I just switched to A2 hosting…

Speed, security, and support… all for a lower cost!

I recently switched an organization from their current hosting provider to A2 hosting, and had a great experience. The site is much faster, more secure, and the migration was performed for no extra cost!

As some of you may know, in addition to managing my Email Overload Solutions site, I am also a Steering Team Member of the Information Overload Research Group (IORG).

One of my responsibilities for IORG is to support their WordPress site and help them with other technical issues (Social Media Accounts, Mailing Lists, etc.).

The IORG site had been running WordPress on a different hosting provider, but weren’t happy with it’s tools, performance, or cost. This other provider also didn’t use the standard cPANEL management interface, their Mail management services were very limited, and the site’s performance was very slow according to various speed tests I performed, including GTmetrix.

Before I made the switch from WordPress to SquareSpace for my Email Overload site, I had used A2 Hosting and had been very happy with their performance and service. Based on my prior good experience wit A2 Hosting, we made the decision to switch the IORG site over to A2 Hosting, and it turned out to be a great move.

Our WordPress site is running faster than ever, I have access to the well-known and standard cPanel site management interface, and setting-up and managing Emails is now a simple activity using the A2 Hosting Email utilities.

In addition, by signing-up for a 2-year deal, we saved a lot of money compared to our old provider, and we are getting more for our money as well..

Best of all, as part of signing-up for a new A2 Hosting account, they migrated our site from our old provider over to A2 hosting at no extra cost. The entire process took less then a day, and there were only a few small items that I needed to do myself, otherwise A2 took care of everything.

I plan to do a detailed write-up that takes you through the entire migration process to A2 Hosting, including a few items that I learned along the way, but I just wanted to let everyone know about A2 Hosting and what a good deal they are for the money.

In addition to the money savings, a huge benefit has been the increased speed of our site.

A2 Hosting is running a 50% off special, so their LITE Shared Hosting Lite package is only $52.86 ($4.41/month) for a full year. And you can save more money if you wanted to lock-in for 2 years for only $93.96 ($3.92/month).

If you are running a hosted website, please look at switching to A2 Hosting by clicking the logo-below.

(By using this logo, it will ensure you get the 50% discount described above!)

(Note: In full disclosure, the above logo is an affiliate link, and I may receive a small commission if you purchase A2 Hosting using my link. However, there is no extra cost to you, and by purchasing through my affiliate link, you are helping to support this site. It is only through affiliate links and a small amount of advertising revenue and sponsors that allows me to continue to run my site and grow my content).

Here is a bit more about A2 Hosting, and why I really like them!

Super Fast Servers!

A2 Hosting only uses Solid State Drives (SSDs) and takes extra steps to limit the number of people that they allow on their “shared hosting” servers.
They also implement caching functionality, which automatically stores information in your web browser, which greatly limits the number of times people need to request ‘static information’ from your website.
“A2 Hosting page loading times came in with an average of 376ms over a period of TEN months – the highest of every web host we have reviewed – and 50+ percent faster than the industry average (890ms)”. (Source: Hostingfact.com).
For WordPress users (which is many people that manage their own sites), they have an A2 Optimized WordPress plugin that helps improve the performance of your WordPress site on their A2 environment.

Free Site Migrations!

With your new account comes a free site migration service!
I submitted a “migration request” through their Helpdesk ticket system and was provided with a data collection form for the site transfer.
There were a few clarifying questions along the way, but everything proceeded quickly and the whole site was migrated in under 24 hours.
Many hosting providers will charge you a fee to migrate your site, but A2 Hosting does this for free.
What is even more impressive is that our prior hosting provider didn’t even use cPanel, but A2 was still able to migrate our site, which is no easy feat.

Great Customer Support!

Fast server response and free migration is great, but you also need a provider that is there when you have questions or issues.
A2 Hosting has US-based support this is available 24/7/365.
You can contact them via Email, Chat, Phone, or Ticket Submission.
I really like that you can either real-time “chat” or call them on the telephone. There are some hosting providers out there that only respond via Tickets and Email, which can be very frustrating if you have a complex issue and want to really talk it through with someone.
A2 Hosting also has an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau (BBB).

Free Security Scanning… that works!

A2 accounts all include their “HackScan” service that helps protect your site. It includes a hosting firewall, virus scanning, security monitoring, and protection from brute-force attacks.
Because of this level of protection performed by A2 Hosting, you may not need to include a WordPress-based security plugin (such as WordFence), which often have high performance overhead and can slow-down your site.
In fact, about a day after we switched over to A2 hosting, they sent us an Email about some files that they felt were potential security risks. They had found a directory on our server with some old, outdated theme files which contained some potential vulnerabilities.
Luckily, we no longer needed these files (they were from an old test site), so we were just able to delete them.
Our prior hosting provider never raised an issue about these files, but A2 hosting caught the problem right away - Very impressive!

A Hosting Company that even cares about the environment!

As stated earlier, A2 hosting only uses Solid State Disk Drives (SSDs). In fact, they were one of the first hosting firms to ONLY use SSDs. But what you may not know is that these drives use much less energy than traditional Hard Disk Drives (HDDs), so using SSDs is also good for the environment.
A2 hosting also partners with Carbonfund.org to help protect our environment. For every Kilowatt of energy that A2 hosting uses, they purchase “carbon offsets”, which helps to fund projects that reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.
They also recycle all their old servers and hardware.
They are also known for supporting virtual work and telecommuting for their employees, which helps to reduce pollution from commuting.
If I am going to give my money to a technology company, it is nice to know it is one that is focused on “being green” and helping to protect our environment.

Various Hosting Packages and Options

Although they have a number of Hosting options, for “Shared Hosting” (which is by far the most widely used option), they have three main plans to consider:

Lite plan:

This plan starts at just $3.92 per month.
Unlimited Storage
Unlimited Transfer
25 Email Addresses
1 Website
5 Databases
5 Subdomains
25 Parked Domains
cPanel Control Panel
Free SSL & SSD
Free & Easy Site Transfer
Anytime Money Back Guarantee

Swift plan:

This plan starts at $4.90 per month.
Everything in the LITE PLAN plus:
Unlimited Email Addresses
Unlimited MySQL Databases
Unlimited Domains
Unlimited Websites
Unlimited Databases

Turbo plan:

This plan starts at $9.31 per month.
Everything in the SWIFT PLAN plus:
Turbo (Up To 20X Faster)
A2 Site Accelerator
Includes HTTP/2 and SPDY support for improved website speed.

There are MANY more options then the few I listed above, and for a full listing of all the features, make sure to check out their A2 Optimized WordPress Hosting Plan Comparison Page

You will also save more the longer you sign-up for.

Their plans can be purchased either month-by-month, annually, or 2-year or even 3-year plans.

For our small IORG site, we just stuck with their “LITE” hosting plan. It had everything we needed, and at the discounted 2-year price, we saved a huge amount over our current provider.

A2 Hosting Summary

I highly recommend you look into A2 hosting, especially if you run a WordPress site on a Shared Hosting provider.

I used A2 Hosting several years back when my site ran on WordPress, and had a very positive experience with them.

And now as a result of moving our IORG site to A2 Hosting, I can once again state that they are one of the better Hosting providers out there.

I plan to make another post in a few weeks that walks you through the entire process of migrating our site over from its current provider to A2 hosting, but I wanted to provide everyone with a quick overview of my great experience with A2 hosting (again!).

Sure, there may be some hosting providers that are a bit cheaper, but if you want performance, support, and security, all at a highly competitive price, it is hard to beat the value of A2 Hosting.