A Detailed Review of A2Hosting Company

Overview

A2Hosting is an innovative, fast web hosting company that has been in existence for almost two decades now. It was started in 2001 by Bryan Muthig who worked as a UNIX systems administrator at the time. Using his strong background and experience in the systems administration field, he formed A2Hosting originally naming it Iniquinet. First, it was a side venture before he migrated to Ann Arbor in Michigan where he set a two-room office to run it. Then it grew from hosting websites for friends and family to providing hosting services for thousands of prominent sites. First, it just offered shared web hosting packages but today it owns a fully scalable product line boasting Reseller Hosting, Virtual Private Servers, and Dedicated Server Hosting.

Besides the traditional hosting products, it has on board application-based hosting featuring WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, OpenCart, and Magento. You can install these content management systems and run them securely using any of their hosting types. In November 2016, A2Hosting introduced Windows Hosting and optimized their servers to run ASP, Microsoft SQL, and other tools designed for the environment. They also included pricing plans in shared, VPS, and Reseller hosting packages.

We check through the specifics of that and other types of hosting in our A2Hosting Review. Below are the hosting packages offered by the company:

- Shared Web Hosting

- Reseller Hosting

- Dedicated Hosting

- VPS Hosting

- WordPress Hosting

Webhosting Plans

Shared Hosting

Plan Name	Disk Space	Bandwidth	Currency	Admin panel	Websites	Scripting	Email-Transport	Database	Price
Turbo	UnlimitedGB	UnlimitedGB	USD	cPanel	Unlimited	PHP	IMAP, POP3, SMTP	MySQL,PostgreSQL	$ 10.78
Swift	UnlimitedGB	UnlimitedGB	USD	cPanel	Unlimited	PHP	IMAP, POP3, SMTP	MySQL,PostgreSQL	$ 5.88
Lite	UnlimitedGB	UnlimitedGB	USD	cPanel	Unlimited	PHP	IMAP, POP3, SMTP	MySQL,PostgreSQL	$ 4.90
Turbo	UnlimitedGB	UnlimitedGB	USD	cPanel	Unlimited	Node.js,Perl,Python,PHP	IMAP, POP3, SMTP	MySQL,PostgreSQL	$ 9.31
Swift	UnlimitedGB	UnlimitedGB	USD	cPanel	Unlimited	Node.js,Perl,Python,PHP	IMAP, POP3, SMTP	MySQL,PostgreSQL	$ 4.90
Lite	UnlimitedGB	UnlimitedGB	USD	cPanel	1	Node.js,Perl,Python,Ruby on Rails,PHP	IMAP, POP3, SMTP	MySQL,PostgreSQL	$ 3.92

Reseller Hosting

Plan Name	Disk Space	Bandwidth	Admin panel	Accounts	Scripting	Database	Price
Platinum	200GB	2000GB	cPanel	100	PHP	MySQL,PostgreSQL	$ 42.23
Gold	150GB	1000GB	cPanel	80	PHP	MySQL,PostgreSQL	$ 25.73
Silver	75GB	600GB	cPanel	60	PHP	MySQL,PostgreSQL	$ 19.79
Bronze	40GB	400GB	cPanel	40	PHP	MySQL,PostgreSQL	$ 14.51
Platinum	200GB	2000GB	cPanel	100	Node.js,Perl,Python,Ruby on Rails,PHP	MySQL,PostgreSQL	$ 40.91
Gold	150GB	1000GB	cPanel	80	Node.js,Perl,Python,Ruby on Rails,PHP	MySQL,PostgreSQL	$ 24.41
Silver	75GB	600GB	cPanel	60	Node.js,Perl,Python,Ruby on Rails,PHP	MySQL,PostgreSQL	$ 18.47
Bronze	30GB	400GB	cPanel	40	Node.js,Perl,Python,PHP	MySQL,PostgreSQL	$ 13.19

Cloud Hosting

Plan Name	Disk Space	Bandwidth	Admin panel	Cores	RAM	Core Speed	CPU	Price
Elite	50GB	2000GB	cPanel	4	1GB	-	4 Cores	$ 15.00
Mid	30GB	2000GB	cPanel	1	1GB	-	1 Core	$ 10.00
Entry	20GB	2000GB	cPanel	1	0.5GB	-	1 Core	$ 5.00

VSP Hosting

Plan Name	Disk Space	Bandwidth	Admin panel	Cores	RAM	Core Speed	CPU	Price
ELITE - Unmanaged	50GB	2000GB	cPanel	4	1GB	-	4 Cores	$ 15.00
MID - Unmanaged	30GB	2000GB	cPanel	1	1GB	-	1 Core	$ 10.00
ENTRY - Unmanaged	20GB	2000GB	cPanel	1	0.5GB	-	1 Core	$ 5.00
PINNACLE+	150GB	4000GB	Admin panel	8	8GB	-	8 vCPUs	$ 69.29
PRESTIGE+	100GB	3000GB	Admin panel	6	6GB	-	6 vCPUs	$ 49.49
POWER+	75GB	2000GB	Admin panel	4	4GB	-	4 vCPUs	$ 36.29
PINNACLE+	150GB	4000GB	cPanel	8	8GB	-	8 vCPUs	$ 65.99
PRESTIGE+	100GB	3000GB	cPanel	6	6GB	-	6 vCPUs	$ 46.19
POWER+	75GB	2000GB	cPanel	4	4GB	-	4 vCPUs	$ 32.99

Dedicated Hosting

Plan Name	Disk Space	Bandwidth	Admin panel	Core	RAM	Core Speed	IPs	CPU	Price
MACH - Unmanaged	2000GB	20000GB	cPanel	8	16GB	2.1GHz	1	2x Intel Xeon 2.1+ GHz	$ 248.99
EXCEED - Unmanaged	1000GB	15000GB	cPanel	1	8GB	2.4GHz	1	Intel Xeon 2.4+ GHz	$ 165.99
SPRINT - Unmanaged	1000GB	10000GB	cPanel	2	8GB	3.1GHz	1	Intel 3.1+ GHz	$ 99.59
MACH	2000GB	20000GB	Admin panel,cPanel	8	16GB	2.1GHz	1	2x Intel Xeon 2.1+ GHz	$ 290.49
EXCEED	1000GB	15000GB	Admin panel,cPanel	4	8GB	2.4GHz	1	Intel Xeon 2.4+ GHz	$ 207.49
SPRINT	1000GB	10000GB	Admin panel,cPanel	2	8GB	3.1GHz	1	Intel 3.1+ GHz	$ 141.09

A2hosting Features

Now that weâ€™ve gone various packages that A2Hosting has for you, weâ€™ll explore in this section various features that the company puts out there. Weâ€™ll categorize them on basis of performance, security, control panel, customer support system, and finalize by analyzing its money-back guarantee options.

Performance

Whenever youâ€™re picking a web host provider, the first thing that you probably worry about is how it will perform in terms of speed and uptime. A decent provider will have measures that sustain your online presence 99% of the time and eliminate hogs or disruptions that affect performance. A2Hosting might not be the best web hosting provider in the world, but the features it brings forth are truly incredible. So, which are these features and measures?

- Turbo Caching

This technology basically uses server memory to store frequently accessed pages, files, and other data in your website. In turn, this speeds up content delivery from the server to customersâ€™ browsers.

- SSD for storage

Solid State Drives are around 3x faster than traditional hard disk drives which used plates and spindles. A2Hosting migrated to SSD hosting in 2013 just around the time the drives came to market. For this, data stored on their storage is relatively faster to load to browser or transfer to other sources. Besides, every account irrespective of plan subscribed uses the drives indiscriminately.

- Overstuffing Control

This exists on the shared web hosting package to control amount of traffic on every server. Basically, A2Hosting implements a cap on resources when they exceed parameters within acceptable limits. This measure prevents the bad neighbor effect by allowing fair usage of resources on the shared server.

- WebsitePulse Tracker

A2Hosting employs this third-party tracker to reveal to the public server uptime statistics. It is easy to assess risk and make decision on whether to rely on the provider for certain services relative to their uptime periods.

- SwiftServer Platform

All servers owned by A2Hosting are held on this platform which optimizes content delivery network, latency, and picks the best domain name servers.

- Raid Storage

VPS and dedicated server hosts use RAID storage to enhance data redundancy and speeds of data transfer between hardware devices in the network.

Security

Even when hosting on the fastest provider on the planet, a shaky security framework would be disastrous if exploited. As such, A2Hosting applies various measures to enhance this feature. These are:

- Server Rewind Backup

As aforementioned, servers take regular snapshots of the files, systems, and sites to facilitate automatic recovery of data in case of crash, malfunction, or damage of original data. This is the tool responsible for this tasks.

- HackScan Tool

This tool is mostly used on websites running on WordPress framework. It scans threats aimed at the firewall, system, or servers and eliminates them as part of the Perpetual Security Initiative.

- Dual Web Hosting Firewall

This firewall works at the operating environment and network level. Its function is to shield against brute force attacks and entries.

- CloudFlare CDN

Besides increasing access speeds to site, its other role is to prevent against distributed denial of service attacks. On A2Hostingm, it can be enabled by downloading CloudFlare cPanel plugin or signing up for an account at CloudFlareâ€™s website.

- PatchMan

This is a security measure to protect against drive failure and consequently data corruption. It is available for all accounts using Solid State Drive storage especially Content Management Systems such as WordPress. Additionally, it detects outdated software and quarantines scripts trying to corrupt data on the writing sectors of the drives.

- Free SSL Certificates

Regardless of the account type, data communication between the web server and the browsers occurs via a secure tunnel powered by SSL.

- Certified Data Centers

All A2Hosting data centers are SSAE16 certified which means to access them you must be authorized.

Support System

Although A2Hosting started small, today it boasts an online support team that works round the clock to attend to queries, concerns, publish guide articles, etc. The team is christened Guru Crew Support and is part of the company as opposed to being outsourced. Therefore, any help sorted is handled using in-house expertise and experience. Other features characterizing A2Hostingâ€™s customer support system include:

- Multiple communication channels

You can submit a ticket, chat live with customer care, send an email, or call the support team. Generally, the response time is short especially when using instant communication channels like live chat.

- 24-hour support portal

All the communication channels are open 24/7 but for some response might not be instant depending on traffic and urgency of the issue raised.

- Dedicated Technical Team

A2 prides itself in division of work to enforce specialization and relevancy in addressing issues. It owns a team of dedicated professionals who answer to technical questions, apply system patches, and updates.

Control Panel

A2Hosting uses two main control panels namely Plesk and cPanel for account administration. The two are standard in functionality and are remarkably easy to use irrespective of level of expertise of the user. Again, they allow for quick navigation of the elements in a website in a structure that closely resembles a site map. Other features A2 uses to augment control panel functions include:

- Integration of Softaculous

This tool assists in importation, exportation, and installation of scripts for Content Management Systems like Joomla and WordPress.

- Ecommerce tools

For users setting up commercial websites, A2Hosting provides ecommerce tools such as Magenta and PrestaShop to get them started without involving complex coding.

- Root Access

Hosting accounts needing privileged operation allow for installation of open source control panels like ISPConfig, Ajenti, and ZPanel which are capable of offering root access.

Money Back Guarantee

All the package plans at A2Hosting support money-back guarantee. Basically, claims for refund should be made within 30 days after purchasing a plan to be eligible for compensation of the full amount. A legit claim made after the period is compensated in a pro-rated criterion meaning only the unused portion is refunded.

Extras

- Site Builders

Unfortunately, A2Hosting doesnâ€™t own a site builder but again it supports a wide variety of tools that do. You can purchase the builders from third-party distributors and integrate them inside the hosting environment offered by the company for convenience.

- Global Data Centers

Currently A2Hosting has data centers in Asia, Europe, and USA. These allow for smooth and fast content delivery in respect to the location of the browser.

- Developer Features

A2Hosting is an environment for budding webmasters as well as complete gurus in the field including developers. It brings on board popular developer software spanning from latest to outdated yet widely-used versions. Some of the tools natively supported in its Linux and Windows environments include PHP, Python, JavaScript, SSH, Perl, Windows Server, Access DB, Silverlight, and MySQL.

- Migration Policy

Planning a migration of your website to A2Hosting servers? As long as your former web hosting provider uses cPanel, A2Hosting can carry out the migration on your behalf. It takes them a maximum of 72 hours for all hosting types whether shared, VPS, or dedicated. For customers coming from hosting providers without cPanel, the process is manual and can take longer. The company can only migrate one website and database for you for free with the rest costing a variable amount.

A2Hosting Strengths and Weaknesses

Even with all its numerous features, A2Hosting has its wins and fails. This section dissects pros and cons of A2Hosting:

Strengths

- Commendable uptime record

According to WebPulse Tracker, A2Hosting has been found to have an average of 99.92% uptime for the past several months. While this is not incredible, it is an impressive effort worth some applause.

- Fast and friendly support system

Its multiple communication channels allow hosting clients to reach out quickly. In fact, it has an A+ rating on BBB which is quite impressive considering theyâ€™ve had this score consistently for over 15 years.

- Decent average speed

A2Hosting shared web hosting has an average of 370ms as seen in the last 12 months. This is almost 50% faster than the average the industry has of 890ms. Good thing is that the load speed appears consistent with minimal large-scale fluctuations.

- Free site migrations

As noted earlier, migrations from other hosting providers supporting cPanel is free. Unless youâ€™re a tech-savvy and has enough time on your hands, the process is quite hectic. Finding a provider that does it for free is a total plus.

- Compatible with popular CMS

The likes of WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal are supported with one-click setups to lessen the installation pain.

- Free CDN

CloudFlare content delivery network is offered by A2Hosting for free. The technology routes site traffic through a path with least resistance and risk of attack thereby enhancing speed and security.

- Free HackScan

This tool is useful in protecting your site from BlackHat hackers which eliminates the cost of exploitation, disruption of service, and risk of online absence.

- Money back guarantee of 30 days

A month is a long time to assess the performance of companyâ€™s servers and make a decision whether to continue hosting with them or not. Again, the refund is 100% if claimed within the trial period.

- Multiple hosting options

A2Hosting has hosting types for all sorts of setups from businesses, organization, to personal blogs. Your level of expertise is not big of an issue as there are numerous guide pages to familiarize newcomers into the field.

Weaknesses

- Quite costly

All the fancy benefits and features A2Hosting brings to the table attract a slightly expensive price. If you want the budget-friendly plans, consider signing up for service on long term basis. Alternatively, use the promotional codes provided underneath each package plan.

- Heavy restrictions on cheaper plans

The cheaper shared web hosting plans (lite and swift) come with limited resources and relatively slower speeds. This could have a negative bearing of first impression visitors have for your website.

- Not PCI compliant

This limits ecommerce sites which require a web host that is inherently PCI compliant. The shortcoming can be remedied by integrating a secure shopping cart framework.

A2hosting Frequently Asked Questions

Whereâ€™s A2Hosting based?

A2Hosting is based in Ann Arbor in Michigan, USA where its main offices reside. Nevertheless, its data centers are located in various states in Asia, Europe, and USA.

Which are the main hosting packages offered by A2Hosting?

A2Hosting offers shared web hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting, Cloud Hosting, and dedicated server hosting. Additionally, it supports hosting of content management systems like WordPress, Magento, and Joomla. Other types of hosting include email hosting, wiki hosting, forum hosting, etc.

Does A2Hosting sell domains?

Yes, it offers a platform for registration of new domains, transfer and review of existing ones. The top level domain (TLD) options supported include .biz, .com, .net, .info, and .org.

Which is the cheapest hosting package at A2Hosting for a simple blog?

Lite Plan ($3.92) for shared web hosting package works best for startups and simple blogs. Once your website gains momentum, you can upgrade to Swift or Turbo Plans which offers twice the benefits for the cheapest hosting package at A2Hosting.

How do I contact A2Hosting support team?

A2Hosting support team is accessible via live chat, phone, and ticketing system. The customer care works 24/7 and responds even when you have no account with them yet.

Which programming languages are supported by the environments provided by A2Hosting?

A2Hosting supports Ruby, Perl, Python, Ruby on Rails, and PHP which work over Linux and Windows operating systems. In case you have scripts written in other languages, submit a support ticket to find out about its compatibility with hosting frameworks at A2Hosting.

Which control panel is supported by A2Hosting?

Plesk and cPanel are two officially supported control panels for Windows and Linux environments respectively. Custom control panels can be imported mostly the ones that are open source like ZPanel, ISPConfig, and Ajenti.

How do I pay for a plan I like at A2Hosting?

A2Hosting accepts payment via major credit cards including MasterCard, Discover, Visa, and American Express. You can also use payment processing firms such as Skrill, PayPal, PayU Latam, and 2Checkout.

In case I want to shut down my website, will my subscription money be refunded?

Yes, but thereâ€™s a catchâ€¦Your subscription date must not exceed 30 days to be eligible for money back guarantee. Also, the resources allotted should have been used fairly without abuse or illegal purposes. For subscription past the money-back-guarantee period, the unused portion is what is refunded. Money paid for domain registration, purchase of third-party applications, and migration is not refundable.

What are the payment terms at A2Hosting?

Monthly which covers 30 days, annually for 12 months, and biennially for 24 months.

Am I allowed to host more than one website on A2Hosting servers?

Certainly, as long as youâ€™re not using Lite Plan on Shared Web Hosting and WordPress hosting. Those plans only allow hosting of a single website per account due to the resources available to these subscribers.