Today I will write a review of a hosting provider that has been tested on many websites and tested thoroughly. It is said that this is the hosting service that I conducted the longest test (3 months), tested on the VPS service as well as its Shared Hosting and I feel it really worth a full review. right now. I am talking to the A2 Hosting provider.
Introduction to A2 Hosting
A2 Hosting is an American hosting provider launched in 2003 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. At that time, A2 Hosting was only known by the people who work in web technology in the United States know by always attracting the attention of the community by introducing new and advanced web server technologies, for example, PHP 5 support in 2004.
However, A2 Hosting is less focused on advertising, especially the image abroad so it may not be as popular as HostGator or Bluehost. By the middle of 2012, they began promoting their advertising campaigns through Facebook, Google Adwords, etc. Thanks to the use of SSD technology on their entire server system so gradually many people already know to this new name, of course, there is a good mark with them.
And below, unlike other reviews, I would like to write in a story sharing format that I have come to A2 Hosting how and why I have accepted their VPS trial for $79/month without seeing regrets.
In the past, I secretly moved my blog from StableHost’s Shared Hosting to Managed VPS of A2 Hosting because a shared host’s CPU was not enough for me, not because of StableHost quality is not good.
Initially, I saw ads of A2 Hosting with the language is very “impressive” as “Website you will accelerate 300% thanks to smart caching technology”, “Accelerate website with SSD technology”, “Green Hosting “… blah blah… Of course, with a person like hosting testing like me, immediately took the domain hinhanhdepnhat.info and order a Prime + SSD package for $10.99/month (buy a month, then that price, buy more will reduce) to conduct the test within a month.
After a month of testing, the results I received are that the website is loading very fast, resulting in me upload the source code of the current CouponTree on the hosting and try to check with Pingdom (without cache), the speed load is about 3 seconds. That means this speed is equivalent to the speed of the high-end hosting package at StabaleHost when I just uploaded the website (when the site has not much traffic at the same time).
On the server of A2 Hosting has been installed full of modules that sometimes other vendors do not support, such as Ioncube Loader, Zend Optimizer and cURL. I moved the whole code of my blog through and restore without any obstacles because most of the time when I switch hosts often encountered something error because my plugin and theme can work well everywhere. This proves that the host of A2 Hosting is well configured and can be configured to run all types of web applications.
About the speed and configuration of the Shared hosting, I confidently donated 9.9 points for A2 Hosting.
After all, if you use Unmanaged VPS in A2 Hosting, it’s better if you use DigitalOcean or Vultr.
A2 Hosting Review
Advantages of A2 Hosting
- High speed through the smart cache and solid SSD drive.
- Good Uptime and for 3 months I do not see any downtime.
- Use the latest version of cPanel dashboard with many add-ons to help you install the web source code quickly.
- The service expiration time is very long, especially the hosting package itself has expired but more than a month later it was suspended.
- Easy to register, I have just paid is a host because it is fully automatic.
But even so good, A2 Hosting also has some nasty bugs that you should know before using the service here if you do not want to be shocked (really shocking).
Disadvantages of A2 Hosting
Support through ticket for a long time< – When I use Managed VPS package I have sent a ticket to request to review and activate your Ioncube Loader because I was busy so I can not chat. As a result, four hours after the ticket was answered and resolved. Now, A2 Hosting has overcome the disadvantages of support and live chat.- The price shown on the homepage is not the same as the actual price – If you do not believe it, try buying a Managed VPS package, outside of the $ 65 home page, make sure that when you go to the checkout page, you will see the price increase over $100 by adding many things.
- Turbo package is quite bad, you should only use Swift package.
Who should use hosting in A2 Hosting?
Hosting in A2 Hosting is very good and quality but I think not everyone is satisfied with its service due to some of the disadvantages mentioned above. In addition, the price of Shared Hosting here is not cheap so I recommend using only on the website you want to invest in a good infrastructure for it and determine if you do not need too much support unless the website is hack or downtime because the problem of customer support in A2 Hosting is not as good as HostGator.
Hopefully, after this review, you will know more about a hosting provider to be able to choose apart from the best quality hosting services that I have introduced.