A2 Summary
A2 offers an excellent mix of features for newer websites. Their hosting platform offers speed, reliability, and security all at an affordable price point. And their dedicated WordPress hosting makes starting and running a WordPress website even easier.
Choosing the right hosting company can make or break your site. You want to choose a hosting company that is both reliable and offers fast service. While there are many hosting options available, each offers its own specialty making some a better choice than others. A2 hosting is similar to other hosting options available, but the team has a strong technical focus and excellent customer service and support. If you’ve never heard of A2 hosting before or are still on the fence about whether it is the right choice for you, here is some more information about A2 hosting and why I love working with them.
What Is A2 Hosting?
A2 Hosting was started in 2001 by CEO Brian Muthig, who has a strong background as a UNIX systems administrator. Initially started as a hobby to host a few small websites, the company quickly grew, transforming into a customer-centric company focused on providing the best technical experience for developers of all skill levels. The company’s motto is to create a web hosting company that is so good the staff would want to use it themselves. The result is one of the best web hosting companies available for websites of all sizes.
Top Features
To give users the best experience possible, A2 Hosting focuses on offering the best technical specs possible. This helps users get faster page load times, better storage, and better overall performance. To achieve this, A2 provides several features from traditional options to the latest technologies helping them stand out from the crowd.
Solid State Drive Servers
Your site’s page load time plays a massive role in how you rank in Google, your bounce rate, and conversion rate. To help give you the best load time possible, A2 offers free solid-state drive servers for each hosting package, from shared hosting to dedicated servers. These turbo servers can give you up to 20x faster page loads than other hosting companies. Not only do these servers give you faster load time, but they can also handle more traffic. This can keep your site running as expected even when your traffic increases.
Multiple PHP Versions Available
Designed by a developer, A2 Hosting supports several different PHP versions, including v4.4, 5.x, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, and 8. Whichever version you used to create your site, A2 has the support you need to ensure your site operates at peak performance. In addition to PHP, A2 also supports the best versions of MySQL, MariaDB, Node.js, Apache, and more.
SSL Certificates
SSL Certificates are an essential tool to help eCommerce sites improve consumer trust. An SSL Certificate can also improve your search engine traffic. But many times, getting these certificates on your own can be annoying and even complicated. A2 makes the process simple by giving you options from free SSL Certificates to Premium SSL options. A2 also makes it quick to set up, giving you an HTTPS site in no time.
Global Servers
All of A2’s servers are high-powered and ultra-reliable. They are continuously monitored to make sure that you experience as little downtime as possible. These servers are located throughout the world, with servers in Michigan, Arizona, Amsterdam, and Singapore. This helps keep your data as close to your customers and visitors as possible. The best part is that A2 has a redundant network. So even if one internet provider goes down, there’s another one available to pick up the slack.
SSH Access
When it comes to developing your site, secure shell access is essential, which is why A2 offers free, instant SSH access when you sign up. All accounts are hosted on high-performance servers that give you fast load time. This SSH access makes it perfect for secure file transfers, remote connections, and more.
Live Support
Knowing that when something goes wrong, there’s a real person to talk to gives you serious peace of mind. This is why A2 Hosting offers full-time live support. No matter when trouble strikes, you’ll be able to get in touch with an experienced member of their Guru Crew to walk you through the issue. Whether you accidentally click the wrong thing, your site crashes, or you just have a question, it’s easy to get the support you need. Help is available via chat, phone, and email- whichever is easiest and most comfortable for you.
Go Green
One of my favorite things about A2 Hosting is that they provide carbon neutral hosting. This “green” hosting helps protect the environment thanks to A2’s partnership with Carbonfund.org. This organization focuses on reforestation and promoting energy efficiency. In addition to this partnership, A2 employees telecommute from their homes and work remotely. A2 also recycles their olders servers, plant trees as a part of different promotions, and saves energy by using SSDs rather than HDDs.
A2 Hosting Plans
Whether you’re a beginner blogger or running a busy eCommerce site, A2 offers a solution for everyone with different hosting packages.
- Shared Hosting. Perfect if your site has relatively low traffic, this plan lets you share a server with other sites. This is one of the cheapest options for hosting.
- Managed WordPress Hosting. If you use WordPress, this is the perfect turnkey solution. Everything is optimized, and you get the tools to run a fast and scalable WordPress site right away.
- Reseller Hosting. A2’s fast servers mean that you can provide your clients with fast and reliable service using A2’s resources.
- Managed VPS Hosting. Easily manage your domains, email accounts, files, and databases using this hosting package that includes cPanel, making it accessible for the novice to the expert developer.
- Dedicated Server. Get an exclusive server for your site to efficiently manage high traffic volumes and get superior website performance and stability.
Superior Performance with A2
A2 Hosting is dedicated to providing the best possible performance by using state of the art technology that will help ensure fast load time and smooth functioning of your site. These efforts make A2’s service ultra-reliable. In fact, A2 offers a 99.9% Uptime Commitment. Ensuring your site stays online means you won’t miss out on sales, and your customers can have the best experience possible.
Extras from A2 Hosting
Even though A2 Hosting has many features that help make hosting your own domain as easy as possible, there’s still more. They have several extras that make the decision to switch to A2 Hosting a clear winner.
Domain Registration and Transfers
Having the perfect domain name can make it easy for your customers and readers to remember. A2 Hosting makes it easy to register new domain names and transfer existing domain names. They make the process easy and affordable. Plus, if you have any questions along the way, the support team is at the ready.
Free Site Migration
One of the concerns with switching hosting companies is having to rebuild your whole site. With A2, the process is simple. When you choose to switch to A2 Hosting, you get 100% worry-free account migration with 24/7 support from the Guru Crew. In fact, there is even a team of expert Migration Specialists who specialize in moving sites to A2 Hosting servers every day. All you have to do is put in a request once you’ve selected a hosting package.
Perpetual Security
Every account with A2 Hosting gets HackScan Protection to keep your site safe from hackers. This includes several security features such as a dual firewall, brute force defense, and rebootless kernel updates. A2 also offers (DDoS) Protection, keeping your site online even during sophisticated attacks. It’s the protection your site needs without having to do any extra work.
What Could Be Better
Despite all the latest tech, like all hosting companies, there are still some things that could be better with A2 Hosting. However, most of these things have to do with billing. For instance, A2 Hosting has the option to do on-demand backups. While this service is appreciated, it would be nice if to have this rolled into the monthly bill rather than having to pay separately for it. Additionally, A2 Hosting has additional fees for things like site downgrades and sidegrades. There are also extra fees for database migrations, account migrations, email migrations, and datacenter migrations. Depending on the complexity of your site, this could end up being costly if you need assistance.
Another issue is that the concurrent HTTP connections are limited to 15-50 connections on most servers. While this usually isn’t an issue, there are certainly some users that this would not be enough. So if you need more than this, you may need to get more than one server or go with a different hosting company.
Why You Should Pick A2 Hosting for Your Site
All-in-all, A2 Hosting is an excellent choice for most bloggers, websites, and eCommerce sites. Their technical prowess and focus on making it easy for the customer means that anyone can use it, whether you’re a novice navigating the waters on your own or an expert-level developer. The different hosting plans give you room to grow as your business grows, and the 24/7 Guru Crew means there’s always someone there to help. Choosing A2 Hosting has been an excellent choice for me, and I couldn’t be happier with the service. If you’re in the market for a hosting company, put A2 Hosting at the top of your list to check out.