A2 Hosting Review (2025): An Old Dog With New(ish) Tricks

A2 Hosting at a Glance

A2 Hosting Pros, Cons, & Things That Could Be Better

When seeking a new hosting provider for your site, you may be tempted to go with one of the newer companies that pop up in ads on YouTube and search engines. Or even worse, you may consider going for one of the older, past-its-prime hosting providers who rely on brand names rather than quality and reliability to win customers. You may be thinking that A2 Hosting is one of those old dogs, too.

Frankly, you’d be wrong.

After signing up and testing A2 Hosting personally, I can tell you that it still delivers impeccable performance scores. It’s still incredibly easy to use, even for beginners and non-techy people like me.

A2 Hosting offers shared, managed WordPress/WooCommerce, dedicated, and reseller hosting, with both managed and unmanaged plans available for VPS. Its Turbo server plans, which come with the A2 Optimized plugin for WordPress, offer better speed and security for your site (more on those later). And for all the value A2 Hosting has to offer, its plans are still reasonably priced.

Is A2 Hosting perfect? No. It has its pitfalls and disappointing moments. Very few hosting providers reach the pinnacle of perfection in performance and service. Read on to find out if what A2 Hosting does get right, however, is right enough for you.

Excellent Features, but a Somewhat Confusing Website

First-time visitors to A2 Hosting’s website may find themselves a bit confused by some of the terms they’re confronted with. That’s because A2 Hosting’s website uses some non-industry-standard language to describe its plans’ features. It makes it difficult to discern just what features are offered in some cases and whether or not they’re anything special in others.

A2 does offer some excellent features, such as unlimited SSD storage on its second entry-level plan and unlimited NVMe storage on the Turbo plans like the one I tested. You get unlimited bandwidth on all plans and 4 with 8 of RAM. If you need more power or specialized hosting, A2 also offers Turbo plans for its VPS and dedicated servers, as well as Turbo optimizations on its managed WordPress plans.

But then there are other excellent features that aren’t as easy to decipher. One example is the Perpetual Security set of features, which includes security essentials such as virus scanning, DDoS protection, firewall, brute force defense, and 24/7/365 monitoring. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention the A2 Optimized plugin, a feature developed exclusively for A2 Hosting. The plan descriptions don’t do it justice, and a beginner may not realize just how special it is.

And then there are the Turbo servers. What the heck is a Turbo server anyway? We’ll cover that in more detail in a bit, but let’s just say it uses well-established, time-proven speed and performance-increasing technology, and that A2 Hosting has given it a clever name.

For the new website owner, all of this marketing terminology may leave them confused. For the experienced hosting customer, it can be a bit annoying. Please don’t let either reaction stop you from choosing an excellent host like A2 Hosting for your site.

Those Turbo Servers, Explained

A2 Hosting’s Turbo servers are marketed as being “up to 20X faster” than other providers’ servers. (Your site probably won’t be. Mine wasn’t.) Turbo servers are LiteSpeed-powered servers with additional performance enhancements. With LiteSpeed technology, these servers offer increased performance for your website by, among other things:

• Adding five extra layers of caching optimizations
• Allocating double the physical memory of a standard server
• Having their own PHP API to provide more speed
• Automatically enabling an APC (Alternative PHP Cache)
• Utilizing LSCache, which caches both mobile and desktop views of your site for faster loading times

Now, not every host offers LiteSpeed web server software because it incurs a hefty license fee. And some of the hosts that do offer LiteSpeed limit it to their higher-priced plans. A2 Hosting, however, offers LiteSpeed servers with shared and managed VPS hosting plans, including non-Turbo ones. Not every plan gets the LiteSpeed treatment, though, so check plan specifications before signing up.

A2 Optimized Plugin for WordPress and Other CMSs

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A2 Hosting’s A2 Optimized WordPress plugin is an easy-to-use and beginner-friendly tool that analyzes your site’s performance, security, installed theme, and plugins. It then gives you suggestions on what to configure to improve your site’s “scores” for optimal site performance.

The A2 Optimized plugin suggests optimizations newbies and experienced WordPress admins may find useful, such as page caching, image compression, and using system cron vs. WordPress cron. It also explains the various performance and security elements and why you should consider each important. Most of the time, you’ll only need to toggle its built-in tools on or off – it’s that simple to use.

I’ve been admin for many a WordPress site in my day and yet found using the plugin on our test site useful. One of the A2 Optimized plugin’s site security suggestions for me was something I always meant to do but never remembered to do until it was too late: set up CAPTCHA for comments on blog posts to avoid spam bot infestation.

I didn’t pay any attention to the speed and performance scores as we use other tools, but for someone less experienced, I can see the benefit of having those tools available right in your WordPress dashboard. Knowing what your Time to First Byte or First Contentful Paint are and how they can affect your site’s performance can be enlightening.

A2 Hosting didn’t stop at WordPress, however, when it came to developing its A2 Optimized plugin. The A2 Optimized plugin works for Prestashop, Drupal, OpenCart, Joomla, and Magento, too. You can optimize your UNIX socket files, autoconfigure HTML, CSS, and JS files, and store static pages, all to increase your site’s loading and download speeds.

WordPress Site Patch and Update Testing

A2 Hosting’s tech crew wants to make sure your WordPress site never suffers from one of those “update deaths” that have plagued many a WordPress site owner. To that end, they test all patches and updates before your site is allowed to update.

No more worries about some plugin fouling up the works or crashing your site simply because the good folks at WordPress chose to update something. Likewise, you won’t have to worry if a “fix” doesn’t, in fact, fix something as it should. A2 Hosting isn’t going to let your site’s performance slip when it should improve.

Loads of Other Goodies

I set up our test site using the Turbo Boost (now Turbo Velocity) shared hosting plan with WordPress preinstalled. It includes those neat Turbo servers plus unlimited NVMe storage, bandwidth, and email accounts, free SSL and site migration, and enhanced cloud backups. There are also WordPress-specific features like WP-CLI and a deluxe WordPress Toolkit.

While all shared hosting plans are Cloudflare compatible, my Turbo hosting plan also came with a free QUIC.cloud CDN offer. But I didn’t go through the hoops of signing up on their site as we prefer to test default setups.

Even A2 Hosting’s entry-level plan includes some pretty good features. You’ll get unlimited bandwidth and email accounts, free SSL, free site migration, and website staging capabilities. If you’re happy with 10 GB of SSD storage and a 1 website limit, this could be the plan for you.

That’s all to say that yes, the Turbo plans are a bit more expensive than the standard shared plans, but they’re definitely great value. On the other hand, you really don’t have to spend as much as I did to get real value with A2 Hosting.

A2 Hosting’s Features at a Glance

My Hosting Experience With A2 Hosting

I discussed the issues you might encounter thanks to the strange terminology used by A2 Hosting’s branding department. But is this what happened when I signed up? Besides a small hiccup, the setup process was a breeze, especially when compared to some of the other hosts I’ve tested.

Let’s take a look at what it’s like to sign up and become an A2 Hosting customer.

Creating a New Account With A2 Hosting

I actually went through (most of) the new account setup with A2 Hosting twice. The first time was my actual account setup for our test site. The second time was so I could show you something important that I neglected to screenshot on my first go. (Don’t worry, I didn’t actually complete a second full sign-up, I just got to the point I needed to and quit).

Once I chose my plan I needed to deal with my domain name. You can use a domain name you already have (either by transferring it over or configuring your DNS), register a new domain name for a fee, or use a temporary domain name provided by A2 Hosting, I registered my our test domain name with a third-party service.

Once you get your domain name squared away, you get to choose some options for your hosting plan. You can pay in either US dollars or Indian rupees. You have a plethora of payment options, too, including PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express, UnionPay (through Stripe), Skrill, bank transfer, or even by mailing in a paper check or money order.

You can also decide where you want to host your site. (As a Mid-Atlantic gal, I picked Michigan.) If you scroll down the page after you choose your data center, you’re met with two more choices: one for the website builder and another for any auto-installs.

If you choose either a WordPress plan or a WordPress auto-install as I did, you’ll get this little pinky-peachy popup with your WordPress login credentials. If you don’t write these credentials down, screenshot them, or whatever you do to remember them, you’ll have to go through the extra step in cPanel to reset them. I’m saving you the hassle of that extra step.

It’s really the only thing I found even slightly annoying in all of A2 Hosting’s sign-up and site management. Why not just email them? It could be argued that it is for security reasons, I suppose.

Anyway, once I reviewed my plan details and entered my payment and address info, I became the newest A2 Hosting customer.

Connecting a Domain and Installing WordPress

Since A2 Hosting uses cPanel, connecting my domain from Namecheap to my new account was pretty straightforward. I simply had to get the domain nameserver info from Namecheap and enter it into my domain name’s settings in cPanel. A2 Hosting even has a tutorial, complete with screenshots, to walk you through the process in case you’re unfamiliar with it.

I didn’t have to install WordPress, as it was already preinstalled, which was nice. I did have to update it through Toolkit, as it threw a security vulnerability alert right at the start that WordPress hadn’t yet released a patch for. Once I did that, entered my DNS name server info, and activated my domain, I was ready to set up our little baby test site and start running our performance tests.

Other Ease of Use Features

It’s Basic… But Not in a Bad Way

When it comes to using your A2 Hosting account and managing your site, A2 Hosting is very easy to work with. A lot of hosts make things more complicated than they have to be, but not A2 Hosting.

You access your website through good old cPanel. Softaculous is there in all its one-click glory. Some might say A2 Hosting’s Customer Portal shows the hosting provider’s age and needs updating to something more hip and modern. I disagree. For me, it keeps things simple and easy to use.

The Customer Portal doesn’t have a steep learning curve. You’re even treated to the WordPress and cPanel “get started” popups when you first log in, just to make sure you know what’s what and where.

A2 SiteBuilder Web Page Builder

I didn’t have a chance to play with the A2 SiteBuilder because I chose preinstalled WordPress instead. From the website’s videos and info, it’s a drag-and-drop, template-based web page builder. You have some customization options, like theme colors and fonts, to keep your site from being too formulaic and cookie-cutter looking.

You can use SiteBuilder to create a 1-page site for free on an A2 Hosting plan. After that, SiteBuilder incurs an extra monthly fee that depends on the size of the site you want to build. It looks to be about as easy to use as any other template-based builder, including WordPress. Again, nothing complicated or dauntingly unfamiliar. And for those not wanting to run WordPress or pay for expensive graphics work for their site, SiteBuilder is a nice and inexpensive easy-to-use option.

Simply Excellent Performance for the Price

I wanted to see if the hoopla over those Turbo servers really held up or if it was just a bunch of hot air and clever branding. I hosted a WordPress site with A2 Hosting to find out if the clever branding was a reality or just a shiny gimmick to hide lackluster hosting.

You can read all the nitty-gritty details on how we conduct our testing here at Website Planet if you’re interested.

We’ve all been overpromised and underdelivered, especially when it comes to online services. I’m pleased to say that A2 Hosting turned in some top-level scores and was closer to a case of underpromising and overdelivering.

However, here’s your reminder that while I wasn’t on the entry-level Ignite (formerly Startup) plan, I wasn’t on the top-tier Turbo Nitro (formerly Max) plan either. I used a middle-of-the-road plan called Turbo Velocity (formerly Boost).

It’s so reasonably priced and filled with features that any small business or professional blogger will find it more than adequately fits your needs. But don’t expect the same loading speeds and performance results for entry-level non-Turbo plans.

Let’s look at things in more detail.

GTmetrix

The closest GTmetrix global testing location was in Chicago, Illinois, less than 250 miles from A2 Hosting’s Ann Arbor, Michigan data center, where testing site was hosted. I used this Illinois server for my formal results in this review.

Just to compare, however, I did test the site on several other testing locations. No matter where I chose in the US or Canada, I couldn’t get a GTmetrix Performance score less than 99%. London returned a 93%, and Sao Paulo, Brazil finally brought me my first B at 86%. Again, phenomenal results for a budget-friendly host, though it is one of the upgraded plans.

My fastest loading speed was 0.50 seconds, while my slowest time to fully load the page was 1.12 seconds. GTmetrix says you should aim for a fully loaded speed of less than 1.2 seconds. By those standards, my little site had three little blips over 1 second in the last week of my tests, but other than that, never neared the 1.2s mark.

Here’s proof of my site’s excellent Grade A performance from a busy mid-week afternoon.

Here’s proof of my site’s excellent Grade A performance from a busy midweek afternoon.

Sucuri Load Time Tester

With Sucuri Load Time Tester, scores remained high, having to go all the way to France to have a complete load time of over 1 second. Then all the way to Tokyo, Japan, it took longer than the 1.2-second goal. These are terrific scores, but could even be improved, as I didn’t enable a CDN for these tests.

A2 Hosting’s choice of data center locations is no surprise, and I’m sure my Asian and European, or South American scores would be different if I were using one of the other geographically closer data centers, or a CDN.

UptimeRobot

Every reputable hosting company generally promises at least 99.9% reliability. A2 Hosting is no exception, offering a 99.9% uptime guarantee and credits up to 5% of your monthly fees per downtime hour. So I was expecting at least 99.9% from my UptimeRobot testing. I was in for a surprise.

The surprise was that, once again, A2 Hosting had underpromised and overdelivered. Not 99.9%. Not even 99.99%. No. A perfect 100% uptime for the entire testing period. Needless to say, I was impressed.

Now remember, this is a low-cost host, using an upgraded plan, but one that isn’t its top-tier best. Just a shared hosting WordPress site with no really fancy bells or whistles other than the default that was suggested by the A2 Optimized plugin. And yet, it got high scores again and again. Few hosts return such great results on so small an investment.

All Good Things Must Come to an End

There always seems to be some sort of disappointment involved when testing and reviewing web hosting providers. Some have great performance and lousy user experience. Some offer great features and then charge ridiculously high prices for them. And still other hosting providers – A2 Hosting among them – can’t quite seem to pull it together in the customer service and support arenas.

A2 promises 24/7/365 support from its Guru Crew, and that you can reach them via online chat, support tickets, or phone. Maybe you can, anyway, but I couldn’t. At least not without waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

My first attempt was to contact support via online chat. I will say one thing about A2 Hosting’s online chat: it is actually live, as in a real live agent on the other end. I’ve had more AI chatbot experience advertised as live chat support than I care to think about. Having an actual person should’ve been a pleasant experience – except for the wait.

The promised 33 minutes stretched into 51 in reality, but I had no way to screenshot that. When the agent did finally come online, she was able to answer my question quickly and efficiently. We were online together for maybe all of 2 minutes, and then we’re done. Waiting 51 minutes for a 2-minute conversation, however, didn’t make a good first impression.

So I thought I’d try the phone support next. I like to ask questions I already know the answer to, so I can test the quality of the support agents. Alas, I never got to ask them anything, as the wait time there was another 40 minutes. I was offered a call back by the recording, but it seemed pointless to waste the agents’ time with a question I already knew the answer to.

Lastly, I submitted a ticket. The ticket system is actually only for paying customers, as you have to log in to your account and access it through your cPanel dashboard. Again, I asked a question I had already found the answer to in A2 Hosting’s Knowledge Base. Guess what their answer was? Yep. A link to the article in the Knowledge Base. And it took nearly half a day to get that.

Talking about the Knowledge Base… perhaps A2 recognizes there’s a problem with its support team. The Knowledge Base proves to be very useful and beneficial. You can access it directly from your cPanel dashboard, eliminating the need to log in and out to adjust or repair something. It offers a variety of resources for all, ranging from a Getting Started guide for beginners to support for VPS clients and web development experts.

Still Good Value for the Money

A2 Hosting’s plans place it squarely in the “affordable hosting” category. The shared hosting plans that my Turbo Velocity plan is a part of are well within reach of nearly any small business or individual looking to start a site. The managed WordPress plans are also competitively priced. Even A2 Hosting’s VPS plans are reasonably affordable.

And unlike a lot of other “bargain” hosting providers, you really do get a lot for the money. The slow support and sloppy service experiences aside, I was quite pleased with the features and performance of my Turbo Velocity plan. From the generous NVMe storage to the 100% perfect uptime and super fast load times, what’s not to enjoy? If this were a real small business website for a side hustle, I’d be thrilled to get all that I got for the low price I paid.

Speaking of low prices, the best way to get the lowest price possible from A2 Hosting is to go with the longest plan possible. When I purchased my hosting account, the price for a 12-month plan and a 3-year plan were around the same. I can’t say with any certainty that they will stay that way as it could’ve just been a special offering. In any case, the longer the plan, the lower your total costs will be.

A2 Hosting also offers the occasional coupon, to give you a great deal. You can use the coupon below to receive the same low, budget-friendly price I did.

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Save up to 76 % on your A2 Hosting plan!

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And yes, there’s a money-back guarantee, and all you have to do to get a refund within the 30-day period is send a cancellation notice from your account dashboard. There’s a Request Cancellation link under the Actions tab for each service and domain you have. Fill out the form and submit it, and in 1 to 3 business days, you’ll have your money back – or at least I did. A2 also offers prorated refunds for up to 90 days.