Written by A2hosting has been an affordable hosting option since 2001. But, as a proactive website owner, I always keep an eye on potential alternatives just in case. You should do it, too. So, which are the best A2hosting alternatives?
Hostinger, Nexcess, Kinsta, Dreamhost, Bluehost, GreenGeeks, HostArmada, and NameCheap are the best A2 hosting providers I found. They provide capabilities on par with A2’s specifications & performance.
Our Top Pick A2 Hosting Alternatives
What Makes A2 Hosting Popular
Since its founding in 2001, A2 Hosting has established a strong reputation for speed and stability. Its SwiftServer architecture combines SSD storage, a unique caching framework, and server optimizations to provide exceptional average load times of around 300 ms.
Its servers are also efficient, with the latest Intel Xeon CPUs to prevent overloads and current DDR5 RAM for seamless performance.
However, many customers love A2’s anytime customization the best. You have smooth control over upgrading CPU cores, RAM, SSD storage, and IP addresses.
You can get this on-demand instead of paying for bundled bundles. If your site’s needs vary frequently, A2 is an excellent alternative. It’s because very few other hosts adjust resources as flexibly as A2.
Of course, rock-solid uptime and DDoS protection ensure that A2’s speed is always fast. Its servers have 99.92% uptime.
It is significantly above the 99.9% uptime standard, which I consider acceptable. Such data indicates A2’s strong focus on server security hardening at both the software and hardware levels.
Overall, A2 hosting is popular for its adaptability to the website’s specifications. Its major pillars of fame include lightning-fast performance, “anycast” DDoS protection, and outstanding uptimes.
Key Features to Look for in a Hosting Provider
When considering A2 alternatives, keep in mind that hosts who control in key metrics should be prioritized. Here’s what I look for in a hosting company for my website:
1) Uptime Reliability
Aim for 99.95 – 99.99% uptime based on provider monitoring from 30+ global locations. Check the uptime for specific data centers as well.
Average load times of less than 300 ms are an example of good everyday speed. So keep a look out for this.
2) Top Notch Hardware Benchmarks
When reviewing hosting services, I take server hardware and infrastructure seriously.
For lower-traffic sites, multicore Xeon processors, 16GB+ RAM, and NVMe-based SSDs provide suitable basic setups.
Heavier PHP apps, e-commerce websites, and sites that use a lot of JavaScript may require more core CPUs, 32GB+ memory, and RAID-10 disk arrays. This is to ensure that response speeds remain consistent as the number of users grows.
I also evaluate reliability, such as <1% annual hardware failure rates. Quality suppliers readily reveal infrastructure information. Make sure that the hosting service you choose has this feature.
3) Network Connection Speeds & Bandwidth
A provider’s network capacity and data center carrier relationships have a substantial impact on hosting speeds.
I check that vendors use tier-1 internet backbone connections with a minimum throughput of 10 gigabits or greater. This function prevents bandwidth problems caused by increasing visitor numbers.
4) Security Protocols & Compliance Standards
Whether your website handles logins, e-commerce, or analytics, security is extremely important. I verify that hosts implement lockdown procedures such as:
- OWASP protections against injection threats & bot attacks
- Mandatory SSL/TLS encryptions for all sites & admin logins
- System hardening, like disabling unused components prone to exploits
In terms of compliance, you must confirm that the web hosting service you choose has passed independent audits to verify SOC2, ISO 27001, or PCI DSS requirements.
This indicates that the provider’s security posture are optimized for the sensitivity of your data.
5) Flexible Scalability for Growth
I prefer hosts that allow me to vertically scale specific server components such as CPU cores, RAM capacity, and storage on demand.
For example, it is easy to upgrade from 4 to 8 cores or 32GB to 64GB RAM on the same account. This prevents site-breaking bottlenecks during traffic spikes and new launches.
Top Alternatives To A2 Hosting Dissected
Based on the key features listed above, I have chosen and reviewed some of the best alternatives to A2Hosting.
These are the ones I have personally tried and tested. Here’s a quick overview of my findings:
Note: Some data might be subject to change over time.
Hostinger
Specification
- Uptime: 99.99%
- Response time: 116ms
- Loading Time: 1.3s
- Price: $2.99/month
- Money Back Guarantee: 30-Day
Hostinger is one of the most cost-effective and reliable hosting companies, with a large customer base globally. It is faster than traditional Apache or Nginx since it uses the LiteSpeed web server and its related caching plugin (LSCache).
In my testing, this resulted in benchmarks of over 4000 requests per second, which is much quicker than usual LAMP/LEMP stack response rates. As a result, WordPress admin load times, content delivery, and site frontend performance are consistently fast.
To reduce backend PHP processing speeds, the underlying architecture uses Opcode caching in addition to LSCache. During launches, I have seen pages load in sub-1.5 seconds on lightweight sites with remarkable consistency, indicating plenty of extra resources. This provides room to increase traffic.
Unlike most budget hosts that restrict hardware, Hostinger offers NVMe SSD storage and modern Intel Xeon processors. My testing with benchmarks such as the Phoronix Test Suite showed high I/O throughput and low disk latency.
When combined with dedicated Xeon E5-2650v4 CPUs, even busy WordPress sites can avoid slow performance. Hostinger has comprehensive security requirements, ranging from anti-DDoS Cloudflare filtering to mandatory SSL encryption across sites.
It also performs daily offsite backups (not on all plans), with options for real-time mirroring add-ons.
In addition, CDN and basic WAF protection features are included. It also integrates with malware scanners from partners such as Sucuri, making you less vulnerable to bot attacks and web vulnerabilities.
Nexcess
Nexcess Specification
- Uptime: 100%
- Response time: <300ms
- Loading Time: 1.2s
- Price: $21/month
- Money Back Guarantee: 30-Day
Nexcess is a cloud hosting company. As a cloud hosting provider, I recommend Nexcess. It offers everything and more that you could ever require.
To fit your requirements and price range, various services and prices are available. You may host up to 250 sites with the XXL plan if you have 800GB of storage, 10TB of bandwidth, more than 60 PHP workers, 32 VCPU, and 32GB of RAM.
Along with daily backups, autoscaling, cloud acceleration, PCI compliance, SSL certificates, and built-in SEO, all plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
For best performance, it has a CDN and global data centers. It also makes use of a strong application stack and server-level Redis to manage complex tasks and heavy traffic.
It can also automatically scale up or down depending on your website’s demand. Additionally, because of its developer-friendly interface, your process, deployment, or settings are not affected with others.
Nexcess supports PHP-based apps like WordPress, Magento, WooCommerce, and others.It also includes extensive admin features and a cloud hosting control panel where you can manage numerous users, permissions, analytics, pricing, and more.
Furthermore, Nexcess is secure and reliable. It features Level 1 PCI compliance, SOC 2 data centers, and 24-hour server monitoring to keep your data secure.
It also routinely upgrades its WAF to address evolving vulnerabilities. As a result of all of this, it has a TrustPilot rating of 4.5/5 and a 24/7/365 support team that is always there to assist.
Kinsta
Kinsta Specification
- Uptime: 99.99%
- Response time: 140ms
- Loading Time: 1.1s
- Price: $30/month
- Money Back Guarantee: 30-Day
Kinsta is a cloud platform that provides hosting, development, and management solutions for a variety of web applications. Kinsta offers application hosting, database hosting, static site hosting, WordPress hosting, agency hosting, and enterprise hosting to meet your demands and budget.
Kinsta uses Google Cloud Platform’s premium tier network and C2 machines. These are the quickest and most stable servers on the market. These servers can improve your site’s performance by up to 200% when compared to other hosting providers.
Furthermore, Kinsta provides 35 data centers and an HTTP/3-enabled CDN with over 260 points of access. This means you can select the region that best suits you and your customers. You can also deliver your information from the closest location, which reduces latency and increases performance.
It natively supports 18 languages and four databases. You may also use custom Dockerfiles to run any stack you like.
If your software requires additional resources, you can activate automatic horizontal scaling. Kinsta also offers separated container technology, two powerful firewalls, and superior Cloudflare DDoS protection to ensure your security.
Kinsta is also SOC 2-compliant. They cure malware and hackers for free, day and night. Furthermore, it provides one-click staging and six types of backups to meet your testing and deployment requirements.
You can also purchase optional add-ons for 6-hour, hourly, or external backups to Google Cloud Platform or Amazon S3 Buckets. Kinsta provides unlimited free migrations, free SSL with automatic renewals, unlimited users with access controls, and Kinsta expert real-time chat service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
You can also combine your projects with third-party services like Cloudflare, New Relic, and others.
DreamHost
DreamHost Specification
- Uptime: 100%
- Response time: 143ms
- Loading Time: 1.5s
- Price: $2.59/month
- Money Back Guarantee: 30-Day
Dreamhost, founded in 1997, was among the pioneers of hosting providers offering tailored hosting services. You can rely on Dreamhost for WordPress, website, dedicated server, cloud services, and file storage.
Its plans include SSL certificates, domain names, privacy, and a jetpack plugin at no extra cost. You can choose between shared, Dreampress, or VPS WordPress hosting based on your needs and budget.
You will get features like a one-click installer, staging, caching, automated updates, and a website builder. Also, its hosting plans are similar to shared WordPress plans but offer a custom control panel and advanced features.
DreamHost’s dedicated server plans are optimized for high performance, featuring an Intel Xeon CPU, up to 64 GB RAM, and up to 2 TB SSD storage. You can enjoy unlimited bandwidth, 24/7 monitoring, DDoS protection, and full root access.
The cloud computing services provided by Dreamhost allow for easy scalability, with cloud servers launching quickly and supporting various CPU, RAM, SSD, and bandwidth configurations. Moreover, you can use preferred DevOps tools like OpenStack, Docker, and Ansible.
Bluehost
Bluehost Specification
- Uptime: 99.98%
- Response time: 157ms
- Loading Time: 1.8s
- Price: $2.95/month
- Money Back Guarantee: 30-Day
Bluehost has been offering efficient hosting options to new website owners since 2003. It now provides excellent performance for high-traffic websites. The Intel Xeon-D CPU with 8 cores and 16 threads, along with 30GB of RAM, can handle high visitor traffic without performance issues.
With 2 TB HDD and 100 GB SSD storage, there is plenty of opportunity for growth without the need for urgent upgrades.
Furthermore, the unmetered bandwidth and Linux OS provide a strong base. You can adjust server settings for best performance using the bundled cPanel, which provides full root access.
The redesign of cPanel effectively manages domains, emails, and all other resources. I particularly like the flexibility to add and handle many VPS or shared hosting accounts from a single account.
With full server control, experts can customize operating systems and Apache to their needs. Cloudflare’s free CDN and 100GB SSD cache greatly improve website load speeds.
Additionally, each plan includes a free domain name, SSL certificate, CDN, 30-day money-back guarantee, and 24/7 support.
The package includes a drag-and-drop site builder, WordPress installation plugin, WooCommerce plugin, Yoast SEO plugin, email campaign creator, and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Overall, Bluehost provides a secure and economical web hosting solution. I wholeheartedly suggest it.
GreenGeeks
GreenGeeks Specification
- Uptime: 99.95%
- Response time: 138ms
- Loading Time: 1.2s
- Price: $2.95/month
- Money Back Guarantee: 30-Day
Do you need a website hosting solution for several small businesses or online stores?
It offers built-in cache and object caching technologies that provide the optimum performance. You also get a free CDN integration, which ensures the fastest loading times.
GreenGeeks provides a free dedicated IP address and an AlphaSSL certificate (worth $48 and $99 per year, respectively). You also have access to multi-user functionality, on-demand backups, and a WordPress repair tool.
You can give access to different users, create backups whenever necessary, and resolve any WordPress issues with a single click. Furthermore, you will receive a free domain name for the first year, a free SSL certificate, a free nightly backup, and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
What’s more, you get support for the environment and plant a tree. GreenGeeks is a carbon-reducing company. It offsets the energy it consumes by investing in renewable energy projects.
It also matches your renewable energy use by 300 percent. In addition, it grows a tree for each hosting account.
GreenGeeks also provides a 1-click installer for installing and managing more than 150 apps, including WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, forums, and blogs. It also supports the most recent web technologies and standards, including HTTP/3 and PHP 8.2.
Last but not least, GreenGeeks supports Perl and Python, two popular programming languages for web development. You can access your files using the command line and secure FTP, as well as developer tools like Git, WP-CLI, and Drush.
Host Armada
HostArmada Specification
- Uptime: 99.95%
- Response time: 231ms
- Loading Time: 1.2s
- Price: $3.49/month
- Money Back Guarantee: 45-Day
In my experience, HostArmada stands out as a gold-standard top-tier web hosting company. It provides Cloud SSD-based Web Hosting services to meet a variety of demands.
Host Armada uses cutting-edge Cloud Technology to ensure optimal power and reliability for your website.
The company promises 99.9% uptime and offers technical help around the clock. With data centers on three continents, Host Armada prioritizes speed and performance.
It provides security for all plans, including malware scanning and removal, as well as WAF and IP firewalls. It enhances performance using dynamic caching.
Also, its free SSL for all websites and basic hosting features make it an outstanding alternative for reliable web hosting.
However, its goal is to provide excellent hosting services to its clients. The company’s blog provides the most recent news and important information for web developers and users.
NameCheap
Namecheap Specification
- Uptime: 99.99%
- Response time: 398ms
- Loading Time: 1.6s
- Price: $1.98/month
- Money Back Guarantee: 30-Day
Namecheap started out as a domain registrar before expanding into hosting in 2005. Namecheap’s hosting solutions have consistently provided me a stress-free experience. Their Shared Hosting plans range from 20 GB to 50 GB SSD storage, and all include unmetered bandwidth and 99% uptime.
The addition of cPanel, a website builder, and over 100 one-click install programs makes this service even more worthwhile. Namecheap’s Reseller Hosting is ideal for companies that need to scale or manage several clients. Meanwhile, its WordPress Hosting stands out for its EasyWP feature.
It claims a 0.7-second fully loaded time and 192 milliseconds to the first byte. It exceeds competitors in terms of speed and pricing.
The EasyWP function is game-changing. You can create a WordPress website in less than two minutes. It is designed to scale seamlessly, with 100 GB of SSD storage, capability for 500k visits per month, and triple the CPU and RAM.
The 99.99% uptime guarantee, as well as free CDN and SSL, are critical for creating a professional image on your website. For demanding tasks, their VPS and Dedicated Server provides exceptional performance. It includes capabilities such as complete root access, OS selection, and Webuzo server management.
Namecheap’s Dedicated Servers provide top-tier performance with Intel Xeon 8 cores @ 3.4 GHz, 32 GB DDR3, and two 1 TB SSDs.
The 100 TB/month bandwidth guarantees that even the most resource-intensive applications work smoothly. In essence, Namecheap offers to both beginners and experts.
One thing to keep in mind is that no shared hosting plan allows you to deploy heavily developed Python scripts or Django sites.
- Low price
- User-Friendly Interface
- Limited Resources
- Average speed
- Not Good Customer Support
Niche-Specific Hosting Solutions
Niche-specific hosting solutions are designed to match the needs of your specific website niche.
Managed WordPress Hosting Alternatives
If you have a WordPress website, you will benefit from a managed WordPress hosting service. This service handles all of the technical aspects of running a WordPress site, including setup, updates, security, backups, performance, and optimization.
Some of the best-managed WordPress hosting alternatives to A2Hosting are:
- WP Engine:
- Kinsta
- Pagely
- Pressable
E-Commerce Hosting:
Your e-commerce store will require a hosting company capable of handling large traffic. Here are some of the most e-commerce hosting options for online stores:
Hosting for Developers
Managing a developer project or a large-scale website? You require power and complete control over your hosting environment.
Some of the best hosting solutions for developers and large-scale projects are:
- DigitalOcean
- AWS Lightsail
- Google Cloud Platform
- Microsoft Azure
Making Switch A New Hosting Service: Tips and Best Practices
Migrating your website/web presence from A2Hosting while avoiding downtime requires advance planning. I recommend that you follow the tips below.
- Clean Up Existing Content: Remove unnecessary plugins, stale content, or development remnants before migrating. This speeds up copies.
- Choose Migration-Friendly Hosts: Opt for hosts like Hostinger and Bluehost. They provide free migration assistance, and their tools can mirror your A2Hosting accounts to theirs in minutes.
- Update Nameservers Beforehand: Have your new DNS names propagate across networks prior to the switchover. This prevents visitors from losing their addresses during the transfer.
- Perform Initial Mirror Migration: First, mirror your live site to new hosts to pre-load content. This reduces cutover downtime.
- Schedule Downtimes: Choose low-traffic hours, such as late nights or weekends, to move hosting servers. Make sure to execute this for the final DNS switch to reduce visitor impact.
- 301 Redirect Old URLs: Enter “301 redirects” on the old host. This is to direct wayward visitors to your transferred site’s pages. This protects referral traffic.
Budget Considerations When Picking A Hosting Service
When choosing a hosting plan, you must consider the long-term consequences of outages. Here’s how to get it.
Balancing Cost With Features And Performance
A very low-cost hosting plan frequently includes restricted features and resources, resulting in poor load times or frequent outages. So, focus on reasonably priced plans with features well-matched to your site’s traffic levels.
For a smaller, simpler website, a shared hosting plan of $5-$10 per month may sufficient. These plans let you share server resources with other websites. This saves money while still offering appropriate bandwidth, storage, and capabilities for sites with lower traffic volumes.
When determining if a basic shared plan will provide acceptable long-term performance, you should consider the status of visitors and the expansion of your site.
For more complicated or high-traffic websites, try managed WordPress hosting ($20-$75 per month) or VPS hosting ($30-$150+ per month). These offer resources that are specifically tailored to your website.
Managed hosting provides increased traffic capacity, faster page loading, and greater control over the software environment. The higher expense results in significantly faster speeds and dependability at scale.
Understand The Long-Term Value Perspective
The true cost of hosting goes beyond the monthly subscription. As a result, spending a bit extra upfront for premium hosting provides higher long-term value, including.
Reliability:
A high-quality hosting service will provide redundant infrastructure and database servers to prevent single points of failure.
This comprises redundant power supplies, RAID storage arrays, multiple 10Gbps network connections, and server hardware updates every three years or less.
They also offer an industry-leading uptime SLA of 99.95% or higher, which is less than 4.38 hours of total downtime per year.
Furthermore, top-tier hosting services provide continuous server monitoring, DDoS protection, and engineer intervention.
Scalability
Quality hosting services provide easy scaling by using efficient cloud infrastructure. They provide dedicated servers with the most recent multi-core processors and sufficient RAM, which increases vertically.
Scalable carrier systems, or SDNs, provide network capacity and bandwidth while also supporting traffic surges.
Furthermore, auto-scaling setups and load balancer tools spread larger workloads across new resources, ensuring performance.
Security
To secure sensitive data, robust security measures include required access controls, granular permissions management, SGX encrypted memory, and hardware-backed cryptography modules.
Continuous patching, version updates, penetration testing, firewalls, WAF rules, log analyzers, and DLP technologies ensure effective threat detection and protection.
Customer data is further protected by encrypted data transmission via VPNs and TLS, with 2048-bit keys refreshed every 90 days.
Performance
To get peak website performance, you will need SSD storage with 100,000 IOPS, memory caches layered on NVME drives, PHP 7.4+ runtimes, and HTTP/2 load-balanced proxy servers.
Premium hosting providers give this to ensure consistently quick website load times. They also offer CDNs that can scale to hundreds of points of presence, accelerating performance.
Support
Good hosting companies provide a skilled 24/7/365 support staff that can be reached via Live Chat, phone, or ticketing methods. Engineers can troubleshoot and resolve server issues at any moment.
FAQs | Related to A2 Hosting
Is A2 Hosting good?
Yes, it is an excellent web hosting provider for outstanding performance site loading speed, and starting price($2.99/m). However, its live chat support is not good. You have to wait longer to connect.
What is A2 Hosting’s uptime guarantee?
A2 Hosting offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee, with good security measures and a proactive server monitoring system.
Which is better: A2 Hosting or Bluehost?
Definitely, A2 hosting because of its performance, resources, price, and features.
Does A2 Hosting offer free site migration?
Yes, A2 Hosting provides free website migration services for up to 25 websites and 20 email accounts per migration.
What types of hosting does A2 Hosting offer?
A2 Hosting offers shared hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated server hosting, and managed WordPress hosting plans.
Does A2 Hosting provide free SSL certificates?
Yes, A2 Hosting includes free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates with all hosting plans. It ensures secure data transfer for websites.
What kind of customer support does A2 Hosting offer?
A2 Hosting provides 24/7/365 customer support via phone, email, and live chat, with a team of experienced and knowledgeable support staff.
A2 Hosting vs Hostinger: which is better?
For speed and performance, definitely A2 Hosting, but if you think about both price and overall performance Hostinger is best.
Conclusion
A2 Hosting’s reputation is well-deserved because it provides fast, developer-friendly hosting that satisfies the majority of website needs.
However, based on my research, the top A2 Hosting alternatives are Hostinger, GreenGeeks, and HostArmada in all aspects, including price.
They provide capabilities that meet A2’s specifications. With these options, you may now choose any of the A2Hosting solutions.
So, consider what your website requires and select any A2 hosting option. You cannot go wrong with any of them.
Trust me, I handpicked them because each one has the capacity to provide you with the highest standard of hosting service.
