9 Best A2 Hosting Alternatives (Feb. 2024)

Speed is the one conspicuous trait you’ll read about in any A2 Hosting review. This web hosting service claims to offer up to 20 times faster speeds than the industry standard. To verify these claims, I decided to take it on a quick test drive.

I looked up random websites that use A2 Hosting and picked the official website of The University of Texas at Austin. The speed test results were pretty impressive; the website had an average load time of 1.7 seconds. That’s faster than the acceptable standard of about three seconds.

From these test results, I can confidently conclude that A2 Hosting isn’t overstating its claims of being a super fast host. If you’re looking for the best A2 Hosting alternatives, chances are you need a fast host with features A2 lacks. Here are some top options our web hosting experts recommend.

SiteGround is a popular Bluehost alternative for those looking for WordPress hosting. SiteGround, like A2 Hosting, has speed-optimized features such as SSD storage, the latest PHP versions (perfect for a WordPress website), NGINX servers, Cloudflare CDN, and a SuperCacher. Like other hosts I’ve covered so far, SiteGround comfortably passes the speed check, making it a worthy competitor to A2 Hosting.

The proprietary control panel is one of the things that make this WordPress hosting provider different from A2 Hosting. The latter uses the traditional cPanel, which is sometimes challenging to navigate for beginners.

SiteGround’s control panel, on the other hand, is simpler, cleaner, and quite easy to use. I must also mention that this host also offers top-notch customer support. You can reach its customer support team via live chat in less than a minute.

Though not officially endorsed by WordPress, InMotion Hosting is also an excellent host for a WordPress website. But that’s not the reason I included it in this list. On matters of speed, InMotion won’t let you down. That’s because it uses NVMe SSDs and multiple CPU cores, which vary depending on your chosen hosting plan.

So what makes this host different from A2 Hosting? For starters, InMotion offers a 90-day money-back guarantee, the second-longest I’ve seen. In contrast, A2 Hosting only has a 30-day money-back guarantee.

InMotion also has arguably the best customer service. It comprises a team of US-based customer support professionals you can reach via phone, email, and live chat 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That’s particularly helpful if you need help setting up your hosting environment or troubleshooting problems.

Bluehost is another fast web host, but it doesn’t come close to A2 Hosting’s levels in terms of speed. To begin with, this veteran host uses SSDs, the industry standard for fast web hosts. Although it’s not as fast as A2 Hosting, it is affordable and reliable. Otherwise, more than 2 million websites wouldn’t live on its servers.

This managed WordPress hosting service should be a better hosting option than A2 Hosting if you plan to build a website on WordPress. The former is actually one of the few web hosting providers officially approved by WordPress.

And since WordPress powers more than 40% of websites on the internet, that alone explains why Bluehost is one of the largest web hosting companies by market share.

IONOS claims to offer three times faster load speeds with SSD and caching. That’s the confirmation I need to consider this host as a potential alternative to A2 Hosting. Of course, three times faster speeds is nothing compared to what A2 Hosting offers, but it is still very fast by any standards.

IONOS wears many hats, starting with affordability and reliability. Just recently, I moved two of my client’s websites to IONOS for a totally different reason: compliance. IONOS floors A2 Hosting at Payment Card Industry compliance, something A2 Hosting doesn’t offer.

If you’re planning to host a website that requires visitors to input their credit card information, IONOS should be a great pick. Although you may still use A2 Hosting for this purpose, you’ll likely need to use third-party PCI compliance software. This option could be expensive in the long run.

Hostinger uses SSD NVMe storage, so we know for sure it’s fast. You won’t miss A2 Hosting that much when you choose this host. The only key difference in speed is that A2 Hosting uses turbo-charged servers, making it faster than Hostinger, but not by much.

Hostinger brings affordability to the table. I’m not saying that A2 Hosting’s pricing is too high, but it’s not cheaper than Hostinger, either. Regarding affordability, very few good hosts can match Hostinger’s rates. The few good ones I’ve seen may be affordable but not as generous.

For context, Hostinger lets you host up to 100 free email accounts and websites on a single plan and will give you unlimited free SSL certificates, unlimited bandwidth, daily backup, and a free domain for the first year. Conversely, the base shared hosting plan at A2 Hosting can only accommodate one website.

Let’s briefly talk about DreamHost, another web host endorsed by WordPress. Obviously, this host works best for a WordPress project, but that’s not all it brings to the table. Earlier, I mentioned how InMotion Hosting offers a 90-day money-back guarantee. If you thought that was generous, wait till you find out that DreamHost offers a 97-day money-back guarantee. That’s three months and seven days!

DreamHost’s extended money-back guarantee tells you everything you need to know about this A2 Hosting competitor. A lengthy money-back guarantee proves the confidence the web host has in its services.

It also gives you peace of mind knowing that if you decide that the hosting service isn’t what you’re looking for, you can always cancel within the first 97 days of signing up and request your money back.

You don’t need to be a genius to know what ScalaHosting brings to the table. The clue is in the name (scalability!). Regarding speed, ScalaHosting also uses NVME SSD storage, meaning you won’t regret moving from A2 Hosting.

The ability to scale vertically beyond A2 Hosting’s ceiling is what makes ScalaHosting different. To give you some perspective, a cloud-managed VPS hosting plan at ScalaHosting can accommodate up to 24 CPU cores.

Meanwhile, a similar plan at A2 Hosting won’t go beyond eight CPU cores (at the time of writing). So, if you plan on hosting a large project that requires scalability, ScalaHosting is hands down one of the most scalable hosts out there.

The availability of SSD storage makes HostArmada a fast web host, just like A2 Hosting. But what makes this host different is that it offers cloud hosting services, while A2 doesn’t. Cloud servers are faster, more scalable, and more reliable than traditional bare metal servers.

That said, while A2 Hosting may not offer traditional cloud hosting, its VPS hosting packages are impressive. They deliver the trademark reliability of cloud hosting. But if you really need pure cloud hosting without using a VPS, HostAmarda is a sure bet.

HostArmada customers also get access to nine datacenter locations across four continents. You could say this web host is well-traveled. No matter where your site visitors are, you can meet them with unmatched speed and reliability.

HostGator sits up there with some of the best shared hosting providers I know. It is affordable, very dependable, and perfect for small to medium projects. And since it also uses SSD storage for most of its hosting plans, you shouldn’t worry about having a slow website.

This host has made it to this list because of its simplicity, something you don’t usually see in this day and age. To give you some context, its base shared hosting plan, dubbed Hatchling, can host one website and comes with 10 gigabytes of storage. That’s perfect for a small project and a tight budget.

We recommend signing up for a multiyear plan to get the best savings. But if the thought of commitment scares you, you can use its free trial in the form of a 30-day money-back guarantee.

A2 Hosting is best known for ultra-fast shared hosting plans. The web hosting company uses proprietary Turbo Servers to bring customers the fastest speeds the hosting industry has to offer.

Like most web hosting companies, A2 offers a gamut of services, including shared hosting, VPSes, dedicated servers, and specialized hosting plans. In fact, of all the hosts I know, A2 has the most niche-specific plans around. It has hosting plans for gamers, developers, WordPress bloggers, and content marketers.

Its motto, “Our speed, your success,” is backed by its professional Guru Crew support team and decades of experience in providing top-notch web hosting services.

A2 Hosting has a website builder that comes with each shared hosting plan. But this website builder has some restrictions you should know about.

If you plan on creating a single-page website, you can add A2 Hosting’s website builder for free at checkout. For a multipage site, the website builder comes with a small fee.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Most people end up buying third-party themes for their websites anyway, so wouldn’t you rather have one designed by A2 Hosting’s team?

This is beneficial if you need help using the website builder. Rather than submitting a support ticket to a third party and waiting hours to get a response, you can simply get in touch with A2 Hosting, and they’ll address your concerns.

Yes, A2 Hosting uses WordPress. In fact, it has four managed hosting plans optimized for WordPress users: They are dubbed Run, Jump, Fly, and Sell. These four plans are powerful in almost every aspect.

It’s pretty standard these days for a web host to offer WordPress-optimized hosting plans. Nearly half of the internet runs on WordPress, so web hosts have become incredibly skilled at supporting these types of websites.

If you’re looking for a WordPress hosting plan, you want to find a host that offers one-click installation, a content delivery network, automatic updates, caching, and a free SSL certificate. A good host will also include free premium WordPress themes so you can customize your site at no extra cost.

Most Linux-based web hosts offer cPanel, including A2 Hosting. The purpose of cPanel is to give website owners an easy way to manage their websites without using the command line (a special tool for developers).

To access your cPanel from A2 Hosting:

Learning to use cPanel takes some time, but it’s far easier than using a command line interface. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll be managing your website like a pro.

A2 Hosting offers the industry standard 99.9% uptime guarantee. That means that your website will be up 99.9% of the time, leaving less than 9 hours of downtime annually. This amount of downtime is perfectly acceptable for small to midsize websites, but for eCommerce websites that rely on conversions (i.e., website availability) to make money, you may consider something with 99.99% uptime instead.

Bear in mind that uptime guarantees are a way of showing the confidence the web host has in its services. A 99.9% guarantee is near perfect, but not perfect. The remaining percentage (0.1%) is just the web hosting provider’s way of saying, “Hey, we promise to stay up the entire time, but we also want to let you know that there may be technical issues that arise outside of our control.”

I’ve personally hosted multiple websites at A2 Hosting for more than half a decade now, and not once have I ever experienced downtime. Maybe it’s because it’s difficult to notice one minute and 26 seconds of downtime, but that’s also a good thing.

No web hosting provider is perfect. That’s one of the most important lessons I’ve learned over the last decade with my web hosting experience.

We think A2 Hosting has all the essential attributes of a great web host. But if you still find that it’s not the right host for you, there are plenty of A2 Hosting alternatives to choose from.