A2 Hosting is now Hosting.com – same speed, support, and services under a new name.
As a hosting expert and website owner, I’ve tested A2 Hosting, focusing on the quality of their hosting services, pricing plans, features, customer support, and and ease of use.
A2 Hosting, established in 2001, has become a reputable company catering to more than 110,000 clients globally. A2 Hosting prides itself on its commitment to its core values: providing exceptional support and offering affordable plans for a diverse clientele. Their two-decade-long experience equips them with the expertise to deliver top-notch hosting services.
A2 Hosting provides multiple hosting plans, including shared, VPS, dedicated, WordPress, reseller hosting, and several “hosting by service” plans. The company is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and is popular for its impressive server speeds and that’s particularly why I decided to review them.
A2 Hosting holds an impressive 4.7-star rating on HostAdvice, reflecting its outstanding offerings and user-friendliness. Importantly, A2 Hosting has earned an A+ rating with the BBB, showcasing its excellent business practices. Moreover, it boasts a 4.3/5.0 rating on Trustpilot, demonstrating a wide range of positive customer feedback.
In my opinion, A2 Hosting emerges as an exemplary hosting provider that I wholeheartedly endorse. With terrific uptime, an array of diverse plans, and attentive customer service, it’s an ideal pick for high-traffic sites and WordPress users seeking optimized performance.
To effectively compare different hosting providers, it is important to have a standardized methodology that specifies criteria to consider and then gives ratings based on how the hosts perform per criterion.
In this A2 hosting review, I’ve followed our hosting rating guide that measures and gives scores on how hosting providers perform so you can choose the right one for your business.
| Parameter | Score | Why we gave this score |
| PRICES | 8.0 | A2 Hosting is quite affordable with a money-back guarantee, but you enjoy the most value for money on its multi-year packages. Plus its boosted plans are slightly pricier. |
| FEATURES | 9.0 | A2 Hosting offers virtually every kind of hosting, good support, and free migrations (even for shared). |
| PERFORMANCE | 9.5 | A2 Hosting performs incredibly well with an excellent 138 ms response time plus a 99.9% uptime guarantee. |
| EASE OF USE | 9.0 | 1-click popular app installs, a modern cPanel, and a built-in website builder make it easy for you to get your website up and running. Plus the host’s user dashboard is exceptionally intuitive with a strong focus on support. |
| SUPPORT | 8.0 | A2 Hosting offers support via phone, live chat, email, and a vast knowledgebase. However, I’d give them 8.0 because it took over 30 minutes for the agent to join the live chat. |
And a varied suite of WordPress-specific plans. They also offer more technical plans like email and cPanel hosting, plus hosting specifically tailored for different services – Business, Ecommerce, Agency, Non-Profit, etc.
Of all A2 Hosting’s features, I’d say the most unique feature they offer that make them stand out from other hosts is their Turbo plans – which they claim to offer up to 20X loading speeds.
Their Turbo plans are offered as standalone packages or as boosts to their other hosting plans, giving you access to their Turbo servers, NVMe AMD EPYC servers, traffic surge protection, HTTP/2 & HTTP/3, Apache 2.4, as well as other Deluxe WordPress features.
You should always consider some important performance metrics namely – speed, uptime, and loading time – before you commit to a web host.
The server speed measures how quickly the host’s servers send data to a user visiting your website. The uptime is how consistently your host’s servers ‘stay online’. And finally, how quickly will your web pages load when a user visits your website?
A2 Hosting promises a 99.9% uptime guarantee – the industry’s standard. To measure the host’s speed and load times, I used GTMetrix to test the performance of reloaderaddict.com – a website hosted on A2Hosting.
These were the results:
Reloaderaddict.com had a fair response time (time to first byte) of 358 ms and fully loaded time of 1.3 seconds (experts recommend 1-2 seconds).
The domain had an overall performance of 98% which is excellent:
A2 Hosting offers 24/7 support through:
On A2 Hosting, you get a global directory of help lines you can call per region:
If you’re intending to use phone support, make sure there is a helpline for your country.
I love it when a host has live chat support, however, A2 Hosting always has long queues of customers waiting to speak with their live agents. And on two separate occasions, I had to wait for over 30 minutes on the queue:
It took a while but the agent joined. They were very polite and answered all my questions quickly. However, the agent was quite quick to redirect me to their articles and self-help pages when I wanted them to answer me directly.
Still, their support is great and I got answers to most of the questions I asked:
A2 Hosting allows customers to open support tickets, but this support feature is only available for customers who have signed up. Disappointing.
And finally, a vast knowledgebase with a built-in search engine and answers to most questions you may have relating to your packages:
I doubt if anyone in the 21st Century still requests support via old-school mail but they do have a physical mailing address:
Registering and signing up on A2 Hosting is incredibly straightforward and easy. To have an account, however, you need to buy one of their plans. You can simply click the “Get Started” button on their homepage and then go from there:
Once you choose a plan and checkout, you also have the option to customize your hosting plan – choose a location, add a dedicated IP, whether you want the website builder, plus several other add-ons:
Once you follow all the prompts and you have an account, you’ll have access to the A2 Hosting account management dashboard that boasts a clean, intuitive design and a direct login to your cPanel:
A2 Hosting features a modern cPanel as its control panel where you can manage all your hosting backend – files, storage, backup, databases, domains, emails, etc:
You can access your cPanel directly from the account dashboard plus A2 Hosting also added their WordPress optimized installations. In the end, A2 Hosting cPanel has been designed to help you manage your website and servers effectively and efficiently.
It is incredibly easy to install WordPress on your A2 Hosting account. If you haven’t bought a plan yet, good news! That’s the easiest way to go. While you’re checking out, simply click the “WordPress A2 Optimized” and once you are done, WordPress will be installed automatically:
If you already have an account and plan though, you can install WordPress manually or via cPanel using Softaculous.
To install WordPress on A2 Hosting using Softaculous, see this help article.
To install WordPress on A2 Hosting manually, see this help article.
To add an email account to your website with A2 Hosting you can use cPanel or the Plesk panel (for Managed WordPress hosting). Simply login to cPanel, go to ‘Email Accounts’, click ‘Create’.
Next, select the domain you want to tie the email address to and then fill in your intended email address. You can then click ‘Set a password now’ or send a login link with login details to an alternate email address you’ll provide.
Then click ‘Create’ and you’ll have your account ready.
Hostinger is known for its affordability and ease of use, making it a popular choice among beginners and small to medium-sized website owners.
They offer a variety of hosting services, including shared hosting, VPS hosting, and cloud hosting. Hostinger offers a user-friendly interface, competitive pricing, and solid performance.
Learn more about these web hosts in our A2 Hosting vs Hostinger comparison.
HostGator offers a wide range of hosting services, including shared hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated servers, and cloud hosting.
Compared to A2 Hosting, HostGator offers a broader array of hosting options and an excellent uptime guarantee, making it a versatile choice for various web hosting needs.
Learn more about these web hosts in our A2 Hosting vs HostGator comparison.
Despite not being one of the biggest names in the industry (not yet), A2 Hosting is an incredible host and I recommend them. In this A2 Hosting review, you’d see that they offer very versatile hosting plans suited to different businesses, great support, and incredible server speeds (one of their main strong points).
Their Turbo plans are specially optimized for speed – music to Google’s ears and the potential for higher rankings.
A2 Hosting sells itself as a host for the people – as a smaller provider with a smaller customer base, their services are quite tailored and they can ultimately cater better to their users.
A2 Hosting is known for its fast servers and excellent customer service. If you’re looking for different pricing structures or enhanced features, consider exploring our page on the 10 Best A2 Hosting Alternatives to find a service that matches your specific requirements.
| Plan Name | Warranty | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Positive SSL Single Domain | MYR 199.75 | MYR 9.99 | Details |
| Premium SSL | MYR 998.77 | MYR 49.94 | Details |
| Positive SSL Wildcard | MYR 199.75 | MYR 66.60 | Details |
| Positive EV SSL | MYR 3,995,099.00 | MYR 76.59 | Details |
| Premium SSL Wildcard | MYR 998,774.75 | MYR 149.82 | Details |
| Plan Name | Space | RAM | Bandwidth | Warranty | Number of Sites | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free Trial | Unlimited | Unlimited | MYR 0.00 | Unlimited | MYR 0.00 | Details |
| Plan Name | Space | CPU | RAM | OS | Panel | Warranty | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Managed Linux VPS XS | 80 GB | 2 cores | 4 GB | cPanel | MYR 0.00 | MYR 131.84 | Details | |
| Managed Linux VPS S | 160 GB | 4 cores | 8 GB | cPanel | MYR 0.00 | MYR 153.81 | Details | |
| Managed Linux VPS M | 320 GB | 8 cores | 16 GB | cPanel | MYR 0.00 | MYR 161.80 | Details | |
| Managed Linux VPS L | 640 GB | 16 cores | 32 GB | cPanel | MYR 0.00 | MYR 221.73 | Details |
A2 Hosting servers run on Linux operating servers. The Linux operating server is known for its security and stability. All plans offered by the company are also hosted on a safe and fast SwiftServer platform. A2 Hosting has the best hardware, networks, data centers, software, and industry techniques that ensure its servers run at optimal performance.
A2 Hosting has a Turbo Server option to make your website 20X faster. Their Turbo servers have a drop-in, speed-enhanced Apache alternative and more resources per user. They’re also faster because they have SSDs, which use flash technology to improve page loads by up to 300%.
The cPanel has a feature called Softaculous. Through Softaculous, you can install the web’s most popular software with only one click. You can easily install WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla. You’ll also get support from the best versions of PHP, MySQL, Apache, Python, and resources such as free SSH access, Git, and much more.
A2 Hosting has excellent customer support. They provide 24/7/365 live support via chat, email support, and ticketing support, and they even can be contacted through the phone. The hosting provider also has an excellent knowledge base and FAQ sections, where users can get answers to their questions.
A2 Hosting’s money-back policy is hassle-free. If you don’t like the service you’ve purchased and cancel your plan in 30-days, you can get a full refund. If you cancel your plans after 30-days, you will get a prorated refund of unused service.
A2 Hosting offers 24/7 support over phone, live chat, tickets, and a vast knowledgebase. Their ticket support is only available for registered customers.
A2 Hosting is not owned by any other hosting company but is independent and still owned by the founder Bryan Muthig who founded the company in 2001.
We compared A2 Hosting and Siteground in this A2 Hosting vs SiteGround article and A2 Hosting came out on top, thanks to its more versatile plans and storage. A2 Hosting was also slightly faster than SiteGround.
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