A2 Hosting VPS Review
You’re reading to this A2 Hosting VPS Review because you might have read on A2 Hosting official website that their VPS solution has Turbo Boost that help your website to gain up to 20X faster page loads than competing hosts.
We learn about it thoroughly and write this A2 Hosting VPS review to help you out.
Unlike normal content management system based websites custom applications and large websites have their own set of hardware and software requirements. As the custom configuration cannot be carried out on shared hosting platforms web hosting companies provide virtual private servers to individuals or organizations who require more powerful web servers to manage their web applications on websites. Unlike dedicated servers’ virtual private servers cost less but are as powerful as dedicated resources they can be configured as per user requirement application dependencies and scaled up to a much higher limit than a shared hosting account can accommodate.
Fast expanding organizations and individuals with large websites or applications opt for virtual private servers instead of dedicated servers as they are easier to manage and also reduce overhead as compared to dedicated resources. to manage the growing demands of the market nearly every web hosting company provides virtual private servers and dedicated servers to the users however the quality of the services and features present in the web servers vary from company to company.
Like all web hosting companies, A2 hosting also provides virtual private servers in the form of managed and unmanaged servers along with cloud hosting to its users to Build their website and applications as per the infrastructure requirements.
With the help of competitive pricing features and great customer support A2 hosting has quickly gained a huge share of the market from the already existing web hosting companies. Now it is expanding its market towards cloud hosting as it will be easier for the company to manage uptime and also increase performance of their web service based on customer usage and server cost.
Within the last 10 years A2 hosting has significantly improved its services and it now offers nearly all kinds of hosting related features not easily found in most web hosting companies. Let’s dive deeper into its offerings to understand how it can be most usable for your requirements.
There is a website called shopperapproved.com which is a 3rd party review site. Below is a screenshot of A2 Hosting review stats. Based on the customer feedback, the company looks really good.
Plans and Pricing
A2 hosting provides its VPS plans in two distinct flavors. The first is the managed VPS hosting that allows developers and programmers who are new to VPS plans to easily build their web application on top of the servers with the help of expert technicians on the side of A2 hosting. The company manages your VPS account while at the same time improves performance and reliability with the help of numerous solutions already in built into the managed VPS servers.
All managed VPS plans come with numerous enhancements on top of the traditional VPS servers to speed up deployment and delivery while at the same time making it easier for developers and programmers to build any kind of web application that is easily able to scale depending on application requirements.
The company provides 3 types of plans for its managed VPS servers namely:
- Power+: with prices starting from Dollars 32.99/month, this plan comes with numerous additions to the traditional VPS hosting accounts along with its turbo boost Technology that speeds up web service up to 20 times faster it has a 4 GB RAM and comes with 75GB RAID-10 Storage and 2 TB data transfer. It also comes with two dedicated IP addresses along with 4 vCPUs, Swift Server hosting platform and optimized for APC and memcached, the servers located in Michigan Amsterdam and Singapore. The VPS also supports cloud flare CDN which significantly speeds up content delivery of any application by caching the data beforehand. The easy deployment methods along with system notifications and kernel management that automatically takes care of reboot less CPanel updates and seamless package upgrades along with security patches and control panel upgrade, it is quite a highly optimized virtual private server as compared to other web hosting companies
- Prestige+: price from $46.19/month this plan comes with 6gb Ram, 8GB storage and 3TB data transfer. It also comes with turbo boost Technology that has to enhanced Apache compatible replacement along with turbo cache option for page level caching. Along with all the features included in power plus it comes with 2 dedicated IPS and 5 virtual CPU’s. Along with the above, it also provides CPanel for managing the servers and WHM access for users at $10 per month. It also has Softaculous along with remote shutdown and remote control.
- Pinnacle+: along with all the features included in Prestige Plus this plan comes with 8GB RAM, 150 GB storage and 2TB data transfer. it also includes turbo boost Technology along with dedicated IP addresses and 8 virtual CPU’s. Like the previous plans It also includes postcard management and tuned service along with unlimited domains sub domains parked domain and add-on domains. All the VPS plans support developer features like PHP MySQL SSH access content delivery networks Apache version control systems Python Ruby Perl and FTP and SFTP access also allow unlimited email addresses Webmail POP3 IMAP SMTP and spam protection support. The hosting plans also support eCommerce features like affordable SSL certificates instant merchant account IDs credit card merchant accounts PayPal merchant accounts and e-commerce setup like Prestashop. Along with that, the plans also provide numerous statistical data like access to raw log files, Webalizer, visitor statistics, website statistics, analog visitor statistics and AWstats to better analyze your website traffic.
Along with the managed VPS plans A2 hosting also provides non managed VPS plans that are structured like cloud VPS solutions and therefore offer the highest flexibility in terms of flexible storage bandwidth number of CPU’s and other integral features that could help you customize your VPS plan as per your requirement.
All plans come with turbo boost Technology however solid state drives are optional and can be opted for an extra $5/month. the plan also offers cloud flare firewall for an extra $16/month along with Swift server hosting platform. the servers are connected with 10gb/s redundant network optimized for hosting it comes with the A2 installer which allows users to quickly install any kind of common web applications as per your requirement. You can install numerous operating systems Like CentOS Ubuntu Slackware Debian Gentoo along with one click setup for Softaculous. A2 quick installer Comes with Web Applications Like Node JS, Zend server, mongo DB, wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, Tomcat and Django.
Features and Add-ons
A2 Hosting with its decade worth of experience perfectly understand the important aspects of an ideal web hosting company. Therefore, it provides all necessary features and other configurable options and add-ons. Along with the basic VPS servers that are already optimized with turbo boost technology, the servers are further optimized for development environments. These development environments are ideal for custom application development and deployment and can easily handle industry standard applications in production environments. You can setup your application with the help of the A2 Quick installer that comes with pre-configured versions of the latest Nginx, Zend, node, tomcat and Django.
The VPS plans also come with Softaculous which helps users deploy common web content management systems like WordPress, Joomla, Prestashop, Drupal etc. With its highly customized solid state drives, the VPS servers are much faster than traditional VPS servers provided by other web hosting companies. The cloud VPS solutions allow users to further expand beyond their limits and therefore avoid high charges incurred due to resource depletion.
Performance and Reliability
We tested one of A2 Hosting VPS IP and found the performance very good. The server respond very fast from across the globe. Below is the screenshot of out test.
Since its inception, A2 Hosting has always remained among the top performance oriented web hosting companies with security measures that far outweighed its competitors. Its inbuilt security layer allows users to deploy ecommerce website without the need for any additional SSL certificates. Except for select instances, the hosting company has maintained its reputation for continuous server uptime and increased page speed over the years. Its numerous add-ons and features along with support for Google’s HTTP/2 protocol and SPDY support makes the VPS servers highly reliable and therefore are among the fastest performing servers among its competitors. Users can further customize their installation as per their requirements and thus increase or decrease server performance significantly depending on their requirements.
Upgrades to higher plans are extremely easy through A2 Hosting control panel. You can upgrade or downgrade anytime depending on your requirements. For migration, the company provides premium migration services as part of their services. You can sign up for the service and their experts can transfer your existing website from your previous host to A2 servers. In case of complex or custom applications, you can collaborate with the company’s team to transfer the applications as per your custom configurations.
A2 is primarily popular for its high performance servers with SSD storage. Solid state drives greatly increase the performance of any web application and powerful dedicated resources for any type of hosting plan makes A2 hosting one of the most reliable hosting platform on the web. You can easily build sophisticated apps or host the most resource consuming applications on the server without any hardware or performance constraints.
However, it is a general feature that most resource consumption apps tend to take up high bandwidth. Therefore, you may have to upgrade to higher plans as per your bandwidth consumption. The company follows a strict notification policy of informing each of their client’s weeks before any scheduled maintenance on their servers. Therefore, you get enough time to handle your traffic for the time period. Most of the times, the server goes down for a maximum of 5-10 minutes and then they are back up with higher efficiency than before.
Page Speed
The page speed graph and statistics files from the cPanel shows a statistical report over a certain period and the stability in the graph is continuous over a period, the server remained at its highest potential. But if you are using high resource consumption applications like crawlers that automatically consume more CPU resource, the page speed of other application on your hosting server wouldn’t be affected. Moreover, unless and until your bandwidth is running out, you won’t notice any lagging page speeds. However, you need to cache your content with the appropriate CDN’s to ensure that your users get the most out of your web applications. A2 supports all available caching and page speed improvement methods and allows users to upgrade their servers to even more faster configurations depending on their application specifications. it also provides Railgun and Cloud Flare premium that greatly speeds up your content delivery.
Serve Uptime and Downtime
In comparison with Godaddy and Hostgator, A2 Hosting performs much better in terms of server uptime. Although the downtime is only for a minute or two, the frequency in downtime has significantly decreased in recent times. The rising number of customers and limited server equipment must be a major challenge for the organization but nevertheless, server uptime often affects customer experience. its average uptime during the benchmarking period was 99.97% which is pretty impressive in comparison to other major hosting solutions like Godaddy, Bluehost and Yahoo who fared even worse. With its SSD servers and high performance server architecture the web hosting company is now creating ripples among its hosting competitors and therefore is growing at unprecedented rate due its uptime, and performance and parameters.
User Experience and Customer Service
A2 Hosting really shines in terms of customer support. They have highly skilled technical people who are always ready to guide you through your setup and installation phases. You can also rely on them in case of any bugs or errors you may encounter while running your websites. Often most web hosting companies do not offer any post-sales support but A2 Hosting has the highly experienced people called the Guru Crew to assist you through any kind of problem in your website or hosting plan.
Some Review By A2 Hosting Real Customers
CJones – Hertfordshire, United Kingdom: Says…..
I have been a webmaster for almost 2 years now. I was on a shared plan in the past but my site kept going down with memory issues and the speed was a concern.
After lots of research I decided to make the switch to a Virtual Private Server (VPS) with A2Hosting due to their focus on high speed. They certainly haven’t disappointed! After transferring all of my sites over from my old host at no cost at all, they patiently helped me with various tech support concerns I had. A2 use English speaking support staff which is a nice change from most companies who outsource to foreign countries to reduce costs.
Since switching to A2 none of my 10 sites have gone down even once (!) this is vital when owning an online business as your focus should always be on the visitors without back-end concerns.
Aside from hosting my data on an SSD, I also get access to Cloudflare services FOR FREE. This is a godsend with its “Always Online” feature and Railgun tech. Really helps to speed things up. Some of my sites were loading at under 1 second, and now even with lots of javascript added on the page (social buttons, Google Ads, Facebook widgets and more) the load time is still just over 1 second.
A2Hosting lets me focus on what matters when trying to expand my business.
Stephen L – NC, United States: Says…..
A2 was my first experience using a VPS. I’ve crossed into unknown territory which was a little scary at first. Their support guided me with ease so that my site came up flawlessly. Performance of the server has been rock solid, and their support team is so easy to work with. I can’t say enough good about this service – I’m an A2 believer!
jvirgo – IL, United States: Says……
I’ve only been with A2 hosting for a few months now. I have their managed VPS hosting service, which has pretty average page load times – it’s certainly faster than any shared hosting service, but not quite as good as other VPS services that give you dedicated processors (A2 gives CPU time).
Their customer service is around average or below average. Although the pricing is good for a managed VPS, tickets often take 24hours+ for resolution, and some of the customer service staff are not all that great at Linux, although some of them seem OK.
My biggest issue with A2 is that I’ve had more downtime with them than any other host. Within a few months, I’ve had my e-mail go down, had issues with APC cache failing causing my sites to go down, and network connectivity issues that caused all my sites to go down.
They’re probably one of the most affordable managed VPS services out there, but if these issues keep occurring I’m going to have to find another host
You can reach A2 hosting customer support team with any means available to you. They provide live chat through their website which is always available to your whenever you need. This really helps when you are configuring your website for the first time or setting up a new web application. You can also email them or submit a support ticket. For people who prefer to self-study, there is a comprehensive knowledgebase that has all possible answers to scenarios faced by users. You can also find their scheduled maintenance from their server status page.
Conclusion
A2 Hosting is ideal for business users who want anytime support and uptime along with faster websites to improve their user experience. Although the prices are a bit higher than its competitors, the improved performance and support compensate for the extra dime. If you are an experienced web administrator or developer and want a perfect hosting company within your budget, A2 Hosting must be your first choice.
In one word we would say A2 Hosting is one of the best web hosting company. We find positive reviews about the across the internet including on reviews sites like Yelp, ShopperApproved , BBB and even of Glassdoor. That means not only customers, employees are also happy working with A2 Hosting.