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About A2 Hosting
Starting in 2001 as Iniquinet, A2 Hosting is one of the oldest providers. Founded by Bryan Muthig in 2003 its name was changed to A2 Hosting that same year. They are a green hosting company with its headquarters in Michigan, United States. After having partnered with Carbonfund.org they have become 100% carbon neutral.
Known for their speed, they are highly reliable and easy to use web hosting. They started small to handle a small number of clients. Today the company continues to grow rapidly.
A lot of things are great about A2 Hosting like their uptime, speed, and customer service. Let’s have a look.
The pros of A2 Hosting:
Excellent uptime–
One of the vital elements of web hosting is uptime. You may lose your customers forever if your site goes down as they will be unable to access your product or service.
A2 Hosting is very fast with an average uptime of 99.9% over the last six months from January to June. It is a very stable and reliable web host.
Server Monitoring and Malware Scanning for 24/7-
Before things get worse preventing issues is always better to keep your site safe. Sometimes users can experience slowing of their site when there are too many security features like extra scanning, firewalls, or layers of encryption. Luckily A2 Hosting does not have this type of issue. Even by giving you various additional features they can still perform their best.
A 24/7 monitoring service called ‘Imunify360’ scans for malware and other attacks and thereby protects all servers of A2 Hosting.
Your site is also protected from DDoS and Brute Force attacks. These attacks increase a lot traffic to your server and cause your site to go offline unexpectedly
Multiple Server locations-
Their servers are located on 3 continents. Their locations are Michigan (USA), Arizona (USA), Amsterdam (Nederland) and Singapore (Asia). Multiple server locations mean a faster speed to load sites. If your site loads faster it will boost your SEO rankings, the bounce rate will be lower, and you can handle more traffic.
Good customer support-
24/7 support through live chat, email, ticketing, and the phone is provided by A2 Hosting through Guru Support team. If you wish to learn things independently they have a vast and extensive knowledge base too. Its support materials are easy to understand and if you are still unable to understand for clarification they provide screenshots too.
Eco friendly-
A2 hosting is practicing in conserving the environment thereby they use green energy. To support renewable energies and reduce their carbon footprint they have partnered with Carbonfund.org. Since 2007 they are 100% carbon neutral.
Though it might seem illogical to you regarding how this could have a correlation with you deciding to choose A2 Hosting if a company could care about the environment then they probably care about their users also.
Money-back guarantee-
Money-back guarantee of 30 days is followed by most web host providers. A2 hosting also provides 30 days Money-back guarantee. But they also offer a money refund at any time you wish to cancel their service after 30 days. You will get prorated refund on the amount you have paid in advance for their service.
Site migration for free-
with the help of the Guru Support team, they provide free site migration for one website. They will migrate your site in less than 2 days after you fill out the migration request form.
You will get 25 free site migrations if you decide to use Reseller, Dedicated, or Managed VPS hosting. But with the shared hosting plan, migrating multiple with costs an extra $25/ per site.
Easy to use–
Most users look for a beginner-friendly website with no complexity. Even if you are a beginner, A2 Hosting is easy to use.
Despite several perks, there are a few downfalls too. Let’s go through them.
The cons of A2 Hosting:
No free domain- Most of web host providers offer a free domain for the first year. But this is not the case for A2 Hosting. In none of their shared hosting plans, A2 Hosting includes free domain registration.
They will charge you $16.99 per year to register a new domain or to transfer an existing domain name to their site.
Prices high on renewal– On long-term plans (3 years) their hosting prices are low. When you sign up for three years you will get the introductory price which is more than half of the regular price.
Once the deal is over the renewal price is too high. It is almost 3 times the introductory price.
The startup’s initial price is $2.99/month (renews at $10.99 per month)
Drive’s initial price is $5.99/month (renews at $12.99 per month)
Turbo boost’s initial price is $6.99/month (renews at $20.99 per month)
Turbo max’s initial price is $12.99/month (renews at $25.99 per month)
Short term plan does not offer much value–
The ‘Startup’ is A2 Hosting’s cheapest shared hosting plan which cost $2.99/month which is the signup price for 3 years commitment. Though it is good but not the best their cheapest plan has restrictions on features.
At this cheap price many features offered are limited like 1 website, 100 GB of SSD storage, and 5 databases. They don’t provide server rewind backups either. If you are willing to pay more price their ‘Drive’ plan ($5.99/month) gives more features like unlimited websites and SSD storage, free automatic backups, more sites and 2x resources. Another higher tier called ‘Turbo boost’ gives all of these features plus 20x faster turbo and more power.
That’s like a sly trick to promote their cheapest plan at this low rate whereas the expensive plan comes with 2x more features that is actually required to create a new site.
Overall Review
A2 Hosting is one of the fastest providers than other web hosting known for their speed. Their turbo server gives 20x faster speed. It provides good customer support with its representatives friendly and knowledgeable, global servers located in three continents, and terrific uptime.
Its concern for environment to reduce carbon footprint is also a good initiative.
Do we recommend A2 Hosting?
Yes, we do.A2 Hosting is recommended even if you are a beginner or professional with a WordPress account. There Guru Support Team provides the right help always. They have an interesting system of money refunds as discussed above which is completely risk-free. The biggest advantage is you will get 20 times faster speed with ‘Turbo Plan’ that no other web host provider provides if you are willing to pay a slightly higher price.
What advantage does A2 Hosting have over other web host providers with regard to speed?
Your website can be 20x faster with their Turbo Servers. Their SSDs use flash technology which is up to 300% faster the page can be loaded making them very fast.
How can my A2 hosting account be canceled?
Through your online account, you can terminate your service with A2 Hosting. However, if you want a refund on their one-year and three-year plans, you should do it before 90 days not more than that.
What are the alternatives of A2 Hosting?
DreamHost is a better alternative if you are looking for the best price value. HostGator is good too for exploring shared hosting.
