A2 Web Hosting Review

A2 Hosting Review

Several months ago I moved my two websites to A2 Hosting. And I like them so much I have started three additional websites with A2.

You may not have ever heard of A2 as they are not as well known as others, such as Blue Host, Host Gator or Go-Daddy to name a few. I won’t say what hosting service I moved from, but I can assure you that A2 is head and shoulders above my previous host.

What is A2?

A2 Hosting has been around since 2001. They were originally called “Iniquinet! They have data centers around the world in US (Michigan), in Europe (Amsterdam) and in Asia (Singapore)

They say they have up time rate of 99.9% and I can tell you that I have never know any of my sites to be down. Their support is outstanding in my opinion. I am not a technical person so when I first moved my website to A2 I had tons of questions and I always got a prompt, courteous and accurate reply from them in a very reasonable time frames. They also have a “live Chat” support feature that is wonderful

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What Are the Claims of A2 Hosting?

A2 says their speeds and customer support are great and as it turns out that are pretty darn accurate in these claims

One popular host testing organization writes “A2 is the fasted hosting provider we have tested. A2 claims speeds of up to 20 times faster than their competitors. Well anything close to that would be amazing. Some of the top hosting providers load in under a second. We know anything taking even 3 seconds to load will cause you to lose half of your traffic.

So, how does A2 fair? Pretty dang fast. How about an average load time of 376ms over a ten month period. That is an amazing 50% faster rate than the industry average of 890ms. They do this by being careful to limit the number of people on their shared servers. They have implemented “caching” which stores information in people’s browsers which limits the number of times they have to go back and request information from your website over and over again. Below is a graphic showing a ten month average load time for A2 Hosting.

Fast and Efficient Customer Support

Their fast load times are certainly nice but doesn’t matter a whole heck of a lot if when you do need help with something their support department comes on not so good. Following up with their impressive support division they offer helpful, US-based support. Support is available 24/7/365 through email, chat, phone or ticket submission.

And they are rated A+ with the BBB which is impressive considering that have been dong this for 15+ years. As I mentioned at the beginning of this review, I can personally attest to their fine support. All of my inquiries were answered super fast.

Free HackScan” Will Keep Your Site Safe

These preventative measures keep hackers out of your site and also includes a dual web hosting firewall, virus scanning, 24/7 security monitoring, and a brute force defense.

Some of the other hosts provide similar tools for you to use if you have the knowledge on how to use them. If you don’t then they are useless. A2 hosting provides this preventative service for you, going above and beyond the others  so you can have “peace of mind so you can concentrate on running your site and not constantly performing technical maintenance.

Free Site Migrations

Installing popular content management systems like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, OpenCart and Magento is a simple 1-click setup. Just plain simple and painless. In fact, your A2 account comes with the A2 Optimized WordPress plugin pre-installed if you select the Turbo Package

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Money Back Guarantee – 30 Days

A2 stands behind their service. They offer a complete refund if you don’t like your experience for any reason within 30 days. Take note that the domain registrations, setup fees, SSL certificate, and other migration fees are not refundable. This is common practice with other services also.

Green Web Hosting

For those of you concerned about climate change and the environment you will like the fact that A2 supports the environment. A2 is partnered with Crabonfund.org to help battle climate change. All of their servers are “carbon neutral” because they purchase carbon offsets. When you purchase carbon offsets you are funding projects that reduce emission of greenhouse gases. These types of projects are responsible for restoring forests, help increase the energy efficiency of buildings and transportation and helping to upgrade power plants to create less pollution. So for every amount of energy A2 Hosting uses, they are buying carbon offsets to make the world a greener, cleaner place.

In addition to all this A2 is fighting climate change and the company allows employees to telecommute to prevent unnecessary CO2 emissions.

They recycle older servers rather than throwing them out, they plant trees during special promotions and reduce trash by using coffee mugs instead of disposable cups.

A2 was also one of the first companies that offers Solid State Disk Drives that use much less energy than the traditional HDDs.

Are There Any Cons to Using A2?

Well I’ve given you a lot of reasons why you should be using A2 Hosting as your hosting service. Are their any reasons not to use them? Maybe a few but very minor if you ask me and, in my opinion, the good things far outweigh the not so good.

Recently the up time figures have slipped to 99.91%. Not a lot, but just something to be aware of.

A2 is not the cheapest service on the market. There is an adage of “you get what you pay for” and that certainly rings true in this case. All those fancy benefits come at a price. A2 is a tad more expensive than some of the better-known hosting companies but they do come in at about the middle of the pack. So, far worth it if some of these benefits are of a concern to you.

There are also some restrictions on the cheapest plans like number of websites and databases allowed on the cheap plan. But, then again, all companies have certain restrictions on their cheap plan that are not on the more expensive plans.

So in my opinion the cons I’ve listed are very minor and not deal breakers in my book.

I won’t go into cost specific here as those change often and there are always various promotions that can get you a good deal so is best to just go to their website and do a plan comparison.

With all this considered I do have to say that I myself am a customer of A2 and I could not be happier with the service and support they offer. Over the years I have used various other hosting companies and I can say with completely honesty that A2 has been simply the best hosting service I have ever used. I am so grateful to the friend who recommended them to me.

For those interested they also offer an affiliate program which does pay a handsome commission and I have to disclose I am an affiliate so if you do decide to purchase a plan through any link on this page, I will receive a commission. The commission I do receive will go right back into my business and help keep this website available to provide help to others so I thank you for your support if you do decide to purchase one of the great hosting plans offered by A2.