting.com; ns3.a2hosting.com; ns4.a2hosting.com. It’s enough to use just 2 of them. So in your registrar, change the name servers to two of A2 Hosting ones, and you’re done with the first step.

To actually add a domain name, you’ll need to locate the Addon Domains feature in A2 Hosting’s cPanel. It’s under Domains.

In the following form, you just need to add your New Domain Name. The rest will be pre-filled.

As soon as you press the Add Domain button, the system will handle everything else for you.

P.S. your domain might need up to 48 hours to propagate, although I’ve noticed that it usually takes no longer than a couple of minutes.

Once that’s done, your domain is ready for WordPress installation.

Installing WordPress with A2 Hosting

Just like the rest of the stuff, WordPress installation with A2 Hosting is very much standard and easy. It’s done through cPanel with the help of Softaculous. Although even that can be made easier if you’ve selected WordPress to be pre-installed during the checkout process.

In the cPanel, you’ll find the whole Softaculous section. WordPress-A2 Optimized is the first option. As the name suggests, it comes with A2 Hosting optimizations, such as caching included.

Of course, you can browse through categories and install another app, but WordPress is the most commonly used content management system for website development.

In any case, you’ll need to click on the Install button to continue in the next window.

This shows what kind of features A2 Hosting’s A2 Optimized function adds to WordPress.

Finally, we reach the installation window. Here you simply need to fill in the required information – select a domain, name your website, create a username, and think of a secure password.

The Quick Install button will pre-fill everything for you, but I find it more secure to do all this on your own.

Finally, just click Install and the rest will be done automatically.

Unless you run into a problem as I did…

My installation did not go through, because, apparently, there was something on my website already.

I knew exactly what it was – A2 Hosting decided that it would be fun to install their own temporary page on my domain.

So for the next attempt, I selected to overwrite all existing files, and the problem was fixed.

It’s a tiny issue, but I hate when something like this happens. It can easily throw off and scare beginner users who are afraid of clicking random checkboxes on a text field that says “ERROR.”

Regardless, the WordPress installation process is very simple and the small issue I ran into when writing this A2 Hosting review has never happened again.

Adding an email account with A2 Hosting

You can add unlimited email addresses with any plan that A2 Hosting offers, and that’s very easy to do. However, A2 Hosting’s offered email clients are outdated and use the same server as your website. This type of email setup is good only for occasional emailing but not for frequent professional use.

Regardless, having an email with your website name on it looks 1000 times more professional than having a Gmail one, so consider taking advantage of this free tool.

To set up your professional-looking email with A2 Hosting, all you need to do is find the Email Accounts in the cPanel under the Email section, click on Create, and fill in the required details.

To better manage your storage usage you can set a custom storage space or you can choose to keep it unlimited.

And that’s it. You can now reach your webmail client from the same Email Accounts management window by clicking Check Mail.

Just don’t forget that none of this will be good for email marketing campaigns. Email deliverability rates really suffer when they are hosted on shared servers.

All things considered, A2 Hosting’s control panel is very easy to use and you will not have any problems navigating it and setting up your new website. It is also very functional and has every tool needed to create a successful website.

A2 Hosting performance – is A2 Hosting fast?

A2 Hosting claims to be “20x faster web hosting”. So to test this, I have put the provider through a few performance-related tests. All throughout the test period, A2 Hosting has demonstrated very reliable uptime, average server response time, and pretty great website loading time. It also managed to pass my stress test on the maximum load.

A2 Hosting uptime and response time

At the time of writing this A2 Hosting review, I have been monitoring it for 2 months. During this time, it had 4 outages which, in total, resulted in 7 minutes of downtime. That’s an overall 99.99% uptime.

Meanwhile, the average response time came up to 597ms, pretty average if you’d ask me.

So many numbers, but what do they mean for you?

First of all, A2 Hosting comes with a 99.9% uptime guarantee. What you get, though, is much better. The 99.9% uptime commitment means your website is expected to be down for 2h 11m 29s quarterly. However, A2 Hosting outperforms that greatly with an expected quarter downtime of 8m 30s.

As for response times, they remained very stable throughout the monitoring period. This shows that my website did not have to fight for server resources too hard.

Now, let’s look at the website’s loading speed.

A2 Hosting speed

My website is hosted in the US data center, so the best results are expected in the US – with the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) at 859ms. Accordingly, the further away from the server we go, the longer it’ll take for the website to load. Test results further support that.

But why does LCP matter and what does it mean?

Google is starting to consider measures such as LCP when ranking web pages. Initially meaning your site has a better chance of appearing higher on the search results page if the LCP is short. As long as you keep it in under 2.5s, you’ll be just fine.

You can tell A2 Hosting fits in this time slot perfectly with the lowest time of 859ms. Even in India, the site manages to load fast enough to fit in. The time could be better, sure, but you won’t see me complaining just yet.

So far I’ve tested an empty website. Now, let’s see how A2 Hosting will handle a fully built website. For that I have installed Astra theme and chose a Tech Startup template with its demo content.

As expected, the LCP has now increased to 1.3s.

Is that bad? Not at all. It still leaves me quite some wiggle space to not fall into Google’s less favorable list.

However, don’t forget who your site is meant for. Site visitors are the ones you should focus on. They may not care about LCP time as much as Google does, though what they care about is how fast the website loads. If the website’s loading time goes from a second to five seconds, the likeliness of visitors leaving the site increases by 90%.

In this case, the Fully Loaded Time is 1.4s, which in my opinion is a great result. Overall, A2 Hosting proves to be a very speedy provider.

A2 Hosting stress testing

Now it’s all fun and games to examine the website in incubator conditions. So let’s shake things up a little more, shall we? This just might be the most important test of them all. We will see if A2 Hosting can handle the traffic.

For that, I’ve sent 50 virtual visitors to my website. Let me just clarify first – that’s a big number. It’s like having 50 visitors on your website every minute at all times. That would be like 10s of thousands of monthly visitors. That’s similar to what you’d expect from a popular local blog or a medium-sized business website.

Guess what, A2 Hosting didn’t even break a sweat.

In this graph, we’re interested in two measures – server response time (blue line) and the number of visitors on the site (grey line). As you can see, throughout the whole test server’s response time remained stable and just as quick as if there was only one visitor on the site.

In this regard A2 Hosting showed quite outstanding results. It can really handle some traffic.

All in all, A2 Hosting performance was great. The website remained live for 99.99% of the time and demonstrated a speedy loading time of 1.4s. More so, the server had enough power to withhold big traffic, which means A2 Hosting can easily host quite popular websites.

What makes A2 Hosting fast?

We can get such fast website loading speed with A2 Hosting because it uses a bunch of contemporary technology to speed them up. It starts with the basics such as fast drives and ends with more advanced features such as a pre-configured LiteSpeed cache.

Modern hardware

• Server locations – when you’re purchasing your plan, A2 Hosting allows you to choose your server location. You have 4 options: Michigan (US), Arizona (US), Amsterdam (Netherlands), and Singapore. Select the server location that is the closest to your visitors. What this will do is that it will reduce response time because of the proximity. The further the server location is from your visitors, the higher the response time will be.
• SSD storage – A2 uses SSD storage instead of the outdated HDD. This is where A2 Hosting’s claim that it’s 20 times faster comes in. See, this is a common claim in the industry as tests have shown that SSDs can be 20 times faster than HDDs. However, it’s worth noting that most big-name providers in the industry utilize SSD storage as well. So, bear in mind that A2 Hosting is 20 times faster when compared to if they’d be using HDD. Not necessarily in comparison to other providers though.
• NVMe AMD EPYC Server – if you choose either of the Turbo plans, your website will be stored on a NVMe AMD EPYC Server. These are some of the fastest enterprise-grade servers available at the moment. They use technology that allows reaching full SSD potential. At the same time, you’ll get more resources allocated to the website. That’s also due to the fact that there are fewer users on the server.

Advanced software optimizations

• PHP version – A2 Hosting allows you to choose the PHP version you want. The default is PHP 7.2 but the latest PHP 8 (which can serve more requests per second) is also available. But the tendency is clear – the newer the version, the faster the website. It’s good to see that A2 Hosting implements new stuff as soon as it comes out.
• HTTP/3 and QUIC – on Turbo plans, A2 Hosting supports the newest and the fastest internet transportation protocols. HTTP/3 was proved to deliver files up to 30% faster than HTTP. Meanwhile, Quic works to make HTTP traffic more efficient.
• A2 Optimized Software – A2 Hosting optimizes popular software such as WordPress, Drupal, and PrestaShop. It supposedly configures the best performance and security settings for the apps so they are faster than the default versions.
• LiteSpeed Web Server and pre-configured caching – LiteSpeed web server is one of the latest and fastest technologies used by hosting companies. It comes with its own caching engine that delivers your website content faster. This feature is available with Turbo plans and is one of the main attractions of A2 Hosting.

All things considered, A2 Hosting has strong hardware to support your website. Performance testing results show that all the implemented tools and technology works to make websites hosted on A2 servers reliable and fast. Not to mention that they are powerful enough to support big surges of traffic.

Security – is A2 Hosting secure?

A2 Hosting absolutely doesn’t play around when it comes to security. Instead, the host excels and offers plenty of security features for all of its shared hosting plans. That’s everything from SSL certificates and firewalls to DDoS protection and 2-factor authentication (2FA).

Now, let’s explore these features further.

SSL certificates

A2 Hosting comes with a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate in all of its shared hosting plans. That’s great and, frankly, that’s the bare minimum that I’d expect from a reputable provider.

What I liked the most is that they are automatically activated – no need to do anything yourself.

DDoS protection

Another win for A2 Hosting as the provider offers reinforced Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection. Simply put, DDoS is a malicious attack where your site is flooded with Internet traffic from compromised systems to disrupt it.

A2 Hosting does this through Imunify360 – a tool that provides protection against malicious attacks like brute-force or any suspicious activities.

Firewalls

A2 Hosting has a dual firewall in place for all its plans: Config Server Firewall (CSF) as well as ModSecurity. As CSF name hints, it’s a server firewall. It protects against attacks and, overall, improves server security.

Meanwhile, ModSecurity is a Web Application Firewall (WAF). WAF basically filters, blocks, and monitors inbound/outbound traffic.

Patchman enhanced security tool

Patchman has many functions, but initially it’s a malware/vulnerability detection and patching tool. For starters, the tool will detect and notify about outdated software. Not only that but the tool also detects security vulnerability in CMSs and automatically patches it up for you.

On top of that, it automatically quarantines all infected files for 24 hours.

Automatic backups

All plans except for Startup are equipped with automatic backups. This is a tool that takes a snapshot of your website daily and saves that copy. So if you ruin something on your website or accidentally get it infected, you can go back and restore the website from the backup. It’s often easier than fixing an issue manually.

However, A2 Hosting does not take responsibility if the backups are lost or ruined. So while the feature is there, occasionally downloading backups to your own Cloud storage for extra reassurance is highly advised.

2 factor-authentication

2FA is a super simple yet crucial layer of your website security. It guarantees that if someone tries to log in to your account, they would be met with not only a password but a 2nd layer of protection – a code that only you can get.

This security measure is being implemented more often, as passwords prove to be quite easily “hacked” or “socially engineered.”

Overall, I’m pretty pleased with A2 Hosting’s wide variety of security features. The only drawback is its rather weak backup offering. With that said, A2 Hosting definitely has one of the most comprehensive protections amongst shared hosting providers and takes a well-deserved place on our secure web hosting list.

Will A2 Hosting support help me?

A2 Hosting support is a little bit behind when compared to modern customer support standards. They will help you, but that might take some time. That’s because the main customer support option is the ticketing system and many phone support and live chat inquiries are redirected to it. Regardless, you’ll be able to reach agents 24/7 or refer to a knowledge base.

For the first part of this support test for my A2 Hosting review, I reached out to sales support.

Even though it said 15 minutes of wait time, I got connected almost instantly. That’s a very good first sign. What I didn’t like is that there was no field to enter my question before being connected with an agent. But I guess it might be just a personal preference.

Once I asked which plan is best for me, the agent immediately asked some logical questions about disk space and RAM. I decided to make her life a little more difficult by saying that I don’t know that and continuing to describe my future website.

The agent immediately sent the link to shared hosting plans and gave her recommendations. I was looking for a little bit more information, so I continued on asking more questions.

The agent took it quite well, answering my questions from her own knowledge and not referring me to numerous knowledge base articles. I really liked that. Plus, the answers were really quick.

On the other hand, the agent did not provide me with much justification for her recommendation, so, I had to do that myself.

But sales support is usually just one interaction. What’s more important is the technical help.

I decided to ask what can I do to make my website faster, or if A2 Hosting takes care of all that stuff for me.

For technical support, I waited around 4 or 5 minutes. Not much, even though it said 30 minutes wait time is expected.

The agent offered to check my website and immediately recommended enabling Cloudflare.

However, when I asked for more advice, things went downhill.

The agent had to leave the chat so he transferred me to another agent. Not only did I have to wait for over 15 minutes to get the first answer from the second agent, but even after that, he did not provide me with any helpful information. Just a link to a basic knowledge base article.

This whole interaction tells me that when you talk to a real person, the experience can be hit or miss. I had two very pleasant interactions (though not perfect), and one that was just not helpful in any way.

Fortunately, a ticket was not created for me this time. Although it used to happen every time you contact A2 Hosting support for technical issues just a year ago.

So I guess that’s an improvement.

Apart from the talking-to-real-humans option, A2 Hosting also has a pretty comprehensive knowledge base.

Here, you’ll find lots of articles and guides on various topics. This includes guides on getting started, provider’s features, and optimization. The articles themselves are well made, and the tutorials are easy to follow.

All things considered, A2 Hosting’s support is a little bit of a mixed-bean bag. You can find some great agents but sometimes the wait time gets long and some people turn out to be less helpful than others.

Other A2 Hosting options

Although shared hosting is the most popular hosting solution, A2 has quite a few additional options to choose from. Other A2’s hosting types include VPS, WordPress, and dedicated hosting. So if you’re looking for a more powerful solution than the standard shared one, A2 Hosting has something to offer.

A2 VPS hosting

When it comes to VPS hosting, A2 offers managed and unmanaged services. While managed plans are much easier to manage, A2’s best value offer lies with unmanaged plans. The cheapest unmanaged VPS plan starts at just $2.99/mo.

Unmanaged VPS hosting does require more skills than a shared hosting or managed VPS would. By opting for an unmanaged hosting service, the user becomes fully responsible for its virtual server. Any installations, updates, security tests, and many more are performed by the user. You also get full root access.

Now talking about plans, A2 Hosting has 6 to offer – 3 standard and 3 Turbo plans. Depending on how much power and speed you need, you can either choose one of the standard plans or a more powerful and faster solution.

Here’s how standard and Turbo plans’ resources vary:

• Standard (from $2.99/mo to $9.99/mo) – from 1 to 4 CPU cores, 150 to 450GB SSD disk space, 2 to 4TB bandwidth, and 1 to 4GB RAM.
• Turbo plans (from $29.99/mo to $89.99/mo) – from 2 to 8CPU cores, 150GB SSD to 450GB NVMe storage, 2 to 8TB bandwidth, and 8 to 32GB RAM.

Although unmanaged VPS hosting requires technical skills, a more experienced user will highly appreciate the generous pricing and resources A2 Hosting has to offer. This is exactly what places A2 Hosting among the best cheap VPS hosting providers.

A2 dedicated hosting

Similar to VPS hosting, A2 Hosting offers managed and unmanaged dedicated server hosting options too. Here best value also hides under the unmanaged services. The provider has 7 unmanaged dedicated hosting plans to offer, with prices ranging from $129.99/mo to $539.99/mo.

Now talking about unmanaged specifically, the host comes with 7 hosting packages. Among those plans, the resources here range from 4 cores/4 threads to 16 cores/32 threads, 2×1 TB to 2×960 NVMe U.2 storage, 6 to 15TB bandwidth, and 16 to 128GB DDR4 ECC RAM.

Dedicated server hosting is only needed if you’re running a very resource-heavy website or project with intense traffic. That becomes quite clear just by looking at generous server resources. Understandably, this type of hosting is the priciest and requires the most skills and technical knowledge. However, by opting for this solution, you get an entire hardware server for yourself.

As a whole, A2 Hosting offers many unmanaged server hosting solutions for a very reasonable price. Truly, one of the cheapest dedicated hosting providers out there.

A2 managed WordPress hosting

WordPress is one of, if not the most popular, content management systems out there. So it’s no wonder that A2 Hosting offers WordPress-oriented plans.

However, do not get fooled, the provider’s standard and the so-called WordPress plans are the exact same thing. Therefore, if you’re looking for some actual WordPress-focused features, consider A2’s managed WordPress plans. The cheapest plan comes at $11.99/mo.

Managed WordPress plans, as the name suggests, are fully managed by A2 Hosting’s agents. Things like installations, updates, patching, backups, and many others are automatically taken care of for you. Additionally, the settings are optimized for WordPress specifically so you can enjoy fast site performance.

Now, no matter which plan you choose, All come with a free SSL, unlimited email accounts, cPanel control panel, preconfigured performance, automated backups, cloning, staging, caching, DDoS protection, and spam filtering. Additionally, all 4 are also hosted on Turbo servers.

As for how they differ:

• Run – 1 website, 50GB unlimited websites, and 4GB RAM.
• Jump – 5 websites, 250GB unlimited websites, and 4GB RAM.
• Fly – unlimited websites, unlimited unlimited websites, and 8GB RAM.
• Sell – unlimited websites, unlimited unlimited websites, and 16GB RAM.

In simple terms, A2’s managed WordPress hosting has quite a lot to offer. However, the provider’s main attention isn’t primarily WordPress-focussed. However, if that’s what you’re looking for, check out the best managed WordPress hosting providers list.

A2 reseller hosting

Another great A2 Hosting solution is reseller hosting. With 8 plans to choose from, prices starting at $18.99/mo, generous resources, and many useful features, the host is one of the best reseller hosting providers out there.

As with other hosting options, reseller plans also are hosted either on a standard or a Turbo server. Regardless, all 8 plans include the main necessities like a client billing and management system, fully white-label, cPanel, Web Host Manager (WHM), and numerous client accounts, free SSL, DDoS protection, automated backups, and many more.

As for the server resources, they vary depending on the plan:

• Standard plans (from $18/mo to $44.99/mo) – from 60 to 270GB SSD storage, 600 to 2700 GB bandwidth, and 1GB RAM per cPanel user.
• Turbo plans (from $24.99/mo to $52.99/mo) – from 60 to 270GB NVMe storage, 600 to 2700 GB bandwidth, and 2GB RAM per cPanel user.

Simply put, A2 Hosting comes with reasonable prices and a wide variety of features for a smooth reseller hosting experience.

As a whole, A2 Hosting comes with a variety of different hosting solutions. No matter if you’re looking for shared hosting or other scalability options, the provider has you. However, keep in mind that while A2 Hosting has both managed and unmanaged plans, unmanaged often serve better value for money.

A2 Hosting review – the final verdict

As we’re nearing the end of this A2 Hosting review, I can confidently say that the provider is one of the fastest and most reliable providers available. For an appropriate price, you get a ton of speed-focused features as well as reinforced security.

But contrary to what many A2Hosting reviews claim, the provider isn’t perfect. Prices can be deceivingly high. Plus, not all plans are offering equally good value. So how does it all sum up?

Who do I recommend A2 Hosting to?

A2 Hosting will be the best option for those who need extra fast websites and strong security or those who prefer the all-cPanel experience. It’s best suited for hosting small-scale company websites and online stores if you pick the high-value Turbo plans.

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