A Small Orange Review

Alexandra Anderson

By: Alexandra Anderson

Alexandra Anderson

Alexandra is a web marketer, Agile Product Owner, and die-hard wordsmith who's contributed to HostingAdvice, InMotion Hosting, HostGator, and other prominent hosting and technology blogs, as well as Forbes. She has a master's degree in information technology from Virginia Tech and more than 10 years of experience building websites, advising on web and mobile app design, and crafting content that engages and converts. Her primary subject matter expertise spans WordPress, UX design, Agile project management, and, of course, web hosting.

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Editor: Lillian Castro

Lillian Castro

Lillian brings more than 30 years of editing and journalism experience to our team. She has written and edited for major news organizations, including The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the New York Times, and she previously served as an adjunct instructor at the University of Florida. Today, she edits HostingAdvice content for clarity, accuracy, and reader engagement.

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OVERALL RATING 4.8 / 5.0
★★★★★
Features4.8 / 5.0
Ease of Use4.7 / 5.0
Pricing4.6 / 5.0
Reliability & Support4.7 / 5.0
Discount for Our Users See Deals

A Small Orange hosting has become known for high-speed hardware, heavily-involved support, and customer-minded services. Director of Marketing Zach Kwarta, Datacenter Operations Manager Matt Harris, and Director of Technology Ryan Echter shared the appeal of "homegrown" hosting, including performance specs and the enhanced user experience.

Category Ratings

We had one of our resident hosting experts, Alexandra Anderson, sign up for a A Small Orange account and take it for a spin. Below are Alexandra’s ratings of the A Small Orange experience, broken down by the types of hosting A Small Orange offers.

If you decide to go with A Small Orange, you may get a discount by using our link to sign up. While we often make commissions on purchases made through our links, this had no bearing on Alexandra’s review.

Here’s what Alexandra found in reviewing A Small Orange:

Disclosure: When you sign up through links on our site, we often earn referral fees from partners. For more information, see our ad disclosure and review policy.

A Small Orange's Overall Rating (4.8 / 5.0)

Best Overall Rating

4.8
★★★★★

Price:

Setup Time:

Alexandra Anderson

Alexandra Anderson (HostingAdvice.com):

Since 2003, A Small Orange has been building a company culture that's "homegrown" to embody two focuses: (1) solutions built to help customers grow online and (2) a workplace environment where employees thrive and stay. Three team members walked us through both what draws customers to A Small Orange hosting and what drew them to work for this passionate and creative company. Director of Marketing Zach Kwarta, Director of Technology Ryan Echter, and Datacenter Operations Manager Matt Harris introduced us to A Small Orange hosting solutions, allowing us to then take the servers for a spin with our own performance testing.

A Small Orange Team Defines “Homegrown Hosting”

ASmallOrange.com says, "People are at the center of everything we do. This includes our employees, our customers, and our communities. It's that simple." When chatting with a few of the all-star people at A Small Orange, we were debriefed on the meaning of the term "homegrown," as used frequently throughout the hosting company's marketing message. We interpreted their definition of "homegrown hosting" to have two focuses:

  1. QA’d Technology For Specific Customer Needs
  2. Quality Support For Problem-Solving & Hand-Holding

Based on the passion the team shows for their customers and the services they offer them, "homegrown" indicates the care that goes into engineering new solutions and nurturing customers as they learn to use them.

Breeding 15x Speed Boosts: SSDs, Caching, & In-House Tech

The technology behind A Small Orange emphasizes speedy and secure performance. With that mission in mind, all A Small Orange shared hosting plans are equipped with SSD servers for 15 times faster page loading. "We're known for our technology," Zach said, and especially since the company's acquisition by the powerful Endurance International Group (EIG), the team continually strives to offer more and more performance in the services they build for their customers.

In building their "one-of-a-kind" cloud platform, as an example, the team has engineered several unique templates that are specific to various operating systems. They're loaded with caching technologies and powered by SSDs. Some of their cloud services are SAN-based, some are on local disk, but their templates are all built in house based on what they see their customers doing and needing to host their business. "We have a WordPress-optimized template that actually uses NGINX instead of the Apache web server to deliver faster content loading for the customers’ visitors," Matt shared with us, as an example. "We’ve set up PHP-FPM and other PHP-level caching technologies as well." By building these templates from scratch in house, A Small Orange offers a great deal of flexibility and boosted performance potential to their users.

The teammates told us that A Small Orange's product portfolio centers around the customer and his or her needs — and getting to play by the "Endurance playbook" has only broadened their potential to serve the customer. "It's the best of both worlds," Ryan said, referring to their experience with EIG. "Endurance has let us run with our growth mode and spirit in mind, so we've been able to scale a lot quicker and get some really cool hardware. We ultimately get the best of both worlds with this entrepreneurial freedom while also having the backing of one of the largest companies in the hosting space."

Cultivating for Businesses: cPanel, Uptime, & US Support

A Small Orange centers their business model around helping you build your business model on the Web. For this reason, they don't promise unlimited resources with hidden agendas and up-charges, they do offer a free cPanel license with all hosting plans, and they make sure their highly-trained staff is on hand to help every step of the way. "You get what you pay for and most people are satisfied with that," Zach said. "They’re really able to leverage the technology of the server."

Matt told us that on the support end of things, it's a personal experience. "Support has always been a big deal at ASO and I think customers recognize that," he said. "We offer a personable type of support; we treat the customers like we would want to be treated." All of their support is conducted in house and they're a US-based team — readily available and more than happy to solve problems (or hand-hold, if need be) 24/7/365.

Final Words: Employee Longevity Benefits the Customer

A Small Orange has been around since 2003 and the team members we spoke with have been with the team for about a decade, collectively. "There’s definitely been a lot of longevity on this team," Matt said. "I think a lot of it has to do with the people." The passion for the people they work with and work for (you!) transcends into the pleasantry of the overall hosting experience with A Small Orange. High-tech hardware, in-house performance enhancements, and a team that truly cares — that's reliable hosting in the truest sense of the words.

  • Get 2 months of FREE hosting with "Small," "Medium," or "Large" plans
  • Screaming-fast SSD servers offer 15x more performant page loads
  • Includes cPanel control, Weebly site builder, and unlimited email
  • Expert support team available 24/7/365 via email and live chat
  • 99.9% uptime guarantee
  • Get started on A Small Orange.
Money Back Guarantee
90 days
Disk Space
500 MB - 30 GB
Domain Name
FREE (w/ most annual plans)
Setup Time
6 minutes
A Small Orange's Cheap Hosting (4.7 / 5.0)

Cheap Rating

4.7
★★★★★

Price:

Setup Time:

A Small Orange hosting includes shared plans to meet a range of customer needs, which results in a price range that hosting users new and old should find worthy of consideration. Even if a "Tiny" plan is all you need, you'll benefit from screaming-fast solid-state drives that give your shared server an extra gust of power. As for the essentials, you'll get unlimited email and webmail access, the popular cPanel control panel, and a customer support team that's based here in the US. "Our live chat people are there to help out," Zach assured us. "We have experts ready to go!"

Shared Hosting: “Freshly Squeezed” for Happy Customers

It says something about a company's true value when they're so confident in their customer satisfaction rate that they're willing to offer their product free of charge for 60 days as a trial run. A Small Orange offers a sweet sign-up deal for those who select one of their "Small," "Medium," or "Large" hosting plans for a year or longer: free hosting for two months with a free .COM domain name. Plus, shared server users have access to unlimited email accounts with SPAM protection, mailing lists, and auto-responders.

A Small Orange accepts the challenge to offer unrelentingly excellent support, features, and pricing, as well as a user experience that's worth the 12-month commitment. "We want to be the best shared host for everyone," Zach said. Looking towards 2016 and the future, he told us, "You'll probably see us iterating and making our shared platform even better."

Grow Your Business with A Small Orange cPanel Hosting

Zach told us that the company "eats" the cost of cPanel licensure, so that anyone who wants to get started with hosting can avoid that incremental charge. "We really do want to do the best by the customer," Zach said. "They’re the ones that keep us going everyday, so we never want to lose sight of that mission." From cPanel, customers can install all manner of popular web application scripts, including WordPress, Drupal, and Magento — some of the most user-friendly avenues for building personal or professional websites.

The Team Creates cPanel-Integrated Tools & Templates for Maximum Performance

The team told us about technical innovations they've concocted to further enhance their hosting offerings. They've implemented an assortment of caching technologies, and they offer MariaDB and MySQL for file storage and management options. They've also designed a series of templates catering to specific operating systems, which customers can seamlessly switch between based on needs. As an example, they built a WordPress-optimized template using NGINX (a web server to help your site load content at blazing-fast speeds). "These templates offer a great deal of flexibility, because we've created them in house ourselves," Ryan said. "A lot of these tools are cPanel integrations that we’ve done in house for anyone who wants those performance enhancements."

They’ve Built an Enterprise-Standard Hardware/Software Stack to Support You

Enterprise-level hardware comes standard. Even on shared server plans, A Small Orange uses high-powered Intel processors to give customers top-tier performance. "We are known for our technology," Zach said. "We have a tremendous infrastructure in place, so a lot of our customers have come to us for that."

Final Words: Affordability & A Small Orange Go Hand in Hand

A Small Orange shared hosting pricing ranges from a little under three to 20 bucks per month, which allows prospective customers to choose a plan based on the resources they require and the cost they can be comfortable with. What you can't really put a price on, however, is the extra thought that the technical team has put into their in-house innovations. With SSD speed-boosting, cPanel access, unlimited email addresses, and a 99.9% uptime guarantee — plus a 2-month promotion for free hosting — A Small Orange knows how to dangle a pretty enticing carrot as far as shared hosting cost is concerned.

  • FREE hosting for 2 months with "Small," "Medium," or "Large" plans
  • FREE Weebly site builder, 100s of templates, and mobile-friendly designs
  • SSD speed-boosting makes your website's server 15x more performant
  • Includes cPanel, unlimited email addresses, and 99.9% uptime
  • Expert support 24/7/365
  • Get started on A Small Orange.
Money Back Guarantee
90 days
Disk Space
500 MB - 30 GB
Domain Name
FREE (w/ most annual plans)
Setup Time
6 minutes
A Small Orange's Dedicated Hosting (4.6 / 5.0)

Dedicated Rating

4.6
★★★★★

Price:

Setup Time:

A Small Orange hosting on dedicated servers includes the following: enterprise-grade hardware, expert-managed security updates and patches, and exactly the resources you need for your dedicated environment. The ASO team will fine-tune your server to your specifications, handle setup, and monitor your main IP address (with ping monitoring as well). You get the power of a dedicated plan with the peace of mind of a fully-managed shared plan.

Top-Tier Technology is a Standard, Not an Option

Solid-state drives, RAID 1 disk mirroring, and premier Intel processors all come standard on A Small Orange dedicated server plans. "We have a great set of hardware/software," Zach said — the stack is of enterprise-level quality with 24/7/365 monitoring done by an expert team. "We have a tremendous infrastructure in place, so a lot of our customers have come to us for that."

ASO dedicated customers all receive full root access as well as cPanel/WHM control to manage their servers. On the system administration side of things, Ryan and a team of 10-or-so run the infrastructure and respond to any issues that exceed the means of traditional support that may arise.

Employee Longevity Makes for a Well-Oiled Machine Team

Ryan has been a member of the A Small Orange hosting team for about five years now; Zach recently joined A Small Orange and Matt's been there for four years. They all agreed that the company holds a history of employee longevity that translates into both an enjoyable work environment and a better customer experience.

When asked what keeps them around, they attributed their sticking with ASO to their professional peers. "I think a lot of it has to do with the people — I really enjoy everyone that I work with," Matt said. "We have a lot of fun together," Ryan echoed. The team gets unlimited vacation time, daily video hangouts (for work-related discussion and for fun), and the option to work from home or choose their schedule. "At the end of the day, we're a giant team and a big, happy family," Zach concluded. That employee morale translates into a better hosting experience for the customer. "We really care about the customer and want to offer them a good service," Matt said.

Final Say on Finding the Dedicated Server to Fit Your Needs

Dedicated server hosting with A Small Orange means flexibility. You get a range of options for memory and disk storage settings — spanning from four to 16 gigabytes and 128 gigabytes to one terabyte, respectively. You get the power of an Intel Xeon core processor. You get the control of cPanel, WHM, and root administrative access. With A Small Orange, you get the power of dedicated resources, backed by a team that can support the security, setup, and troubleshooting needs that accompany that server responsibility. "Our product portfolio is based on the customer and what they need," Zach concluded.

  • FREE cPanel/WHM license, Root access, and 5 IP addresses
  • Managed services include help with updates, patches, and maintenance
  • RAID 1 disk mirroring comes standard to prevent server data loss
  • 4-32GB of memory and your choice of single- or multiple-CPU servers
  • US-based support available 24/7/365
  • Get started on A Small Orange.
Money Back Guarantee
N/A
Disk Space
128 GB SSD - 1 TB
Domain Name
N/A
Setup Time
7 minutes
A Small Orange's VPS Hosting (4.8 / 5.0)

VPS Rating

4.8
★★★★★

Price:

Setup Time:

KVM virtualization, Intel Xeon 6-core processors, automatic failover, and state-of-the-art network safeguarding — a blur of letters and buzz words for hosting newbies, but for the more savvy VPS shopper, these features are exactly what you're looking for in a cloud-based server. A Small Orange cloud hosting includes the latest in performance technologies, so you can expect enterprise-level hardware and expert-level help to secure and monitor it. Ryan, Matt, and Zach introduced us to their VPS hosting infrastructure, talking through the tech and the team behind it.

Performance Testing Reveals 100ms Response Times

Cloud Spectator conducted performance testing on A Small Orange and other providers and reported 100% uptime for A Small Orange Linux hosting in February 2016. When comparing the response times coming from various datacenters, the results for February 2016 ranged from 297 milliseconds to respond to a low 100-millisecond load time.

Cloud Spectator Report: A Small Orange Linux Hosting Response Times
Feb 2016: Lifetime (Aug 2014 - Feb 2016):
West North America: 101 milliseconds 473 milliseconds
East North America: 136 milliseconds 458 milliseconds
Mid North America: 100 milliseconds 454 milliseconds
Europe: 297 milliseconds 603 milliseconds

ASO promises 99.9% uptime, which isn't jaw-dropping in the hosting space; however, they were one of three providers with 100% uptime in February 2016, according to the results of the Cloud Spectator performance review.

ASO Team Talks the Tech Fueling the Cloud Product's Power

While discussing A Small Orange's hosting offerings, Zach told us the cloud product in particular is "one of a kind." This piqued our interest immediately. "The way we have it set up is pretty cool," he explained that the entire platform is SSD-powered with RAID solid-state drives and several "cool caching technologies" in place (e.g., PHP-FPM/FastCGI Process Manager and other PHP-level caching tools).

NGINX & Caching Galore: In-House Innovations Offer More Performance & Flexibility

"One of the things that really differentiates our cloud platform and that really enables us to provide a higher quality of service than other providers on the market right now is that all of our templates for different operating systems are homegrown," Matt said. "What I mean by that is that instead of downloading a template from the developers of our virtualization software, we create them based on what we've learned about what our customers are actually doing in the real world; then we optimize the templates around that research."

As an example, the A Small Orange team built a WordPress-optimized template using NGINX to deliver faster content loading for customers' site visitors. "These templates offer a great deal of flexibility, because we’ve created them in house ourselves," Matt said. "We’re able to offer certain performance bonuses that you can’t find with any other provider." Customers can seamlessly switch between various templates as their hosting needs fluctuate.

More is Better: Control with cPanel, Speed with SSDs, Data Protection with RAID 1

"From a marketing side, cPanel’s included," Zach said, "so anyone who wants to get started with VPS is not faced with that incremental charge." Ryan added that many of the in-house tools we discussed are integrated with cPanel, "so if someone wants to get these performance enhancements, there are cPanel integrations that we’ve done in house that are a part of those stacks as well."

In addition to cPanel hosting, A Small Orange VPS customers benefit from SSD speed-boosting, resulting in screaming-fast response times. To protect your precious site data, A Small Orange conducts daily site backups, with options for rolling back to previous versions over a 7-day timespan. They also offer R1Soft's Bare-Metal Restore (BMR) backups for all of their servers, along with RAID 1 disk mirroring.

Final Words: VPS Customers Get "Big Deal" Support

Recognizing that no hosting solution can be one-size-fits-all, the A Small Orange hosting support team is there to help iron out the setup and security details. They offer free migration assistance, 24/7 network monitoring, and a "personable" support experience, to use Matt's words. "We treat the customer like we would want to be treated," he said. They have around 100-or-so support employees and Zach told us those folks make up the "bulk" of the ASO staff. "Support has always been a big deal at ASO and I think the customers recognize that," Matt said. "It really shines through in all of our support channels."

To sum things up: VPS requires flexibility and that power warrants a need for relentlessly reliable support; that support needs to translate from the chat portal to the network of servers — servers which need to be online. A Small Orange's cloud hosting for Linux yields screaming-fast response times, the team offers support you can count on, and the company promises 99.9% uptime for your site. That's a virtual deal you can literally feel good about.

  • Scale in the Cloud for FREE for the first 2 months with annual plans
  • Automatic failover makes your hardware less susceptible to failure
  • 24/7 monitoring and SSD caching for super fast page load speeds
  • First-class hardware, FREE migration assistance, and KVM virtualization
  • US-based support available 24/7/365 and cPanel/WHM access included
  • Get started on A Small Orange.
Money Back Guarantee
N/A
Disk Space
30 GB - 150 GB
Domain Name
FREE (w/ most annual plans)
Setup Time
7 minutes
A Small Orange's WordPress Hosting (4.9 / 5.0)

WordPress Rating

4.9
★★★★★

Price:

Setup Time:

WordPress hosting is a popular avenue for individuals, business owners, and bloggers to get a new website launched quickly and easily. A number of the ASmallOrange.com offerings benefit WordPress hosting seekers, starting with their sign-up deal for annual plans (two months of free hosting). With the extremely popular cPanel control panel, customers can log in and easily install WordPress, along with hundreds of other web apps, via Softaculous auto-installer. Once you're up and running, your site will perform up to 15 times faster, thanks to A Small Orange's SSD-powered servers.

WordPress-Optimized Templates Built In House

The team told us about some cool performance enhancements that they've engineered in house. They offer a variety of system-specific templates, with a boatload of caching and SSD speed-boosting technologies. Ryan explained one template type in particular: "We have a WordPress-optimized template that actually uses NGINX instead of the Apache web server to deliver faster content loading for the customers’ visitors."

They determine what kind of templates and in-house innovations to work on next based on what they observe their customers doing, using, or needing. "We create these templates based on what we’ve learned about what our customers are actually doing in the real world," Ryan said. "By creating these templates in house, we’re able to offer certain performance bonuses that you can’t find with any other provider."

Support from the Experts with a 99.9% Uptime Promise

WordPress is well-liked and well-supported in the hosting community, but there's nothing more frustrating than trying to troubleshoot a WordPress hiccup yourself to no avail. A Small Orange offers the help of their friendly support staff 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year. They're US-based and ready to assist.

Meanwhile, their security team is also keeping an eye on your website and server. They conduct daily site backups, with 7-day rollback options, and promise a 99.9% uptime guarantee. Your data is also better protected with Bare Metal Restore (BMR) backups.

WordPress with A Small Orange in Review

What could be better than 1-click installation, SSD speed-boosting, and a US-based support team to get you started with the very popular blogging platform, WordPress? A Small Orange makes it easy, affordable, and darn-right pleasant to launch a WP site for your personal or business use. "The customer has always been a really important part of our business," Zach said. "Our product portfolio is based on the customer and what they need." A Small Orange centers their business around helping you build your business.

  • Get 2 months FREE with "Small," "Medium," or "Large" plan sign-up
  • Install WordPress with one click via Softaculous auto-installer
  • Includes cPanel, US-based support, and 99.9% uptime guarantee
  • Webmail access, POP3, IMAP, SPAM filtering, and auto-responders
  • Up to unlimited domains and email
  • Get started on A Small Orange.
Money Back Guarantee
90 days
Disk Space
500 MB - 30 GB
Domain Name
FREE (w/ most annual plans)
Setup Time
7 minutes
A Small Orange's Website Builder (4.5 / 5.0)

Website Builder Rating

4.5
★★★★★

Price:

Setup Time:

A Small Orange builds upon their usable and flexible hosting offerings by partering with Weebly to provide the "Professional" and "Business" website builder plans. Keep in mind, all shared hosting plans come with a free Weebly site builder, but these particular services give you the same drag-and-drop ease-of-use, without the ASO branding. These add-ons allow you to get a professional-looking site up and running in mere minutes and are especially appealing to eCommerce-minded customers or those with no programming experience (and no interest in becoming a developer overnight). Both plans include A Small Orange hosting features like cPanel access and unlimited email addresses, as well as 24/7/365 live chat support.

Market Your Personal Brand with Weebly Drag-and-Drop

Customize a beautiful web property that boasts your brand with the simplicity of Weebly's drag-and-drop builder tool. With either of A Small Orange's web builder plans, you can create an unlimited number of pages, a custom footer to connect them all, and a slideshow to catch visitors' eyes at first landing. Password-protect pages, add audio or video, and host your masterpiece at a personalized domain name. Once you're satisfied with your design, hit "Publish" and start promoting your brand or profiting from your products.

SMB Tricks: Shopping Carts, Promo Codes, & Calculators

If you're building an online marketplace, A Small Orange offers all the eCommerce features you need to feature and sell your products on the Web with ease. Feature up to 25 products with the "Professional" plan, or display as many as you can come up with using the "Business" plan. Other perks to opting for the slightly pricier "Business" plan include a shopping cart integrated into your domain (rather than parking it at a Weebly.com subdomain), no transaction fees, and additional tools for calculating shipping, taxes, and coupon codes. Depending on your business size and sales expectations, you can determine which plan better suits your inventory needs.

The Bottom Line: Web Building with ASO is Easy

If there's one thing we want to stress here, it's that the A Small Orange team is readily available to help no matter your hosting or site-building requirements. "We offer a personable type of support," Matt said. "We really care about the customer and want to offer them a good service." Based on our conversation with the ASO team, we believe that their attitude is: your business's success is their business.

  • FREE Weebly website builder and 99.9% uptime for your new site
  • Choose from 100s of templates and mobile-friendly designs
  • Create forms, design slideshows, and display up to unlimited products
  • Includes cPanel, unlimited email addresses, and unlimited pages
  • No ASO branding and you can add a shopping cart to your domain
  • Get started on A Small Orange.
Money Back Guarantee
N/A
Disk Space
N/A
Domain Name
FREE (w/ most annual hosting plans)
Setup Time
6 minutes

Features

(4.8 / 5.0)

You Get What You Pay For: A Lot

  • A Small Orange may not boast "unlimited everything," but it's with good reason: you get what you pay for and are then able to really leverage the technology of your server.
  • A Small Orange does offer its share of "freebies," however, including a complimentary cPanel license, unlimited email accounts, and screaming-fast SSD servers that offer a 15x-boost to performance.
  • Perhaps the most incentivizing perk to joining the ASO family is the free two months of hosting and free domain that they offer to customers who sign up for (most) annual plans.

One-of-a-Kind Cloud Product

  • A Small Orange's cloud platform is completely SSD-powered with RAID solid-state drives. Zach said, "There's a lot of cool caching technology in place so your site loads a LOT faster."
  • They offer several cloud services and Matt told us a key differentiator is the fact that all of their templates for various operating systems are "homegrown," meaning they create templates per the findings of research on customer needs.
  • As an example, the WordPress-optimized template uses an NGINX web server, rather than Apache, which helps deliver faster content loading for their customers' site visitors.

A Personable Support Experience

  • The LiveChat team is always on hand and ready to go: "to resolve issues, hand-hold if need be, and help you be successful," Zach said. The support of A Small Orange is US-based and offered 24 hours a day, 365 days per year.
  • "We offer a personal type of support," Matt said. "We treat the customer as we would want to be treated; that sounds like a cliche, but it really shines through in all of our support channels."
  • In addition to trouble-shooting issues, the A Small Orange team will help you migrate and/or upgrade your service at any time, so that's a seamless process as well.

A World-Class Hardware Stack: 99.9% Uptime

  • In addition to the latest processors (Intel Xeon E5 Dual Hex Core or better) and enterprise-level hardware stacks, they've got a team of experts vigorously minding your servers 24/7.
  • A Small Orange reviews and backs up your site daily, with 7-day rollbacks included. RISoft Bare Metal Restore (BMR) backups come standard on all shared server hosting plans, so you know that your data is safe, no matter what.
  • ASmallOrange.com promises a 99.9% uptime rate — or better — for your website. You can also password-protect files and directories, and IP-blocking is supported as well.

Ease of Use

(4.7 / 5.0)
1-Click WordPress Installation
A Small Orange Review
Includes User-Friendly cPanel
A Small Orange Review
Manage Files & Databases Easily
A Small Orange Review

A Small Orange has taken all the necessary steps to make your hosting setup process simple. Shared hosting users can activate their free Weebly website builder or install their choice of blogging or eCommerce application (e.g., WordPress, Drupal, or Magento) with one click via Softaculous auto-installer. More advanced users will also appreciate the root and SSH access for manipulating their server(s). You can manage it all easily and efficiently with the extremely popular hosting control panel: cPanel — the license for which is included in all A Small Orange hosting packages.

Pricing

(4.6 / 5.0)

"Tiny" Shared Plan

"Medium" Shared Plan

"Large" Shared Plan

A Small Orange pricing is pretty fair, with emphasis placed on the value of the technology and support you are getting in exchange for your monthly bill. A juicy perk to signing up for one of the qualifying yearly plans is free hosting for the first two months! You'll also get a free .COM domain name to host your new website on. Participating plans include all annual VPS and dedicated plans, as well as all annual shared plans with the exception of the "Tiny" plan.

"We're priced pretty well," Zach commented. "We don't offer unlimited this and unlimited that and it's on purpose. You get what you pay for and most people are pretty satisfied with that." A Small Orange doesn't claim to give you the world and then underdeliver on the expectations of the customer. You can choose a plan that caters to your specific hosting needs, and seamlessly scale as necessary. They do, however, offer a hefty amount of free email features: webmail access, IMAP and POP3 support, auto-responders, SPAM and virus filters, and unlimited accounts. With A Small Orange, cPanel licenses come standard as well. That's a lot of bang for not necessarily a lot of bucks.

Reliability & Support

(4.7 / 5.0)

A Small Orange boasts a 99.9% rate as their uptime guarantee, which isn't a lofty promise in the hosting world; however, for most run-of-the-mill hosting customers, 99.9% uptime means their website is almost always live, and that's enough. A Small Orange hosting truly shines in the reliability arena with the company's performance-boosting technology choices. For example, they set up PHP-level caching tools in their templates, include NGINX web servers to deliver rapid content loading, and include industry-leading RAID SSDs on most plans.

A Small Orange Includes:

24/7/365 Customer Support, Daily Backups with 7-Day Rollbacks, SSD Speed-Boosting, and a 99.9% Uptime Guarantee

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Bluehost vs A Small Orange

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.8/5.0
Bluehost vs A Small Orange

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.9/5.0

A Small Orange vs. SiteGround

Here we compare a host that touts “homegrown hosting” with one that’s become known for their in-house technologies.

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A Small Orange vs SiteGround

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.8/5.0
A Small Orange vs SiteGround

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 5.0/5.0

A Small Orange is the winner
3 out of 5 times.

The Rundown

Alexandra Anderson

Alexandra Anderson

Hosting Expert:

A Small Orange: "Homegrown" with Powerful Technology & A Personable Team

After our conversation with Matt, Ryan, and Zach, it seems the A Small Orange hosting family is bred to believe in putting the customer experience first. What goes into crafting the ideal customer experience isn't determined by guesswork, however, but through thorough vetting of ASmallOrange.com customer use-cases and needs. Whatever it takes — upgrading the hardware, building out template options specific to various operating systems, or investing more in customer support — A Small Orange will explore any opportunity to enhance the customer's hosting experience. "We’re really known for our technology, but we’re also really known for our support," Zach said. "Our product portfolio is based on the customer."

A Small Orange review

Overall Rating

4.8 / 5.0
★★★★★

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.
Alexandra Anderson
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