A2 Hosting vs. InMotion (2023)

By: Alexandra Anderson

Editor: Lillian Castro

9/7/2023

Alexandra Anderson Hosting Expert

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

On your marks, get set, GO! Two of the fastest hosting providers are being tested to see who will reach the finish line in first place. Our competitors, A2 Hosting and InMotion, both offer lightning-fast speeds backed by industry-leading hardware and turbo-boosted SSD drives. But these features aren’t just reserved for dedicated server packages — even shared hosting customers are blown away by quick page loads. Take your seats because this will be a close match.

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 »

Overall Rating

4.9/5.0 ★★★★★

Core Plan: $2.29/month »
Launch Plan: $4.99/month »
Pro Plan: $12.99/month »

Visit InMotion »

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Overall Hosting Comparison

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

Best Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.9/5.0

Offering a wider range of services than most — including shared, dedicated, VPS, and even WordPress-specific plans — InMotion Hosting features a great combination of industry-leading hardware, always-there support, and mass scalability for all hosting needs.

InMotion Hosting has ultra-modern SSD drives on its shared plans, which give an added speed boost to your site. If a little extra speed is worth a few dollars more a month, then InMotion is a good choice for you.

The company's customer service and reputation are excellent in the shared space, though InMotion tends to be a bit higher priced than some competitors.

In testing InMotion servers and account backends ourselves, there are a few things InMotion does that we especially appreciate.

First and foremost, we like to see free and automated backups included with each plan, as data security is vitally important.

The company also offers zero-downtime site transfers, which makes switching to InMotion or between its hosting plans a breeze.

Finally, multiple datacenters and the ability to choose which will house your site appeals to speed freaks like us.

Regardless of your hosting needs, InMotion seems to have your bases covered. If you value great hardware and support, all at a reasonable price, we highly recommend InMotion as your next host.

FREE SSD drives included with all hosting plans
Zero-downtime website transfers and migrations
FREE backups, SSL, and DDoS protection
Choice of East Coast or West Coast datacenter
Multi-language support for PHP, Ruby, and Perl
Get started on InMotion now.

Money Back Guarantee

90 days

Disk Space

Unlimited

Domain Name

FREE (1 year)

Cheap Hosting Comparison

Cheap Rating

★★★★★ 4.6/5.0

#8 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

Cheap Rating

★★★★★ 4.7/5.0

#5 out of 10 in Cheap Hosting reviews

InMotion Hosting offers an excellent business-class shared hosting plan — with a price tag lower than several other budget hosts.

For the IT crowd in the audience, you’ll appreciate SSH access, as well as support for PHP, Ruby, Perl, Python, WP-CLI, and other popular languages.

You’ll also appreciate the 20-times faster speed, which comes from all-SSD storage and your choice of datacenter locations.

You needn’t worry about data security, as InMotion plans include automatic data backups.

For the rest of us, we can appreciate the convenience of the free website transfers and 24/7 US-based support.

A free domain registration and WordPress website builder with eCommerce support are also appealing.

The overall package and business-class hardware make InMotion’s shared hosting a great choice for businesses or those looking for a little higher-end hardware.

And, as one of the few remaining independently owned hosting providers left on the market, InMotion has taken every effort to remain cost-competitive.

FREE BoldGrid site builder and templates
FREE website, domain, and cPanel migrations
SSD storage makes your site load up to 20x faster
Security suite includes SSL and hack protection
Unlimited bandwidth and email accounts
Get started on InMotion now.

Money Back Guarantee

90 days

Disk Space

100 GB SSD - Unlimited

Domain Name

FREE (1 year)

Dedicated Hosting Comparison

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 (Mirrored)

Domain Name

New or Transfer

Dedicated Rating

★★★★★ 4.8/5.0

#2 out of 8 in Dedicated Hosting reviews

InMotion Hosting offers amazingly fast and reliable dedicated hosting on market-leading hardware — making it an easy choice for anyone seeking a premium dedicated server host.

From free SSDs to a fanatical support team, InMotion has all the bases covered for both small-scale and large-scale operations.

Unlike some hosts, InMotion gives SSH and root access to its servers. Each plan comes in bare metal or fully managed flavors. The latter includes two to four hours of dedicated time with a system administrator, which is an excellent help in getting your site configured to meet your needs.

Managed servers also come set up with free cPanel and WHM for easy management, while unmanaged server operators can choose among CentOS, Debian, or Ubuntu operating systems.

Plenty of CPU power, RAM, and storage come with each plan, as well as lots of dedicated IP addresses.

Perhaps our favorite feature of InMotion is the company's zero-downtime, rebootless kernel updates, which are partially the reason for InMotion's superb 99.999% uptime.

InMotion has a 30-day money-back guarantee on their dedicated plans, which is fairly rare and just another reason you can’t go wrong selecting the company as your dedicated host.

Bare-metal or managed servers available
1-on-1 time with a server administrator
99.99% uptime via Smart Routing™ technology
Tier 1 network with redundant bandwidth
SSH root access and DDoS protection on all servers
Upgrade for cPanel, migration, and auto backups
Get started on InMotion now.

Money Back Guarantee

30 days

Disk Space

1 TB SSD - 4 TB SSD

Domain Name

New or Transfer

VPS Hosting Comparison

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

150 GB SSD - 450 GB SSD

Domain Name

New or Transfer

VPS Rating

★★★★★ 4.6/5.0

#7 out of 9 in VPS Hosting reviews

Boasting market-leading VPS hardware, slick management software, and free SSD drives and backups, InMotion Hosting competes to win when it comes to managed VPS hosting packages.

The host initiates its VPS customer relationship with free website migrations and up to two hours of launch assistance from an experienced sysadmin.

Customers then enjoy highly available servers, seamless scalability options, and premium support — at a fair price.

Enjoy SSD storage arranged in a RAID-6 array, DDoS attack prevention powered by Corero, and routine server snapshots and rollback options.

Performance and security are clearly priorities for this hosting company. When it comes to bandwidth, disk space, and other usage allowances, we found these VPS packages to be competitive with other industry leaders.

All plans run on the CentOS Linux operating system and feature a license for cPanel and WHM, making it super easy to resell some unused server resources, too.

Ultimately, InMotion Hosting's reputation for uptime is second to none.

With a solid track record as a large-scale host, the company's sweet spot is found in its virtual, cloud, and dedicated server offerings. Should you get stuck, the support team is available 24/7.

Based on our experience, we'd highly recommend InMotion to those seeking flexible/easily configurable and cost-competitive virtual private servers backed by equally available support.

HostingAdvice readers get 67% off the first term
FREE site migrations and 2 hours of Launch Assist
2 - 3 dedicated IP address options
FREE cPanel/WHM licenses included
Highly available servers with real-time redundancy
Get started on InMotion now.

Money Back Guarantee

90 days

Disk Space

90 GB SSD - 360 GB NVMe SSD

Domain Name

FREE (1 year)

WordPress Hosting Comparison

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 NVMe SSD - Unlimited NVMe SSD

Domain Name

New or Transfer

WordPress Rating

★★★★★ 4.9/5.0

#4 out of 8 in WordPress Hosting reviews

InMotion Hosting, long known for affordable and high-performance shared hosting options, entered the WordPress space with a solid option built upon the company's reputation for great support and reliability.

Build on an all-SSD infrastructure, InMotion's inherently quick speeds make the infrastructure a perfect fit for delivering rapid WordPress page loads.

Options like integrated staging help take full advantage of the nice, modern hardware, and ample server caching tools are a good perk.

The choice of datacenters (East or West) is nice, as well, as it allows you to target your local audience with better load times.

InMotion offers four levels to its WordPress hosting offerings, which allows you to tailor the hosting to your needs or budget.

For those needing ecommerce support, the company's middle or top offerings have you covered, while all three include InMotion's drag-and-drop BoldGrid page editor.

Each hosting package InMotion offers comes with a free domain, unlimited disk space, unlimited emails, and free data backups for data security.

If you need it, each plan also has support for PHP, Ruby, Perl, and Python, and includes SSH access.

InMotion Hosting has made a name for itself on support and reliability. While not the cheapest of the budget WordPress hosts, the packages offered are solid in performance and feature sets.

Up to 12x faster WordPress hosting
FREE SSL certificate and SSD storage
Automatic WordPress plugin, theme, and core updates
Features a FREE drag-and-drop WP page editor
Premium themes and plugin subscriptions
Get started on InMotion now.

Money Back Guarantee

90 days

Disk Space

100 GB - Unlimited NVMe SSD

Domain Name

FREE (1 year)

Site Builder Hosting Comparison

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

100 GB SSD - Unlimited SSD

Domain Name

New or Transfer

Website Builder Rating

★★★★★ 4.8/5.0

If you're aiming to build a dynamic, user-oriented website — an active blog, a photo gallery, an ecommerce store — check out InMotion Hosting.

The InMotion team is extremely knowledgeable in the hosting industry, and they're attuned to the ever-evolving needs of the end-user — from the ultra-novice to the über-experienced.

Evidence of the team's attention to user needs can be found in BoldGrid. The proprietary website builder platform was received so well by the market that InMotion decided to spin the web builder off into its own company.

BoldGrid functions on top of WordPress, bringing intuitiveness and ease of use to a content management environment notorious for bringing beginners frustration.

With hundreds of templates and a nice WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, getting started with a new site is a fairly quick and easy process. You can play around with the plethora of site templates, preview the site that could soon be yours, and get a feel for which look most closely matches your intended design or brand.

BoldGrid comes free on all of InMotion's shared hosting packages, which come with all the essential hosting goodies and some of the best support money can buy.

Each plan offers powerful hardware, a free domain name, and free data backups — that last one being an extremely valuable feature.

InMotion does have lengthy signup periods for their best deals, but they offer a 90-day money-back guarantee to help you feel confident that they are the right host for you.

FREE site builder comes with all WordPress plans
FREE domain with tons of options to customize and scale
200+ easy-to-edit blog, gallery, and ecommerce themes
Customizable templates come with industry-specific starter content
Easy SEO tools and mobile-friendly designs
Get started on InMotion now.

Money Back Guarantee

90 days

Disk Space

Unlimited

Domain Name

FREE (1 year)

A2 Hosting vs. InMotion - Our Conclusion

Alexandra Anderson Hosting Expert

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

There you have it! These two hosts came in close, showing their high rank above the other competition. Compared to the industry’s cheapest packages, we still consider InMotion and A2 Hosting well worth the added investment. The upgraded hardware, attentive support, and unlimited features make these hosting companies two of the best.

Overall Rating

4.9/5.0 ★★★★★

Visit A2 Hosting »

Overall Rating

4.9/5.0 ★★★★★

Visit InMotion »

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.