A2Hosting.com VPS Review
High Speed Service With A Green Heart
In case you should never have heard of A2Hosting, we have to change this right away. When it comes to VPS hosting services they are one of the best players on the market.
They are probably not as known as HostGator or DigitalOcean, but they promise to deliver speeds of up to 20X faster than other hosts.
A2 Web Hosting and VPS Provider – Who Are They?
A2Hosting is a web hosting company established in 1999. They hold three data centers located in Singapore, Michigan and Amsterdam. The service doubtlessly stands out from others as they are the eldest and thus well-experienced players on the market which turns them a great competitor amongst cloud VPS services.
In the beginning, the provider was named Iniquinet. In 2003, it switched its name to the present one, as a homage to the Ann Arbor; the city of origin having an A letter at the start of every word – making 2A. The city Ann Arbor contains over 150 parks and 50,000 trees, for that reason, it is called “Tree city”.
Their customers are striving to deliver news before anyone else – and A2Hosting has to live up to this demand for speed and reliability. And they do. Their basic slogan is “to deliver a service people want and prefer over others”.
Thus, it is normal for A2Hosting to aid saving nature by neutralizing the emission of carbon and planting 3 trees for every plan sold in specific months of the year.
What Makes A2Hosting An Excellent VPS Host?
A2Hosting offers a collection of various technologies and outstanding practices including their A2 optimized plugin for best use of the most famous software, Turbo servers, Solid State Drives (SSD), Turbo boost (VPS & Ideal Servers), Quadruple-redundant network, fine-tuned servers by Professional support team, Options for data center location, Cloudflare content delivery network, 10 GB/ s extra network, Railgun, HTTP/2, SPDY & ESI (Turbo option).
When A2Hosting.com is discussed, the technologies their website hosting and VPS customers can make use of have to be mentioned, and those technologies can be quite difficult to understand for clients visiting the A2Hosting website for the very first time.
For instance, they have the SwiftServer Platform. This platform is the one that encompasses all services and serves to designate a set of measures on the server to make the loading of your site the fastest in the market. It includes: app optimization, cache system, SSD usage and Boost hiring option that will give you more processing power.
Turbo Server is the name that designates the semi-dedicated service, which is shared hosting, but with a fraction of the amount of users sharing the normal plans. In addition, it is configured to use HTTP / 2, SPDY, ESI, and other tools the Lite and Swift plans don’t have.
The A2 Optimized Cache contains the following mechanisms: Turbo Cache, which caches PHP into HTML so it will not be rendered again and can make page loading up to 20x faster. OPcache, and APC that can reduce page response time by half. And Memcached, which caches the database in memory.
And A2 Optimized Software, which does the self-configuration of software like WordPress and Drupal for the best performance.
Another very important platform available is Server Rewind that takes care of the backup in a more user friendly way and keeps the last 30 backups. Remembering that, even though it seems contradictory, there are few companies that offer backup services linked to the hosting plan..
100% of your files as the operating system, site, database and cache are hosted on the SSD allowing a considerable performance gain compared to a common HD. The VPS was greatly cited for its ability to serve a large number of visitors and especially without having periods of downtime.
The limit of inodes is 300,000 as opposed to the 100,000 of many companies currently. Backup has a 50GB limit which is considered a good space.
A2Hosting Uptime & Speed
A2 Hosting also guarantees 99.9% uptime as well as excellent customer support. Besides their claim of having 20X faster load times, that set of features makes the service outstanding since any service close to that would be lucrative and impressive.
Top hosting services need to make a site load within microseconds because if your site takes more than 3 seconds to get visible for the website visitor, it can result in losing half of your traffic. The average page loading time observed in A2Hosting is 376ms throughout 10 months, and this is the highest reviewed time of every web host, and it is 53% faster than other providers.
How does it work?
What A2Hosting.com exactly does is limiting the amount of people on shared servers. Furthermore they use a caching function in their user’s browsers to limit the number of times browsers have to entirely reload the page again when users are surfing on the host’s website.
Average load time per month observed for A2 Hosting during the last 12 months:
- January 2018: 369ms
- February 2018: 374ms
- March 2018: 388ms
- April 2018: 356ms
- May 2018: 398ms
- June 2018: 361ms
- July 2018: 352ms
- August 2018: 343ms
- September 2018: 376ms
- October 2018: 391ms
- November 2018: 358ms
- December 2018: 364ms
Fast & Efficient Customer Support
Quicker load times are definitely an important factor when it comes to webhosting. However, it doesn’t matter if you’re no techie yourself. A2 Hosting pursue their commitment of impressive performance with easy and useful support from their headquarters in the USA. They can be contacted at any time, 24/7, even on Sundays – via email, phone, chat or ticket submission.
Of course we tested the support team and when we contacted them they were instantly available. Their team member was very helpful and answered all our questions within minutes.
Since the hosting provider has 15 years of experience it’s no surprise that independent business raters such as bbb.org give A2Hosting the best grade (A+).
‘HackScan’ For The Highest Website and VPS Security Standard
A2Hosting renders some useful preventive functions to keep hackers away from your web project through a function they call HackScan; a costless service made up of virus scanning, brute force defense, dual web hosting firewall and non-stop security monitoring.
Other hosts only provide standardized tools with less advanced features. And if you’re not clear about what you’re doing, they’re pathetic.
A2Hosting on the other hand goes to great lengths by delivering this security service. That way their clients can simply sleep better knowing that A2’s continuous technical maintenance keeps their website safe.
Easy & Costless Project Migrations
The VPS provider will help in moving your site from your previous hosting provider to their server, in case your site was also managed with cPanel so far. Moving a web project by yourself can be big trouble (you must be tech-savvy to do that) or a menial and time-consuming task. Moreover, sometimes you are charged high by other web hosts for this service.
Content Management and Scripts
A2Hosting VPS comes with a basic standard content management system. CPanel is an Addon that comes with a cost, except for Linux VPS with CentOS 7, where it is included. Setting up famous content management systems like OpenCart, WordPress, Joomla, Magento and Drupal is a 1-click setup. Very easy and painless! In actual fact, your A2 account will be offered with the preinstalled A2 Optimized WordPress plugin if you select the turbo package.
Refund Policy
A2Hosting supports its product by providing money back guarantee if you are unhappy with the experience (within 30 days). Fees for domain registration, setup, SSL certificate and other settings will not be refunded.
Besides permanent virus scanning for free, the host also supports Cloudflare, which means an extra layer of security for your website since you will be protected from Ddos attacks.
Thus, users can get a speedy site, one-click setup, increased security, enhanced uptime and several other free services.
Eco-friendly VPS and Web Hosting
A2Hosting endorses the environment. Thus you even get the feeling of doing something good when selecting them as a web host. A2 Hosting has partnered with Carbonfund.org to fight climate change and to actively do something about it. If you care about the future of our world, using A2Hosting as your VPS provider is already an active step to help the environment.
All services offered by the company are “carbon neutral” since the hosting provider buys carbon offsets, that way you support projects which aim to fight the greenhouse effect. For every energy A2Hosting uses, carbon offsets are burnt to make this planet cleaner and greener place.
A2Hosting VPS Plans & Pricing
A2Hosting VPS is available in 3 versions; Unmanaged, Managed and Core VPS. The only Difference between Managed and Core is that in one case you get root access although they are managing everything for you, and in the other case you don’t get access to the root directory of your project.
Linux VPS – Unmanaged, Root Access:
Linux VPS – Managed with Root Access:
Windows VPS – Managed with Root Access:
The signup process for A2 Hosting is simple and easy. Payments can be made via PayPal, Credit Card, Bank Transfer, PayULatam, Money Order, Check and Skrill. Payment through check is not refunded. 25$ is charged for moving your account to some other data center. The account is instantly activated after the payment and option to install popular CMSs including WordPress are also offered.
Bottom Line
A2 Hosting offers incredibly fast servers with redundant connectivity and well-trained, highly professional and knowledgeable staff delivering the support each client deserves at any time.
