A2 Hosting Review of 20X Faster Speed Claims [2024]

A Quick Overview and Features of A2 Hosting

A2Hosting is a Green Web Hosting company that has been providing hosting services since 2003. It provides cheap shared wordpress hosting, managed wordpress hosting, Reseller hosting, Dedicated Server Hosting, and VPS Hosting for all type of customers ranging from beginners who want to start a successful blog to e-commerce store owners and businesses.

Their hosting Infrastructure includes turbo servers that deliver 20x faster performance as compared to other WordPress hosting services. It supports apps like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and Magento and offers one Free Site transfer. Unlimited monthly data transfers along with 24/7 server monitoring and Unlimited email account hosting in all its shared hosting plans make it a reliable hosting provider.

A2 Hosting’s Customer support is efficient and they help you with your WordPress related support queries also. With an average uptime guarantee of 99.99%, their pricing starts at $2.99 / mo and we recommend their three-year plans for max discounted price. A typical Three-year plan starts at $140 for 3 years. 

Below are A2 Hosting Key Features

• Uptime Guarantee – 99.99% 
• CMS  – WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento
• Support – 24*7*365 Live Chat, Phone, and Email 
• Hosting Plans – Shared WordPress, Managed WordPress, Reseller, VPS, Dedicated Hosting
• Features – FREE SSL, FREE CDN, SSD Disk Space, Unlimited Bandwidth, “anytime” money back guarantee
• Email Accounts – Unlimited
• Site Migration – One Free Migration
• Server Location – 2 in the US, 1 in Europe, 1 in Asia
• Pricing – Starts $2.99/mo (Renewal Price – $8.99/mo)

A2 Hosting Speed Performance Report for WordPress Hosting

The major benefit of using A2 Hosting’s Shared WordPress hosting is the speed that comes with it. A2 Hosting gives you turbo servers with SSD disks and caching features

As you see below, the test site that we created has given us the following results on the Speed test – 

Let’s look at GT Metrix, Tools Pingdom, and Google page speed insights to see how our site performs. 

Details – test Site : framedx(dot)com

Server Location – North America

A2 Hosting Cpanel Dashboard

A2 hosting offers a regular easy-to-use Control panel dashboard with its shared hosting service. You can easily look at your Domains and billing information, and create a Support ticket.

Control Panel (cPanel) is standard for WordPress hosting companies offering shared web hosting service and is loaded with easy to use features like File management and Database administration to Easily manage your MySQL databases with phpMyAdmin

CPanel also helps in Domain administration to Create and edit subdomains and manage account’s addon domains and Add unlimited email accounts

CPanel has Softaculous,  the industry standard that provides easy 1 click install options for WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and Magento. 

A2 Hosting is a Fast WordPress Hosting Solution

Site Speed is very important for lower bounce rates and in a shared hosting provider, site speed often tends to become a concern because your hosting space is shared by multiple websites.

However, A2 hosting provides RAID -10 SSD disk storage built on optimized servers that means you will have blazing fast speed for your shared hosting space and this helps in better SEO rankings on Google with low bounce rates and high conversion rates.

These WordPress optimized turbo servers come with your choice of the server location to boost the CPU performance for faster page loads. There are 4 server location options to choose from – two in the United States, one for Europe ( Amsterdam), and one for Asia (Singapore).

This pretty much covers the major part of the globe!

A2 Hosting infrastructure is SSD powered turbo servers integrated with Cloudflare CDN and advanced DNS features that you rely upon. Compared to another cheap WordPress hosting provider, it claims to provide 20X faster page loads and allocates more resources to your website. 

All shared web hosting options come with FREE CDN ( Content Delivery Network) that automatically routes your traffic through its smart global network to automatically optimize the delivery of your site at a much faster speed. CDN helps you create an efficient delivery of your website to the visitor across the world.

The 12 Core Server minimum and 64 GB RAM server minimum is the standard

Turbo plans have LSCache to statically cache your dynamic WordPress pages and greatly reduce your site’s page load time. For Starter plans, you can use a FREE WordPress plugin like LSCache. 

A2 Hosting uses Anycast DNS that copies your DNS record on the A2 Hosting network of global servers that helps in faster DNS resolution and faster website delivery. 

What is DNS resolution?  When you type a domain name into a web browser, traditional DNS works by translating that domain name into the IP address where that website can be found. The computer is connected with the web host and the web site can be viewed once this IP address is located. 

Given that it uses premium RAID SSDs, Speed boosters, caching DNS, and CDN options, they give an uptime guarantee of 99.99%

Site Migrations are free. In case you are migrating from a different web host, they provide one free migration. You will have to raise a support ticket and customer service will do it for you

Each Shared hosting plan offers unlimited subdomains and unlimited parked domains with Free DNS management.

A2 Hosting Nameservers

Name server information for your account on the A2 Hosting Customer Portal.

For Shared WordPress hosting, A2 Hosting Nameservers are

• ns1.a2hosting.com
• ns2.a2hosting.com
• ns3.a2hosting.com
• ns4.a2hosting.com

A2 Hosting Security Features for WordPress Websites

A2 Hosting provides A2 Optimised servers that are more efficient for WordPress websites from a security perspective. Instead of a generic wp-admin URL, they provide a unique WordPress login URL so that spammers can not access your login URL. 

Automatic WordPress updates with ReCaptcha on the WordPress login page makes sure your WordPress website security is never compromised. 

All shared web hosting plans come with a FREE SSL certificate for secured encryption and automated server rewind backups. Server rewind backup is a  free file recovery program to Easily restore your data from saved snapshots when recovery is necessary. The server Rewind option is available from Drive and above plans.

There is one-click staging available for you to clone your website and test the changes before you migrate your changes to a live environment. All WordPress hosting plans come with perpetual security measures that prevent you from getting HACKED! 

Yes, that’s true.

A2 Hosting offers free HackScan protection to block the hacks on your website. It also provides DDoS protection ( distributed denial of service ) to avoid any attacks. They monitor tier servers 24*7*365 making sure you get a safe and secure WordPress hosting environment

A2 Hosting is a reliable web host as they allow you to set up a Two Factor Authentication ( TFA) helping you enhance your website security. There is 24/7 network monitoring and virus scanning done by the Dual Firewall equipped with Brute Force Defence and constant WordPress core updates if required.

A2 Hosting provides A2 Optimized WordPress Hosting

A2 hosting provides A2 Optimized WordPress which means the hosting servers are customized to better support  WordPress websites.

A2 Optimized for WordPress includes these features

• Page caching
• Database caching
• CSS/JS/HTML minification
• reCAPTCHA on comment and login forms
• Move the login page
• Image compression
• Compress pages with gzip

Often, WordPress users have to add a lot of plugins to support various functionalities. However, adding plugins often slows down the website and impacts the overall performance. 

Often plugins, if not updated, get vulnerable to spammy sites and hackers can compromise the security of your website. A2 Hosting takes care of the speed and security of WordPress sites by providing WordPress optimized hosting servers that are secure and boosts the loading speed of the website.

As soon as you access the A2 Hosting’s login, you will be on a safe, secure, and a reliable host platform

A2 Hosting Customer Support

A2 hosting provides 24*7*365 Guru Crew support in Live Chat, Email, Tickets, or Phone. There is a live chat option that stays always open for you to raise a ticket. It only provides Technical support and Sales Support. 

Technical support is only for Hosting related queries like Website, Database, Website Slowness, Site Migration, SSL, Cpanel, etc. They do not provide WordPress related support. i.e if you will ask them WordPress related questions, they will only guide you to relevant blogs.

This is standard support for Shared WordPress hosting unless you opt for Managed Hosting like Kinsta or WP Engine. 

We have raised a couple of tickets and found the chat support to be super quick, informative, and helpful though there could be more areas of improvement especially in WordPress support. 

Even SiteGround or Bluehost Chat support was not so quick! On a scale of 5, we would customer support as 4.

Check out a few of the support tickets we have raised over time. 

Green Hosting for Clean Environment

A2 Hosting is a green web host with infrastructure that supports carbon neutral hosting. They have partnered with Carbonfund.org and their servers are carbon neutral by using the purchased carbon offsets

While this should not be criteria to choose your web host, but it is good to know that they care for the environment

A2 Hosting Pricing Plans

A2 hosting shared web hosting plans have various options to choose from. Doesn’t matter if you are just starting your blog or if you are an experienced blogger and looking to upgrade to shared hosting, there are enough cheap WordPress hosting options to choose

There are 4 options to choose from – 

• Startup – Starts from $2.99 / mo if paid annually with 1 Website and 100 GB SSD, FREE SSL, CDN, and Free Site Migration with unlimited monthly data transfers. The startup plan does not have a Turbo boost server. 

• Drive – Starts $4.99/mo with unlimited websites and unlimited SSD Storage,  FREE SSL, CDN, and Free Site Migration with unlimited monthly data transfers

• Turbo Boost – Starts $9.99/mo with unlimited websites and unlimited SSD Storage with Turbo Boost servers for 20X faster speed and unlimited monthly data transfers. Also, it has FREE SSL, CDN, and Free Site Migration.

• Turbo Max – Starts $14.99 with unlimited websites, unlimited SSDs and Turbo boost servers for 40x more loading speed and unlimited monthly data transfers

A2 Hosting allows you to cancel any time subscription and they refund you the money on a prorated basis. If you choose to cancel within 30 days, you get your FULL refund. 

Renewal pricing can be pricey but in case you want to save yourself from renewal pricing surges, go for 3 yearly plans when you start. You only need to pay 140$ for 3 yrs for the Startup Plan. 

At the time of renewal, again opt for yearly plans and you can certainly negotiate while you are renewing with them. 

Let’s look at the renewal pricing for the StartUp Plan. 

Check out Renewal Prices here ( scroll to bottom)

A2 Hosting Coupons

Check out the latest A2 Hosting Coupons Code here

A2 Hosting Money-Back Guarantee

A2 hosting goes above and beyond to offer a unique customer experience to its customers. They promise “anytime” money back guarantee to their users.

After purchasing web hosting from them, if you wish to cancel your subscription, you can do it any time and they will offer your refund on a pro-rata basis.

In case you submit a cancellation request within 30 days of your purchase, you will get a full refund from them.

Additionally, if something is bothering you, you can always connect with their friendly support staff and get the required help from their customer support team.

A2 Hosting CMS Support and Developer Tools

A2 Hosting works well with all major Content Management Systems ( CMS) like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento, or OpenCart.

It is super easy to install the above CMS on A2 Hosting servers. WIth single click install options, it gets easy for beginners to get started. 

For developers, A2 Hosting is a developer-friendly shared web hosting with updated web development tools with the latest version of PHP, MySQL, Apache, Python, version Control Software  ( GIT), and free SSH access as soon as you sign up.

You can easily access the servers and databases.

A2 Hosting Customer Reviews

A2 hosting has the ultimate customer reviews online. In case you check their website or a third party, you will find how much people have appreciated their Customer support and the offerings of Shared WordPress Web Hosting plans

What I find amazing is apart from support, they definitely offer a lot in their shared hosting plans at this pricing. This includes Unlimited email hosting, unlimited sub-domains, unlimited SSD storage.

They also have achieved some major accomplishments and earned recognition and accolades as a top hosting provider. Everything comes with a Risk-Free guarantee, Hassle-Free Money back guarantee along a HackScan guarantee!

What else will you wish for 🙂

Pros and Cons for A2 Hosting

The list of PROS  is definitely long. From our honest feedback, we do see that the below offerings are certainly great for a shared web host. With 20x faster speed and 40% faster CPU performance, A2 hosting is definitely a secured hosting platform.

If we look at improvement areas of A2 hosting, we can argue that

1. cPanel for Turbo plans – Usually, with costly plans, there should be a custom dashboard instead of the usual Cpanel. This is an area of improvement I see almost for every shared hosting companies. 

2. Renewal pricing is high but you can get discounts connecting with their chat support

Summarizing, the only improvement that we see is for Turbo plans for A2 hosting that start from $9.99, they should definitely consider offering a custom dashboard like myKinta dashboard offered by Kinsta Managed Hosting or Wp Engine

Is A2 hosting Worth the hype?

A2 Hosting is built on top-class SSDs that gives a blazing fast speed to your websites. Over the years, they have improvised their hosting infrastructure and its guru crew support. For WordPress hosting users, they offer A2 Optimised WordPress that delivers optimal performance for the WordPress websites. 

Their Shared Hosting Option comes with FREE SSL and FREE CDN making it easy for beginners to manage their websites with better speed. Every user can get one FREE migration. Just ask their Guru Crew Customer support and they will do it for Free within 4 days. 

With 99.99%  uptime commitment and 20X faster Turbo servers, A2 Hosting is indeed reliable and good web hosting.

We recommend A2 hosting

A2 Hosting vs Other Shared Hosting Solutions

Let’s see how A2 hosting compares with other Shared WordPress hosting solutions

A2hosting vs Siteground

Here is a comparison of A2 Hosting vs SiteGround and you can see A2 hosting WordPress hosting stands out. There are many features that Siteground doesn’t offer like DDoS protection, Unlimited Email Accounts. Additionally, pricing is cheap as compared to SiteGround

Features	A2 Hosting	SiteGround
Pricing	Starts 2.99$/mo	Starts at $6.99/mo
Unlimited Bandwidth	Yes	No
Unlimited Emails	Yes	No
Staging	Yes	No
HackScan guarantee	Yes	No
Free Migration	One	One
Free Domain	No	No
CDN	Yes	Yes
SSL	Yes	Yes
24/7 Support	Yes	Yes
DDOS Protection	Yes	No
Any Time Money Back	Yes	No

A2 Hosting vs BlueHost

Here is a comparison of A2 Hosting vs BlueHost

Features	A2 Hosting	BlueHost
Pricing	Starts 2.99$/mo	Starts $2.75/mo
Unlimited Bandwidth	Yes	No
Unlimited Emails	Yes	No
Staging	Yes	No
HackScan guarantee	Yes	No
Free Migration	One	Yes
Free Domain	No	Yes
CDN	Yes	Yes
SSL	Yes	Yes
24/7 Support	Yes	Yes
DDOS Protection	Yes	No
Any Time Money Back	Yes	No

FAQs