A2 Hosting VPS Review 2022 (Real Uptime Records + Speed Test Result)

A2 Hosting VPS Review
A2 Hosting VPS Review

DISCLOSURE: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning when you click the links and make a purchase, we receive a commission.

A2 Hosting is not a new name on the world of web hosting industry. They are here since 2003. They may not be the most well-known web hosting provider but they are getting popular lately.

You might also have heard about them and now thinking about trying their VPS hosting service. But, you are confused. And, you can’t come to a decision yet. So, has ‘A2 Hosting’ got it all what it takes to be your next VPS hosting provider? In this post, we will try to answer that question.

We will be exploring the ins and outs of their VPS hosting plans and features. On top of all these, we will be sharing some useful but insider information about A2 Hosting for our readers. So, if you’re ready.

Let’s start off…

Check A2 Hosting VPS Details Here

A2 Hosting VPS Review

What is VPS Hosting?

First, we will try to know about VPS Hosting service.

VPS stands for ‘Virtual Private Server’.  VPS hosting is technically a combination of shared and dedicated hosting. How is it similar to a shared hosting? Your virtual server will be stored on a parent (physical) server with a lot of other virtual servers. That means you will be sharing the resources of that parent server simultaneously.

Then again, you are actually using a single server (parent server) as a dedicated server. Each virtual server is distinct from one another even though they are hosted in the same parent server. Each of those virtual servers extracts their required resources from the parent computer.

And, each of them can only extract the allocated amount of resources from the parent computer. Not more than that. Each of the virtual servers has its own operating system, they usually have different owners.

So, you can say that a VPS hosting is that when your website/s is hosted on a parent computer where there are other websites hosted too. But, those websites won’t be able to extract the resources like CPU power, RAM, Storage etc. from your allocated amount. Similarly, you also can’t use their allocated resources. All of the users will share the parent server/computer’s resource but in a fixed amount. That way, one user’s usage won’t hinder the usage of another user. And, that is VPS hosting.

A2 Hosting VPS Hosting Plans:

A2 Hosting has an innumerable amount of packages on their VPS hosting plan. So, you might find it intimidating at first to sort them out and find the most suitable packages for yourself. That’s why we will let you know about all of the different packages in this section. And, the best part is that we will try to make it as simple as it can get. So that you can understand the categories and choose the best plan depending on your needs.

First of all, A2 hosting divided their VPS hosting packages on 2 primary categories depending on the OS (Operating System). They offer Linux and Windows OS based VPS hosting service. You can choose any one of your choices. Now, both of these categories are also divided into sub-categories.

Linux and Windows based Plans
Linux and Windows-based Plans

For instance, the Linux based plans are primarily divided into 3 plans named as Unmanaged VPS, Managed VPS, and Core VPS. Now, these 3 sub-plans are again divided into more categories.

Again, the Windows-based plans are divided into several categories too. It’s getting confusing, isn’t it?

But don’t worry. We are here to help you. Let’s make it simple…

Linux VPS Plans:

Primarily, it has 3 plans which are called as Unmanaged VPS, Managed VPS, and Core VPS plan. Now, let’s break these 3 plans further.

Linux VPS Plans
Linux VPS Plans
  1. Unmanaged VPS Plans:

The Unmanaged VPS Plan category has 3 different packages starting from just 5$. They are named as Entry, Mid, and Elite. Here are some details about these plans.

Unmanaged VPS Plans
Unmanaged VPS Plans
  • Entry:

It costs just 5$ monthly. You will have 20 GB storage, 2 TB Transfer, 512 MB RAM, Root Access, 1 Core CPU etc.

  • Mid:

This package starts from 10$ a month. You will get 30 GB storage, 2 TB Transfer, 1 GB RAM, Root Access, 1 Core CPU etc.

  • Elite:

This is the best ready-made package available from the ‘Unmanaged VPS’ hosting category. It costs from 15$ per month. You will get 50 GB storage, 2 TB Data Transfer, 4 Core CPU, 1 GB RAM, Root Access etc.

And, remember, you will get A2 Hosting’s famous ‘Anytime Money Back Guarantee’ with all these packages. That’s not all. The ‘Unmanaged VPS’ plans are created for users who want more freedom. So, A2 Hosting has got a unique idea about making this package more flexible and versatile for their users.

  • Custom-Made Plan:

And, that is why you can also customize any plans from the ‘Unmanaged VPS’ plans. So, let’s say, you love everything about the ‘Entry’ Package here, but as it comes with only 512 MB RAM, it isn’t matching your needs. So, you can customize the package and add more RAM if you want to.

Custom-Made Plan
Custom-Made Plan

By customizing the plan, you can get up to 250 GB Disk Space, 12 cores of CPU, and 32 GB RAM, and 9 TB Bandwidth. The choice is yours. Not only this but also you can choose your desired Operating System, cPanel License, Turbo Boost, and many more features too. However, you have to remember that the price will also go up or down depending on the choices you make.

As we have explained the ‘Unmanaged VPS’ plans, let’s get to know more about the ‘Managed VPS’ plans.

  1. Managed VPS Plans:

Here, the ‘Managed VPS’ hosting Plans are also divided into 3 packages named as Power+, Prestige+, and Pinnacle+. They have more features than the ‘Unmanaged VPS’ plans and you will have the highest quality support from the A2 Hosting team. You won’t have to manage or take care of anything server sided. For that reason, these packages are pricier than the ‘Unmanaged VPS’ plans. So, let’s know about these packages below.

Managed VPS Plans
Managed VPS Plans
  • Power+:

The ‘Power+’ package starts from 32.99$/monthly. Here, you are getting 4 GB RAM, 75 GB Storage, 4 vCPUs, 2 TB Storage etc.

  • Prestige+:

This package costs about 46.19 $. And, you will have 6 GB Ram, 100 GB storage, 3 TB Transfer, 6 vCPUs etc.

  • Pinnacle+:

This is the best of the best package from the ‘Managed VPS’ hosting Plans. And, as usual, it costs the highest. You will be able to get this package for about 65.99 $. And, you will get 8 GB RAM, 4 TB Transfer, 8 vCPUs, 150 GB Storage Space etc.

Now, that is just the tip of the iceberg. You will get free SSL, cPanel and SSD Storage with all of these packages. Oh, and you are covered with the ‘Anytime Money Back Guarantee’ policy of A2 Hosting always.

Now, you know about the ‘Unmanaged’ and the ‘Managed VPS’ plans. It’s time to know about the last one which is ‘Core VPS’ Hosting Plan.

  1. Core VPS plans:

Here’s the thing, the ‘Core VPS’ Plan is completely similar to the previous Managed VPS plan. It costs the same and also it has the same 3 packages named as Power+, Prestige+, and Pinnacle+. So, you may be wondering, why does this have a different name then?

Core VPS plans
Core VPS plans

The answer is that you are not getting ‘Root Access’ in the ‘Managed plans’ but you will get ‘Root Access’ in the ‘Core VPS’ Plans. With ‘Root Access’ you will get the complete control over your server. This is the only difference between these ‘Managed’ and ‘Core VPS’ plans. So, if you want the ‘Root Access’ you will have to use any one of the ‘Core VPS’ Plans.

Until this point, we have just explored all the options which are Linux based plans. Next, we will be talking about all the Windows OS based plans.

Windows VPS Plans:

At our first look, we see that there is not any ‘Unmanaged’ windows OS based hosting plans. Rather, there are 3 ‘Managed’ hosting plans named as Power+, Prestige+, and Pinnacle+. Another thing, the price of the Windows-based VPS hosting plans are higher than the Linux based VPS plans. Let’s learn more about them.

Windows VPS Plans
Windows Managed VPS Plans
  • Power+:

The Power+ package is the most basic one among the 3 plans. It starts at 36.29$/monthly. You will get 4 GB RAM, 2 TB Transfer, 75 GB Storage, 4 vCPUs etc.

  • Prestige+:

The second hosting plan cost about 49.49 $/monthly. And, it has 6 GB RAM, 100 GB Storage Space, 3 TB Transfer, 6 vCPUs etc. also, it is the most popular package among the 3 packages.

  • Pinnacle+:

And last but not least, you are getting the best of the best features on the ‘Pinnacle+’ plan. This plan starts at 69.29$ per month. And, you will be able to get 8 GB RAM, 150 GB storage space, 4 TB Transfer, 8 vCPUs etc.

Along with all these features, you will also get free SSL and SSD, Plesk Onyx 17.8 Control Panel, and their famous ‘Anytime Money Back Guarantee’. And, you can get their ‘Turbo Servers’ to host your site paying just additional 14.52 $ per month.

Now, please be advised that A2 Hosting offers discounts on their VPS plans from time to time. So, the mentioned prices above might not be valid in the future. However, at the time of writing this post, these are the current price of all the mentioned plans.

Who should choose the A2 Hosting VPS Hosting Plan?

To be frank, anyone can use the A2 Hosting VPS Hosting packages. The answer lies on your budget and the features you require. There are plenty of plans for the users. So, it is a must that you will find at least one plan which would check all the boxes for your needs.

Let’s simplify the whole thing a bit more…

First, if you are a developer or have technical knowledge about web hosting then you can use any one of the ‘Unmanaged plans’. Those plans are created particularly for the experienced developers. As you know you can choose from 3 pre-made packages and also you can customize any plans according to your needs. You have the freedom and flexibility while you are choosing the package. And, if you have a small personal website, then this is the best option for you. As this package starts from just 5$ per month.

Now, if you don’t have knowledge about web hosting or you are just starting a website without any prior experience, then you can choose either of the ‘Managed’ or the ‘Core VPS’ plan.

Simply because you will not have to take care of anything other than improving the contents of your website. All the complicated and technical tasks will be performed by the dedicated professional team of A2 Hosting. They will manage all of the server sided operations. And, that is why it is called the ‘Managed’ VPS plan. And, similarly, if you want ‘Root Access’ or the complete control over your servers then you can use the ‘Core VPS’ plan. It’s also a ‘Managed’ hosting plan.

Likewise, if you want more power and support then you have the ‘Windows Managed Plans’. You have got all type of options. So, if you have a website which is getting popular rapidly then you should think about getting a VPS hosting for your site.

But, if you are just starting out and don’t get a lot of traffic on your site then you should use any one of the shared hosting services. That will save your money. But, if there is no problem regarding your budget and you want an extraordinary performance from your website/s then the perfect choice for you would be VPS hosting of A2 Hosting.

And, for non-techy website owners, the ‘Managed VPS’ hosting packages are life-savers. Because you won’t need to know everything about web hosting. Rather, you can leave it to the professionals.

Besides, if you use the ‘Linux based VPS’ plans, then if you want to upgrade your plans, you will have more flexibility compared to ‘Windows VPS’ plans. For example, if you want to add more RAM or Storage Space on the go on a ‘Linux based’ server, you can do that without disturbing the entire setup.

But, on ‘Windows-based system’, after changing/upgrading any components on your servers, you will have to reboot the entire system. And, at that time, your site will be down. Although, the time to reboot the system is not long, yet it may hamper the experience of your visitors.

Great for hosting what applications?

You already know that there are hundreds of web applications out there. And, most of them are not popular. But on the opposite, some of them are very popular and used regularly to manage millions of sites every day. Among them, WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento etc. are to name a few.

A2 Hosting has been working very hard to make their system suitable for any CMS or web applications. And, they have already optimized their system for all the available popular CMSs like the WordPress, Joomla, Drupal etc.

Compatible with popular applicatons
Compatible with popular web applications

As you will get cPanel/Plesk control panel for free with all the VPS plans, you can use that to install your favorite CMS within just a few clicks. You will have all the necessary software which will make using any CMS on your website easy as pie.

As always, features like auto-update are also included. So you don’t have to worry about updating your CMS as it will be automatically updated. Along with these, you will have all the necessary security patches, software which are pre-requisite of using any CMS. So, you can be certain that there won’t be any problems using any web applications with the A2 Hosting VPS hosting service.

Services of A2 Hosting VPS Hosting Package:

A2 Hosting comes with a myriad of useful services for their customers. We will discuss a few of them below.

Services of A2 Hosting VPS Hosting Package
Services of A2 Hosting VPS Hosting Package
  • Super-Fast Speed:

A2 Hosting has the best components on their servers. That means you will have a faster load speed on your website/s. Besides, A2 hosting offers free SSD (Solid State Drive) storage facility. Normally an SSD hosting can increase the load Speed of a website by about 20 times over using an HDD (Hard Disk Drive).

Also, they use HTTP/2 over HTTP, which is responsible for improving the site speed. Even after all these, if you’re not satisfied with the speed of your website, you have more advanced options to use.

You can enable the ‘Turbo Boost’ server feature by paying an additional 14.52 $/monthly. Plus, you can use the ‘Turbo Boost + Turbo Cache’ feature for 19.80 $ per month which can dramatically increase the speed of your websites hosted on the servers of A2 Hosting.

  • Free tools:

Whereas some other hosting companies charge extra money for additional features like SSL certificate, CDN, Dedicated IP etc. A2 hosting offers them for free. To add to that, they have another free service named as ‘Server Rewind’. With the help of this service, your website data will be backed up regularly. So, if anything goes wrong, you can restore your lost data using the ‘Server Rewind’ service. Other than these, there are various other free services also available.

  • Managed by professionals:

When you have a website/s which receives loads of traffic, your highest priority should be to serve your visitors carefully so that they return in future. As well as you have to work on the contents of your website so that visitors find your site interesting and helpful. This alone is a huge task.

But when you get a VPS hosting you normally need to manage and deal with the servers, software, technical issues by yourself. But, in this case, you cannot concentrate on improving your website as you will be busy spending time on the backend of your site.

That’s why A2 hosting has their fully managed VPS web hosting service. If you get this service, you will be able to get help from the professional team of A2 hosting 24/7 all around the year. Everything will be taken care of by them. This service also helps the newbie website owners who are non-techy.

  • Ironclad Security:

If you use A2 Hosting service, you don’t have to worry about the security of your websites. They have services like KernelCare, Dual Web Hosting Firewall, Brute Force Defense, Virus Scanning, and Server Hardening which indicates that the security is top-notch. On top of this, they also perform manual monitoring in a timely manner daily.

  • Choose your favorite server location:
Choose your favorite server location
Choose your favorite server location

A2 Hosting has 4 servers which are located in Michigan (USA), Arizona (USA), Amsterdam (Europe), and Singapore (Asia). Now, the best thing is that you can choose your desired server before getting an account with them. It is better if you host your site closer to the majority of the visitors to your website. That way, they will get the best experience browsing your site. So, with this option, you can get the preferred server of yours to host your sites.

There are more services provided by A2 Hosting. For saving our time, we have discussed only a few of them here.

Features of A2 Hosting VPS Hosting Service:

A2 Hosting has some unique features which come with their VPS hosting plans. Among them, most of them come for free. However, there are few paid features too. For example, with the help of ‘Railgun Optimizer,’ you can get up to 143% faster HTML load times. This is truly incredible. For this feature, you will have to pay only 1.32 $ per month.

Features of A2 Hosting VPS Hosting Service
Features of A2 Hosting VPS Hosting Service

If you have an old website and you want to switch hosting provider to A2 Hosting now, then you can get help from their support team. They will migrate your site for free.

You will not just get cPanel, you will also get the WHM (Web Host Manager) access. With the help of that, you can access the backend of the cPanel for more customization.

A2 hosting has the quadruple redundant network. For that reason, they have almost 99%+ uptime record. And, you will also get the basic features like unlimited email, webmail, unlimited FTP accounts for free. There’s plenty more.

Testing the website load speed of A2 Hosting:

Now, we will be conducting speed test of a website which is hosted on A2 Hosting. From that, we can analyze the result and will be able to know the quality of A2 Hosting servers. We will be using Pingdom to perform this speed test.

Pingdom test from the USA (Washington D.C) server:

Test from the USA (Washington D.C) server
Test from the USA (Washington D.C) server

The result of the test:

Test Result from the USA (Washington D.C) server
Test Result from the USA (Washington D.C) server

Analyzing the result:

The most important data for us on this test is the ‘Load Time’. It is a good thing if your website has faster load speed. So that your website visitors will love browsing your website. If your website is slower, they will not return to your site again.

Although there are a lot of factors which can affect the load speed of a website, among them the quality of the server is one of the main ones. So here, our test website took only 827 ms to completely load.

That means A2 Hosting’s server has performed great. Normally, it is seen as a good thing if a website loads within 2 seconds. In our case, our website even didn’t take 1 second to load. Overall, we have to say that we are very satisfied with the performance and speed of A2 Hosting.

Uptime Record of A2 Hosting:

One of the most important things about a web hosting company is their uptime record. The industry standard uptime record is 99%+. So, it is obligatory to choose a web hosting company which maintains that.

Thus, you need to know about the uptime record of A2 hosting too. When we visited their website, we have seen that they are claiming that they have a 99%+ uptime record. But it can be false too. You shouldn’t believe what a web hosting company says about them on their own website.

For that reason, we have been tracking the uptime record of a website on a regular basis which is hosted on A2 Hosting. Next, we will share the data with you. So that you can see the real result yourself.

The uptime stat of A2 Hosting.

Uptime Stats of A2 Hosting
Uptime Stats of A2 Hosting

So, the data above shows that they have been pretty consistent on their uptime record. They actually have maintained the industry standard uptime record (99%+) efficiently. And, needless to say, that they have actually kept 100% uptime on the maximum number of months. This is astounding.

A2 Hosting Support:

A2 hosting has a great reputation for caring about their customers. They are continuously looking to improve their service regularly. At this point, they have 97% of customers who are really pleased with their cooperation.

You can contact them anytime you want to. They are available 24/7/365. You can use any one of the mentioned methods below to talk to them.

A2 Hosting Support
A2 Hosting Support
  • Ticket
  • Direct Call
  • Live Chat
  • Email

Now, anybody can use these methods to contact them. But if you are a ‘managed VPS plan’ user then you will have a dedicated team of professionals who will be always available to help you with your server sided issues. That is another perk of using the VPS hosting plans of A2 Hosting.

Final Verdict: Should you use A2 Hosting VPS Web Hosting?

If you’re here, then we hope that you know all the things needed to know about a2 hosting VPS hosting service by now. By this time, we have explored all of the available plans, features, and services of A2 Hosting VPS Hosting.

Furthermore, we have also conducted a speed test on a website which is hosted on A2 Hosting. Additionally, we have also provided some vital and authentic information about A2 Hosting’s performance and uptime record.

From all this abundant information, we believe you have already found your answer to the ultimate question – if the VPS hosting service by A2 hosting perfect for you or not?

But, from our perspective, we can say that if you go with their VPS service, you will not regret your choice. And, even if you don’t like it afterward, you can always get a refund with their ‘Hassle-Free Anytime Money Back Guarantee’ policy.

A2 Hosting VPS hosting has everything required to be a perfect hosting service for your websites. You will have the stability, flexibility, security and all the advanced features which will take the performance of your website/s to the next level.

Check A2 Hosting VPS Details Here

Leave a Comment