A2 Hosting

Named for its hometown, Ann Arbor, Michigan, A2 Hosting is an independently-owned hosting company whose impressive product package includes a range of hosting options with Wordpress, website builders, domain registration, Cloud and VPS services and support. They are known in the industry for their speed and have 4 data centers in three different continents (Europe, Asia and North America), which helps to reduce website loading times. Their competitive prices, with a variety of premium options, make them a great hosting option.

• Terrific customer service
• Packages are complete, with lots of extras
• WordPress options are particularly great
• 99.9% uptime can’t be beat

• Plans are on the pricier side
• Some plans don’t have options for Windows servers

A2 Hosting has high quality customer service available around the clock and prioritize ease-of-use for its customers. Standout elements are the Softaculous one-click optimized installations, auto-configurations and plugins that make the setup process simpler. Also the award winning cPanel control panel provides easy access to email, database and domain administration and security features. Their nearly perfect uptime and great packages also make them leaders in the world of hosting. In particular their WordPress plans, an Editors Choice, stand out from the pack.

There are more affordable options in the world of hosting, but A2 offers solid, complete plans that won’t disappoint.

Lite plan: For $3.90 a month (although this is the initial cost - price doubles upon renewal), you’ll get five databases, 25 email addresses, and hosting of one website. Also comes with unlimited storage and data transfer, cPanel control panel and Softaculous 1-click installs for tons of apps. Bonus items: Let’s Encrypt free SSL certificate, choose from 3 server locations, CloudFare integration (to load pages more quickly) and security checks that ensure your site stays up to date and running smoothly.

Swift plan: At $4.90 a month (again, this is the initial price, as when you renew the value doubles), the Swift plan offers unlimited everything! You’ll also get backups and doubled allocated cores (2x2.1ghz), physical and virtual memory (which can boost speed significantly on big sites).

Turbo plan: For $9.35 a month (yes, price doubles when you renew) A2 provides Turbo Speed servers, with fewer users per server, more resources per user and enhanced performance with Apache. There’s also A2’s optimized site accelerator, Magento hosting and WordPress LiteSpeed Cache, HTTP/2, SDPY and Edge Side Includes (ESI) to ensure your sites load and run as quickly as possible. The Turbo plan also doubles the physical memory available in the Swift plan (to 2GB).

For any of these, if you buy an annual, biennial or triennial plan there are significant discounts.

A2’s Turbo Server option means your page will load up to 20 times faster, and with greater stability than other hosting services. This is because they’re hosted on speedy SwiftServer SSDs that work three times faster than standard hard drives, processing thousands of operations each second. They also use less CPU and memory and there are fewer users per server. And A2 has an impressive 99.9% uptime guarantee.

Their “Guru Crew” support team offers 24/7 support, and comprehensive security for your site: round the clock monitoring, brute-force defense, virus scanning, dual web hosting firewall and more.

Plans include a Cloudflare Content Delivery Network, allowing visitors from around the globe to access your site quickly, user-friendly cPanel control panel and Softaculous staging to easily install popular web apps (in one click). Use Softaculous to find software, content management solutions (like Wordpress, Drupal and Magento), eCommerce apps, wikis and more.

You can also get SSL certificates and Paypal merchant accounts. Shared plans have the added bonus of a free online magazine subscription and $50USD of advertising on Bing.

A2’s great reputation is well-deserved. It’s a hosting service that will grow with you, a service that truly earns its marks for robust packages with tons of extras, supportive customer service available 24/7 and an impressive uptime. This is particularly the case for users who plan on working with WordPress. Whatever your hosting needs, A2 will meet them - and more.