A2 Hosting vs. SiteGround (2024)

By: Alexandra Anderson

Editor: Lillian Castro

2/7/2024

Alexandra Anderson Hosting Expert

“We tested SiteGround & A2 Hosting — The winner is SiteGround!”

Choosing between A2 Hosting and SiteGround may be a tough decision. Both hosts rank high when it comes to comprehensive and high-performing hosting packages. They are also excellent choices for new and experienced users in the hosting space. A2 Hosting has the edge on unlimited storage and speedy page loads, boasting SSD-packed Turbo Servers. At the same time, SiteGround adds incredible freebies, such as a free-for-life domain name and unlimited email accounts. Read closely to see which host sounds better for you.

Overall Rating

5.0/5.0 ★★★★★

StartUp Plan: $2.99/month »
GrowBig Plan: $4.99/month »
GoGeek Plan: $7.99/month »

Visit SiteGround »

Overall Rating

4.9/5.0 ★★★★★

Startup Plan: $2.99/month »
Drive Plan: $5.99/month »
Turbo Boost Plan: $6.99/month »

Visit A2 Hosting »

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Overall Hosting Comparison

Best Overall Rating

★★★★★ 5.0/5.0

With an impressive breadth of overall hosting services offered, SiteGround is a leading innovator in the hosting space — from custom software solutions to premier customer support.

The company offers the full range of web hosting features, including a free Cloudflare CDN, cPanel with SSH access, and unlimited MySQL databases and bandwidth — not to mention prize-worthy customer support.

CEO Tenko Nikolov and CTO Ivo Tzenov, SiteGround Co-Founders, gave us the inside scoop on SiteGround's features and took us through the solutions they've engineered to enhance the user experience.

Customer service has long been the company's claim to fame, behind custom solutions built to make the hosting experience as stress-free as possible. SiteGround engineered an in-house chat software that allows users to select and rate thoroughly vetted customer service agents with whom they've worked previously.

The company wrote its own ticketing system, as well, which comprises an algorithm designed to select appropriate technical support representatives for specific tasks.

The end result is instant replies to phone calls and chats, and 10-minute responses to email tickets, all of which contributes to a 99.7% customer satisfaction rate.

For shared hosting, SiteGround conceived a one-of-a-kind server isolation system that prevents vulnerable servers from taking down entire networks.

In place of VPS hosting, the company built its own cloud container platform, featuring thousands of containers and top-notch scalability and security.

All SiteGround hosting service users benefit from a unique downtime prevention mechanism, which has helped SiteGround develop a reputation for stellar uptime rates: 99.996% annually and 99.999% monthly.

FREE site transfer or new site setup
FREE daily backups, CDN, email, and SSL
24/7 expert support with no wait on phone or chat
Recommended by WordPress as a top host
Ideal for business email hosting
Get started on SiteGround now.

Money Back Guarantee

30 days

Disk Space

10 GB SSD - 40 GB SSD

Domain Name

New or Transfer

Best Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.9/5.0

If speed and performance, partnered with support and security, are at all priorities in your web host shopping, A2 Hosting should be a leading contender.

When A2 Hosting first launched in 2003, the company was focused on serving developers; A2 Hosting was among the first providers to offer PHP 5 and to support Ruby on Rails on shared servers.

As the company grew, the focus shifted toward performance, following a customer survey that revealed loading times trailed only support and reliability as top priorities. As such, A2 Hosting was also one of the first to offer hosting with high-speed solid-state drives, which now reside across the company's entire portfolio of services.

A2 Hosting's full-stack optimizations unlocked a 300% increase in page load speeds The company took performance yet another step forward when it launched its Turbo hosting platform, which boasts fewer users per server, pre-configured caching options, and twice the allocated physical memory.

With the Turbo Server option, caching tools, and other optimized software, sites experience page loads speeds up to 20 times faster than average.

Whether you want a dedicated server, standard shared hosting with cPanel, VPS, or anything in between, A2 Hosting can offer the services to meet your needs.

With expertly-tuned servers that house fewer accounts, the company promises uptimes of 99.9% or higher, with Guru Crew customer support available all day, every day.

Overall, you can't go wrong in choosing A2 Hosting as your web host. The company's inventive hosting solutions, impressive performance and security measures, and the constant thought put into the user experience warrant our high praise for their services.

SSDs and TurboServer for 20x faster pageloads
Host unlimited websites and FREE site transfer
Optimized plugins and 1-click installs for WP
Pre-installed OPcache and Memcached caching
FREE HackScan with restore options
Get started on A2 Hosting now.

Money Back Guarantee

30 days

Disk Space

100 GB SSD - Unlimited SSD

Domain Name

New or Transfer

Cheap Hosting Comparison

Cheap Rating

★★★★★ 4.7/5.0

#7 out of 10 in Cheap Hosting reviews

Providing hosting with the perfect balance of technological innovation and superior customer support, SiteGround offers a range of affordable hosting services to meet your needs.

In addition to the expected cheap web hosting perks — a free website builder and unlimited bandwidth — the company specializes in custom-built tools to deliver strong and positive user experiences.

Although SiteGround prices itself on the high-end of the shared hosting spectrum, the upgraded SSD-powered infrastructure and additional perks make its service well worth the investment. In addition to included SSL certificate, daily backups, and a content delivery network, SiteGround delivers a top-notch blend of speed and security.

SiteGround developed its own ticketing system and custom chat software, allowing you to chat with trusted and capable representatives with whom you've had success in the past.

The software takes in about 1,500 chats on any given day. The website itself receives about 1 million visitors per month, with users coming for both tutorials and knowledgebase articles written and updated by the tech support team.

Once a month, SiteGround tests competitors' and its own support levels with dummy accounts, measuring response times, attitude, and effectiveness. If a competitor is doing something well, SiteGround's team takes note and tries to improve its own services.

FREE website transfer service to get started
99.9% uptime guarantee and unlimited traffic
User-friendly WordPress installation
24/7 support featuring custom systems
4 caching options plus staging and Git
Get started on SiteGround now.

Money Back Guarantee

30 days

Disk Space

10 GB SSD - 40 GB SSD

Domain Name

New or Transfer

Cheap Rating

★★★★★ 4.9/5.0

#3 out of 10 in Cheap Hosting reviews

There are plenty of excellent cPanel shared hosting providers out there, so what sets A2 Hosting apart from the rest?

Not only does the company offer a ton of features, but it has custom-built its packages for enhanced performance, speed, and security — putting your priorities above pricing.

A2 Hosting packages include a free Cloudflare content delivery network, 24/7 Guru Crew support, and multiple SSD speed boost solutions. Within the comfortable cPanel control panel, users will find Softaculous — featuring easy, 1-click installations of popular web applications.

With A2's Perpetual Security features, users receive free HackScan protection and KernelCare, which runs rebootless auto-updates to kernels daily.

The company promises 99.9% uptime and 24/7 network monitoring, plus virus scanning and defense against brute-force attacks.

Not only was A2 Hosting one of the first to offer SSD hosting — featuring three times the page load speeds of standard hosts — but the company also invented its own Turbo hosting platform. A2 Hosting's Turbo Servers yield 20 times faster page load speeds, using less CPU and memory, with fewer users on each server.

We appreciate how A2 Hosting spends a great deal of time and effort on performance testing and ensuring its giving customers the best speed, security, and support available at a price users can afford.

The highly optimized solutions make getting started easy, and the usefulness and reliability of A2 Hosting's products make them extremely cost-effective.

With 24/7 support, including a WordPress-specific department, we're confident A2 Hosting can provide the assistance you need to get an affordable site launched and thriving.

FREE Cloudflare CDN and SSD speed boost
Optimized caching and 1-click installs
Unlimited email, domains, and databases
Advanced security and FREE HackScan
24/7 support via phone, chat & tickets
Get started on A2 Hosting now.

Money Back Guarantee

30 days

Disk Space

100 GB SSD - Unlimited SSD

Domain Name

New or Transfer

Dedicated Hosting Comparison

Dedicated Rating

★★★★★ N/A

SiteGround does not currently offer this type of hosting. We would not recommend choosing this host for this hosting category.

Dedicated Rating

★★★★★ 4.4/5.0

#7 out of 8 in Dedicated Hosting reviews

Whether you're looking for managed or self-managed hosting, A2 Hosting offers three extremely reliable dedicated server plans to meet your needs, depending on your levels of comfort and experience.

With A2 Hosting's Unmanaged Flex Dedicated Server plan, users get administrator-level control with root access and their choice of Linux operating system.

Your server will be ready for configuration with an optional cPanel license available. Plus, the company offers 24/7/365 server monitoring and maintenance for hardware.

We found this package to be most useful for experienced developers who are familiar with the command line. The Managed Flex Dedicated Server service removes the operating system choice and root access — along with any of the hassle or stress of server maintenance and management.

Blending the best of both worlds, A2 Hosting also offers a managed server with root access as part of its Core Dedicated Server plan.

A2 Hosting's dedicated servers feature its proprietary SwiftServer platform — expertly-tuned hardware with performance enhancements.

The company was one of the first to offer SSD hosting, a perk passed down to all dedicated server customers that unlocks page load speeds as much as three times faster than those of standard web hosts.

Servers are never overloaded, and A2 notifies you of targeted server occurrences, such as high load volume or when a filesystem becomes full. With four datacenters strategically located on three continents, A2 Hosting offers high redundancy and global distribution.

Root access and 3 levels of server management
Expertly managed servers deployed instantly
Choose from 4 datacenters across 3 continents
FREE redundant SSD storage in RAID-1 arrays
Choice of 13 Linux operating systems
Get started on A2 Hosting now.

Money Back Guarantee

30 days

Disk Space

1 TB SSD (RAID-1)

Domain Name

New or Transfer

VPS Hosting Comparison

VPS Rating

★★★★★ 4.2/5.0

When it comes to VPS hosting, SiteGround does things a little differently. Instead of managing a typical virtual private server network, the company created its very own cloud platform built from the ground up.

Although the services are similar to a VPS, with shell access included, it's much more scalable. The hefty price tag certainly jumps out at potential customers, however, making SiteGround's cloud product a major investment.

The company's top-tier infrastructure and customer support certainly back up the cost, but the platform may not be the right step for first-time VPS customers looking to take a small step beyond shared hosting.

That said, SiteGround's managed cloud hosting includes thousands of containers and is much faster than most products you'll find on the market.

A single cloud instance can be provisioned, up, and running in seconds. The container platform behind the cloud hosting isn't the only in-house technology the company has up its hosting sleeve.

Instead of using third-party programs, SiteGround developers write almost all of the platform's software themselves. Among SiteGround's many custom solutions is a unique server isolation system that shields servers from falling victim to the vulnerability of single, corrupted accounts.

SiteGround was the first to develop such a mechanism. The company also created its own backup system, which runs daily backups in about an hour; a downtime prevention mechanism that has yielded stellar uptime rates; and its proprietary SuperCacher, which offers four caching options for optimum load times.

With each custom innovation that SiteGround has engineered, customers have reported being pleasantly surprised by how much the technology simplifies their hosting experience.

SiteGround's cloud hosting service is no different.

The company offers all the hit features they're known for, plus the added scalability and security that surpasses most VPS hosting providers. If you're ready to move beyond shared hosting, and want to do so with a king of customer service and tech solutions, look no further than SiteGround's cloud hosting.

Fully managed cloud hosting with ultra-fast performance and scalability
FREE Cloudflare CDN and daily backups
SuperCacher, Git, and 1-click CMS installs
cPanel, SSH access, and private DNS setup
Dedicated IP address and iptables firewall
Get started on SiteGround now.

Money Back Guarantee

14 days

Disk Space

40 GB SSD - 160 GB SSD

Domain Name

New or Transfer

VPS Rating

★★★★★ 4.8/5.0

#3 out of 9 in VPS Hosting reviews

While A2 Hosting's turbocharged shared hosting platform gives site owners ample room to grow, the company's tech prowess is on full display with its portfolio of VPS options.

Ranging from unmanaged, bare-metal environments to stress-free, fully managed space, A2 Hosting is sure to have the perfect option for your expanding online presence.

No matter which option customers choose — and there are many — A2 Hosting allocates ample storage, bandwidth, and memory to VPS customers.

Site owners or app developers can customize their hosting package to include root access, cPanel, or high-performance solid-state disks.

We highly recommend the company's Core VPS packages, which combine managed services with root access to provide the best of both worlds.

The configurations start with a whopping 4GB of RAM, 4vCPUs, 75GB of SSD storage, all well above average elsewhere in the industry.

Experienced developers who are comfortable with the command line and willing to spend the time managing and maintaining their VPS will find a great deal with A2 Hosting's unmanaged servers, which also enable customers to select from a staggering 15 different operating systems.

Beyond the myriad of management and operating system options, customers can also select cloud-powered VPS options to receive the ultimate redundancy and reliability, custom-fit servers, and flexible resource monitoring and scaling.

When it comes to speed and performance, A2 Hosting pulls out all the stops. The company's Turbo option, paired with its exclusive Site Accelerator software suite, produce page load speeds up to 20 times faster than competitors. A2 Hosting holds a breadth of opportunities for flexibility, cost control, and custom solutions built for VPS customers.

With an emphasis on performance and a commitment to solving customer problems, you won't regret going turbo with A2 Hosting's VPS packages.

Turbo server & cache options for faster page loads
Well-built plans starting with 4GB RAM
FREE CDN plus auto-installs with Softaculous
Multilingual support and up to unlimited databases
Enhanced security with and daily kernel updates
Get started on A2 Hosting now.

Money Back Guarantee

30 days

Disk Space

20 GB SSD - 450 GB SSD

Domain Name

New or Transfer

WordPress Hosting Comparison

WordPress Rating

★★★★★ 4.9/5.0

#2 out of 8 in WordPress Hosting reviews

Want a hassle-free, WordPress-optimized hosting service? SiteGround has thought of everything you need to get your site up and running.

Starting with the essentials, users get free email accounts, site transfer, Cloudflare CDN, and cPanel license. Then the company makes it simple for you to start rolling out content by offering an easy, automated WordPress installation and a unique and powerful WordPress Starter program that walks site owners through site setup.

The custom tool helps customers choose from professionally designed themes and add key functionalities likee a contact form, online store, portfolio, or other content. Selections are automatically installed on the site, delivering a fully-functional website in minutes — without any tech expertise required.

SiteGround's WordPress hosting also features automatic updates to the core and plugins, with built-in, multi-layer WordPress caching built-in, as well. Users can easily test and deploy changes to their site with single-click staging, and Git is available for version control.

SiteGround's unique downtime prevention software monitors servers' statuses in real-time and resolves more than 90% of server issues instantly and automatically.

Many competitors can take an average of five to 20 minutes to detect an issue, plus up to 20 minutes to react and resolve the exploit.

From in-house solutions on the technical side to warm and unwavering support from a customer service angle, SiteGround has crafted a complete package for any hosting need.

For WordPress-specific hosting, the company offers popular perks you wouldn't get with other shared hosting providers. Get started with all of the awesome freebies and prepare to be blown away by SiteGround's commitment to building hosting solutions intended to make your WordPress experience easier than ever.

Officially endorsed by WordPress.org
FREE migration plugin or automated installation
Pre-installed Git, 3 caching levels, and FREE CDN
FREE WP setup wizard, staging, and auto-updates
Fast, 24/7 support via custom chat system
Get started on SiteGround now.

Money Back Guarantee

30 days

Disk Space

10 GB SSD - 40 GB SSD

Domain Name

New or Transfer

WordPress Rating

★★★★★ 4.9/5.0

As experts in performance optimization, A2 Hosting is a top choice for powering resource-heavy WordPress websites.

The company offers shared or managed plans for the ultra-popular content management system, with the benefits extending to Joomla, Drupal, and other platforms.

A2's shared web hosting plans come with cPanel control panel, where users can access Softaculous auto-installer. Easily install popular web applications, including your choice of CMS, with one click.

Alternatively, A2 Hosting experts will pre-install and configure WordPress for you, complete with PHP7 and HTTPS protection.

While the company's all-SSD infrastructure enables sites to fly, A2 Hosting's enhanced Turbo Servers and proprietary Site Accelerator particularly shine with WordPress plans, enabling 20-times-faster page loads and automatic compression and caching options.

To boost security and protect customers, the company build another custom program that auto-hardens WordPress sites for proactive protection against malicious attacks.

Additionally, A2 Hosting offers virus scanning, a firewall, and brute-force attack protection — not to mention spam filtering for emails, which are also IMAP, POP3, and SMTP supported.

A2 Hosting offers 24/7 customer support and tons of optimized features made with WordPress users in mind. Whether you're an online retailer looking to launch a fresh site with WooCommerce or a moderately web-savvy WordPress user looking for speed and security excellence, we'd highly recommend A2 Hosting.

FREE Cloudflare CDN and 1-click WP installs
Turbo Server, SSD speed, and optimized caching
A2-optimized plugins for performance and security
FREE SSL certificates and 24/7 support
FREE HackScan and KernelCare
Get started on A2 Hosting now.

Money Back Guarantee

30 days

Disk Space

50 GB SSD - Unlimited SSD

Domain Name

New or Transfer

Site Builder Hosting Comparison

Website Builder Rating

★★★★★ 4.4/5.0

#6 out of 9 in Website Builder Hosting reviews

Do you know you need to build a website but don't know where to begin? Well, SiteGround will give you not one, but two extremely popular and user-friendly options to create the online presence of your dream.

Plus, customers start off with unlimited email accounts, site traffic, and database storage options — all for free.

Whether you're transferring a domain or want a relatively hands-off experience starting your very first site, you'll find helpful support at every turn.

SiteGround hosting includes easy installations for your choice of content management system, including WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and Magento. The company's WordPress experts will even migrate your site for you — a seamless transition with zero downtime — or first-timers can benefit from their in-house setup wizard.

Alternatively, SiteGround gives each customer access to the ultra-popular Weebly drag-and-drop site builder and hundreds of professional templates.

Once you're up and running, custom ticketing and chat systems have been engineered and implemented to provide you with pleasant and tech-savvy customer support 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

SiteGround also conducts daily site backups, using an in-house system that can run backups in about an hour, compared to rival technologies that can take up to half a day to operate.

Whether you're a hosting newbie or a site-building savant, you can trust SiteGround to provide you with a hosting and website-building combo that is simple to manage and pleasant to troubleshoot.

FREE Weebly site builder or WordPress setup
Worry-free, automated webiste migrations
User-friendly cPanel interface and staging area
Custom ticket and chat systems for 24/7 support
SuperCacher with static and dynamic caching
Get started on SiteGround now.

Money Back Guarantee

30 days

Disk Space

10 GB SSD - 40 GB SSD

Domain Name

New or Transfer

Website Builder Rating

★★★★★ 4.8/5.0

When it comes to site-building, A2 Hosting sets users up with all the tools they need to get a website built, launched, and thriving.

The company's own drag-and-drop site builder offers total simplicity for those without coding experience, or users can opt for design tools from Microweber or RapidWeaver.

Additionally, the inclusion of the cPanel control panel and Softaculous script library means dozens of other blogging, ecommerce, and content management systems are just a one-click installation away.

A2 Hosting strives to make these setup processes as simplistic and intuitive as possible, and the company has built optimized plugins to configure each application to its specific infrastructure advantages automatically.

While we appreciate the wide range of site builder options, we're a little surprised to see relatively simple website elements, such as a blog, SSL certificate, or ecommerce store, are held out of A2 Hosting's introductory site builder plan. Upgrading to more expensive plans probably means the company is pricing themselves above many first-time site owners' budgets.

That being said, we appreciate the company's focus on providing an above-average experience for all types of customers. An emphasis on modern, high-powered hardware is combined with personalized and responsive support to help users learn about how to design, launch, and grow a website.

Multiple website builder options for code-free design
Softaculous 1-click installs for WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla
A2-optimized caching (6x faster page loads) and Turbo Server (20x faster)
FREE blogging and ecommerce tools available, plus SSL security
24/7/365 Guru Crew support
Get started on A2 Hosting now.

Money Back Guarantee

30 days

Disk Space

50 GB SSD - Unlimited SSD

Domain Name

New or Transfer

SiteGround vs. A2 Hosting - Our Conclusion

Alexandra Anderson Hosting Expert

“We tested SiteGround & A2 Hosting — The winner is SiteGround!”

We told you this was a close one. Your best hosting fit depends on your specific needs. Since they both offer a similar scope of features, looking into them and what comes with each, including costs and performance range, will probably help you with your decision. This battle is essentially a toss-up, but thankfully, both hosts offer a 30-day money-back guarantee. So maybe give both a try to decide your champion.

Overall Rating

5.0/5.0 ★★★★★

Visit SiteGround »

Overall Rating

4.9/5.0 ★★★★★

Visit A2 Hosting »

About The Author

Alexandra Anderson’s interest in website administration was sparked in her teens, priming her for a fast-paced career in managing, building, and contributing to online brands, including HostingAdvice, Forbes, and the blogs of prominent hosting providers. She brings firsthand experience reviewing web hosts, perfecting website design, optimizing content, and walking site owners through the steps that add up to a successful online presence. With a master's degree in information technology from Virginia Tech, she combines her extensive writing experience and technical understanding to unpack some of the most complex topics that daunt novice website owners, as well as the subjects that excite veteran technologists within the HostingAdvice readership.