A2 Hosting is a website hosting service that provides its clients with the necessary tools and functionalities that facilitate the seamless running of the websites across various networking platforms. We have featured this hosting provider in our overall list of best web hosts and as the 4th-best green web hosting providers in 2020. The website hosting service was founded by Bryan Muthig in 2001 under the name Iniquinet to handle a small number of clients.
Following its success upon launch, Iniquinet(founder) had to expand its functions and capabilities to satisfy the rapidly growing demand and thus rebranding to ‘A2 Hosting.’ The company was named in honor of the town in which it was founded, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Bryan Muthig continued to be the company’s CEO and has continued to be ever since. It is still independently owned and has been recognized as a ‘generous web hosting’ provider that offers adequate resources for their clients. When we compared it with others, it emerged among the top in our list of best web hosting providers for video streaming, thanks to its energy-efficient SSD drives.
A2 hosting continues to provide services to all its respective clients, from Ann Arbor Michigan where they are able to monitor all its operations for twenty – four hours a day all year round. This is made possible by the fact that the company owns all its web servers which stores all the primary data in their data center in Michigan. Their additional data centers in the Netherlands and Singapore also ensure that they are able to handle their constantly growing client needs.
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A2 Hosting features
A2 hosting has been able to be a world class web hosting service by having a variety of features that suite customer needs. These features can be classified into five main functions:
- Best quality developer tools
- Very high speed performance tools
- Best customer interaction and satisfaction
- Fair pricing policies
- Reliability in uptime
As most customers in today’s world seek to have ultra-high speeds for their connectivity with respective correspondents, A2 hosting has managed to top the list by providing reliable high speeds as its most prominent selling feature. Interestingly, this is even embedded in their motto, ‘Our Speed, Your Success.’
A2 Hosting Pricing Plans
With regard to their pricing detail, you cannot find better, favorable, and more suitable terms than those offered by A2 hosting. With the range of services provided by A2 hosting, the company covers an array of target market clients ranging from beginner level to expert level business sites.
The pricing plans of the web hosting service are categorized into three primary tiers and vary depending on the added functionalities related to the offered services:
- Lite plan – starts at 2.99$/mo
- Swift plan – starts at 3.70$/mo
- Turbo plan – starts at 7.03$/mo
Nonetheless, the general company pricing begins at as little as 3.92$/month for the first trial and a consequent renewal of the services at 9.80$/month.
Below is a snapshot of their Shared Hosting plans. You can check it out on their website here.
If you are a reseller, it is also a favorite for agencies and web design companies. You can check their reseller pricing here and can also see our A2 Hosting Reseller review here. Below is a snapshot of A2 Hosting’s reseller prices:
A2 Hosting Status
With regards to the hosting status, A2 has minimal to none downtime. In fact, they have a very high record of the response time with respect to the individual customer review on the same. This however does not mean that they are completely without their shortcomings.
These incidences occur due to unplanned maintenance, service interruption MySQL interruption, scheduled maintenance and service reboot. Even so, these issues are quickly resolved with the longest recorded issue lasting only a mere three minutes before being resolved.
To confirm the status of the hosting service, a customer can run a manual status check by conducting a ping test and tracert for network troubleshooting. The customer can do so by opening the terminal window and using the command ‘ping’ followed by the domain to check the output. For example, ‘ping domain-name.com.’
The same protocol applies when running a tracert check where we use the command ‘tracert,’ followed by the domain name on the terminal window to give the output. This output information gives the customer a sense of the status of the reliability of the hosting service.
A2 Hosting Magento
A2 Hosting has been using Magento Content Management System (CMS) and has been recognized for its super-fast SSD servers that can outperform its peers by up to 20x. Magento software comes pre-installed, making it easy to integrate it in your website if you are using A2 Hosting. A2 Hosting prefers to use Magento because of its specialization in e-commerce handling.
Magento is more favorable as it is self-hosted with the only requirement being the purchase of the hosting space required for hosting services. A2 hosting also prefers Magento to alternative CMS’ as not only does it facilitate seamless running, but is also an open-source software and therefore customizable to the company’s specialization requirements.
Magento enables A2 hosting to manage these websites on the proponent of data transfer and security. Most client websites use emails as the base of communication and this information is prioritized when considering the CMS to be used. For instance, when setting up emails, A2 hosting offers 3 primary protocols that can be used to achieve this goal: SMTP, POP3 and IMAP.
For as low as $9.99 per month, you can get started with Magento Hosting with A2 Hosting. Check out their Magento plans and features on their website here.
A2 Hosting Email and Backups
A2 hosting offers a more technical process of creating the relevant protocol that enables the client to access an email account hosted on an A2 server. Even though the process is more technical than the rudimentary webmail setups, it offers more features, that are customer oriented and in other cases customer specific.
Further, the various steps involved in setting up a client’s email account vary based on the application. All in all, the same information is required despite the application; with the basic considerations being those of the incoming and outgoing mails. For incoming mails, POP3 or IMAP protocols may be used while SMTP protocols applied for outgoing emails.
To prevent any loss of important client and company data, it is essential to create a backup plan that saves all your website data as well as client email data. This process can be done either manually or automatically based on relevance and use of the data itself
A2 hosting provides a platform where the website data files MySQL databases can be backed up on either dedicated servers or VPS. Moreover, A2 hosting also enhances the cloud data backup through Amazon S3 cloud storage.
A2 Hosting DNS
Foremost, a client needs to have a domain so as to establish their website presence on the internet. While creating a domain is a relatively straightforward process, much thought has to be given as to the purpose and applications of the website before proceeding to begin the process.
A2 hosting has a domain setup process installed into its website via the customer portal. Once the customer chooses the option of registering a new domain, the other steps are basic Q & A in a manner of speaking. Once the process is complete you are able to effectively use the domain under any hosting service providers that best suit your website parameters.
Once the domain is purchased, there are no refunds or money back guarantees since the domain purchase process is specific to the selected registrar which do not offer refunds. This is because once a domain is purchased, the client owns it completely and they are at liberty to apply the domain as per their intended use, much like registering a business name.
A2 hosting service offers clients with the ability to change their primary domain names if they intended to do so; commonly during rebranding. A domain name can be transferred to A2 hosting by simply transferring the domain’s billing and administration information to A2 hosting.
In addition, if a client has a pre – existing domain that had been purchased under a different registrar, A2 hosting can allow the client to change the server settings such that they point to A2 hosting. This process is commonly referred to as setting up name servers.
Furthermore, A2 hosting offers various discounting coupons to promote clients and also as a marketing strategy to attract a larger client base. A2 hosting offer an approximate 60% discount on the hosting services and especially during the holidays as well as other special occasions.
A2 Hosting Free SSL
A2 hosting offers free SSL for hosting services such as Geotrust to enhanced visitors and website security as a promotional content. Further, this free SSL service is automatically linked to your A2 hosting account such that no manual application from the customer is required.
More so, A2 hosting has a let’s encrypt option that automatically generates, installs and renews SSL certificates on a cPanel – enabled client account. This is in addition to the https protocols that encrypt any incoming or outgoing data from the site, to make sure that all data is secure.
A2 Hosting File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
Much like other hosting services, A2 hosting uses FTP protocols to transfer files between the A2 hosting account and your computer. Nonetheless, using FTP to transfer files between the A2 hosting server and your local computer does not encrypt data but simply provides a path. To secure your data, you may use an FTP over SSL (FTPS) for windows users and Secure Shell File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) for Linux users.
As A2 hosting prides itself in providing high speed hosting solutions, one of the tools used to make sure that clients get this service is the use of the django framework. Django is a python based framework that enables the developers to develop high quality apps while using less code in the development process.
To enable faster loading of web pages, A2 hosting uses dedicated servers essentially named turbo servers, which make this possible. A2 hosting provides a drop replacement instead of the base apache, thereby enabling the usage of less memory and the capability of handling connections with greater efficiency.
Even though most web hosting services utilize node.js on their VPS’ A2 hosting has specifically optimized its servers to accommodate node.js such that it has an easy set up process that lets the customer get right to the development process.
A2 hosting utilizes a shared wordpress hosting provider that facilitates the high speeds used by the web hosting service. In retrospect, managed wordpress web hosting services are very much competitive in the sense that they are very much preferred. However, this is no match to the shared wordpress hosting provision since clients prefer faster services over the alternative.
A2 Hosting Pros and Cons
Pros
- Very high speeds
- Interactive and efficient customer support
- Free site migration services
- Reliable Uptime
- Money back guarantees
- CMS, Web builders and Developer friendly tools
- Customer friendly pricing plans
- Green web hosting services
Cons
- Other products and functionalities are too technical
- Relatively high renewal hosting prices
- Limitations on services related to cheapest plans
A2 hosting service comparisons
A2 Hosting vs Hostgator
Hostgator offers almost the same services as A2 Hosting does but the small differences are what separate the two and give a unique presence to them. First off, and with regards to pricing, while A2 hosting offers a starting price of 3.92$/mo, Hostgator has a starting price of 3.95$/mo. Also, Hostgator offers a free domain wherein A2 hosting does not. In Addition, A2 hosting offers only one coupon where Hostgator offers two.
A2 hosting vs Siteground
When comparing A2 hosting to SiteGround hosting services, the first major difference is the response in load time. You will find that A2 hosting has a much faster response time as compared to that of SiteGround.
Further, SiteGround does not currently offer Virtual Private Servers (VPS) whilst A2 hosting offers VPS in both the managed and unmanaged varieties.
Moreover, whilst A2 hosting platform offers an anytime money – back guarantee, SiteGround offers a thirty day guaranteed money – back package.
A2 Hosting Reviews
A2 hosting enjoys a relative high five – star rating which essentially reflects its high standards of product and service provision.
For instance, Agostino P. from Venice, Italy says,
‘A2 is great but even if they offer unlimited features, SSD servers, ect, I can say that the greatest feature they have is customer support.’
In another instance, Kat Sullivan comments,
‘Really loving my service with A2 Hosting. The service is great. No outages like the former company I was with. Very straightforward account management. But the part of A2, is he impeccable customer service… Highly recommend them.’
All factors considered it would be a great shame not to experience the amazing array of services offered by A2 hosting when selecting the ideal web hosting service that best suits your needs.
My name is Nate Reiner and I am the editor here at 10Webtools. I have 8 years of experience using 50+ different web tools ranging from podcast, web hosting, email marketing, and much more. I previously managed a team offering support services to a large conglomerate that utilized tens of software solutions. I now run this blog full-time and when I am not reviewing or testing software, I enjoy riding bikes and supporting my clients achieve internet success. You can reach me directly at [email protected]