What’s A2 Hosting? Free Shoutcast Server Hosting
You’ve likely never heard of A2 Hosting. Neither had I initially. That is a shame. Because while they are not as’net famous’ since BlueHost or HostGator, they assert to boast rates of up to 20X faster. They have also been around since 2001, previously known as Iniquinet (yes — good call on the rebranding!) . A2 Hosting has information centers around the globe from the US (Michigan), Europe (Amsterdam) and Asia (Singapore). Furthermore, they make promises of’99.9% uptime’ and’guru support’. (OK, now it is just sounding too good to be true.) So what’s the conclusion? Could it be a blazing fast server with amazing uptime and terrific support? Or a different firm who’s good with adjectives, but can’t back it up with performance? Free Shoutcast Server Hosting
Gains of using A2 Hosting
A2 hosting claims their speeds and client support are wonderful. Exactly how good are they actually? It turns out — pretty fantastic! Listed below are the reasons:
Best Shared Hosting Provider We have Tested…
A2 has claimed speeds of up to 20x quicker than their opponents, remember? Anything close to that would be remarkable. And rewarding. Some of the top online brands load under another because taking even 3 minutes to load can cause you dropping 50% your traffic. A2 hosting page loading times came with a mean of 351ms within a span of ten months that is 50+ percent faster than the market average (890ms).
How do they do it?
A2 Hosting is taking extra precautions to limit the variety of people on’shared’ hosting servers and executing additional performance like caching which stores info in people’s browsers (thereby limiting the amount of times they must go back and request info out of the site over and over and over again).
Click Here to sign up for your A2 Hosting Service
Quick & Powerful Customer Support
Quick load times are nice. But none of that matters if your encounter — that the aid you do (or don’t) receive when issues pop up — stems out lackluster. A2 Hosting follows their string of amazing functionality with friendly, useful, US-based support. They are available 24/7/365 through email, chat, phone or ticket entry.
It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, given their A+ rating with the BBB (that is remarkable considering they’ve been doing so for 15+ years already). We tried reaching out to their service to provide a fair, impartial inspection and have been connected immediately. Their support representative was also incredibly receptive, answering our queries within a minute. Free Shoutcast Server Hosting
Free’HackScan’ Keeps Your Site Safe
A2 provides a couple of helpful, preventative steps to keep hackers from your site with HackScan; a free service including
double web hosting anti virus, virus scanning, 24/7 security monitoring, and a brute force defense. Some hosts simply offer comparable tools to utilize if you’re so inclined. But if you don’t understand what you’re doing, they are useless. A2 hosting goes over and beyond providing this preventative service for you, providing you with’reassurance’ so you just have to be concerned about running the website (and NOT constantly performing technical care ).
Free Site Migrations
A2 can help you to relocate another hosting provider — gratis! — in case your website now uses cPanel (which many professional sites do). Transferring the site yourself might be a huge hassle (if you are not the tech-savvy) or a time consuming, menial task (if you’ve got a huge site with several pages, images, etc.).
Compatible with Frequent Content Management Systems (CMS)
Installing popular content management systems such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, OpenCart, and Magento is a straightforward,’1-click’ installation. Pretty simple and painless. In fact, your A2
account will have the A2 Optimized WordPress plugin pre-installed should you pick the Turbo bundle.
Money Back Guarantee — 30 Days
A2 Hosting stands for their product, offering a full refund if you don’t like your experience for any reason (in 30 days). Please note that domain registrations, installation fees, SSL certificate, and other migration charges aren’t refundable (that is fairly common with other companies as well).
Free Content Delivery Network
In addition to complimentary virus scanning, you will also be able to utilize Cloudflare’s Content Delivery Network (CDN). Cloudflare will track visitors to your site to take the course of least resistance. It follows that you’ll receive even faster site speeds, improved security (Cloudflare CDN will prevent malicious threats), straightforward setup, greater uptime, and more. The very best part? It’s all totally free.
Green Web Hosting
A2 Hosting supports the environment, so that you can feel good about choosing them as a web host. Since 2007, the business has now partnered with Carbonfund.org to battle climate change. If caring for the environment is something that you’re passionate about, you can save the planet by simply having an A2 Hosting account.
All their servers are”carbon neutral” since they purchase carbon offsets. When you get carbon offsets, you’re funding projects that decrease the emission of greenhouse gases. These kinds of projects are responsible for protecting woods, increasing the energy efficiency of buildings or transport, or updating power plants to create less pollution.
For each quantity of energy A2 Hosting uses, they are buying carbon offsets to make the world a fresher, cleaner place. In addition to battling climate change, the provider also allows employees to telecommute to prevent unnecessary CO2 emissions.
They also recycle older servers as opposed to throwing out old hardware, plant trees through specific promotions, and reduce garbage by
employing coffee mugs instead of disposable coffee cups. The business was also one of the initial providers that provided Solid State Disk Drives (SSDs). These drives use much less electricity than conventional HDDs. Free Shoutcast Server Hosting
Cons of utilizing A2 Hosting
Our affection for A2 hosting must be evident by now. Great rate, and help go a very long way in our books. In addition, they don’t nickel-and-dime you to get small things like migrations. Unfortunately, nobody’s perfect. Listed below are a Couple of of A2’s defects:
Uptime Has Slipped to 99.91% Over the Last Ten Months
‘Uptime’ is crucial, because the reverse — downtime — may cost you a lot of cash! That is why when someone (or any server ) tells you they have 100% uptime, so you shouldn’t believe the hype. While 100% may be attainable, it’s VERY rare
More Costly than Average
The adage,”You get what you pay for,” rings true here. These fancy advantages come at a cost. A2 hosting will be costlier than the ordinary web host (coming from around the center of the pack). As with other online hosts, they also use a frequent process of providing the cheapest possible price if you sign up for a longer term. Traditionally their lowest priced shared hosting plan advertised at $3.92 meant you had to sign up for 36 months.
Limits on Cheapest Plan
If you’d like the flashy features, you want to cough up a little more dough. As an example, their Lite program (the lowest one) has limitations on the number of websites (1, instead of unlimited) or databases (5, as opposed to infinite ) you get. Nevertheless, it’s well worth noting that in our experience, the cheapest plan remains much, much quicker than the majority of other web hosts. So you’re probably still OK.
If you want turbo fast rates, you are going to have to sign up to the turbo program. The
Turbo and Swift plans are similar, however the Turbo host is full-stacked with additional perks. As an example, the Turbo server contains PHP API. APC is empowered with the Turbo plan, and the server includes a built-in caching engine. As a result of this, the rates are lightning fast!
APC is enabled by default, and reports receive 256 MB of APC memorycard. It’s important to remember that if you wish to change how PHP is configured to the Turbo Server, then you will need to use the cPanel as opposed to the php.ini documents. The Turbo program simplifies .htaccess files to increase speeds, too. Turbo hosting servers do not encourage Ruby-based or even Python-based web applications. Including Rails and Django.
Click Here to register for your A2 Hosting Service
A2 Hosting Setup, Hosting Plans & Quick Facts
Shared Hosting: They have three primary shared hosting plans:
Lite program: This plan begins at $3.92 per month. It supports 1 domain name, 5 subdomains, 5 databases and 25 email account.
Swift strategy: This program starts at $4.90 per month. It supports unlimited domains, databases and email accounts.
Turbo strategy: This program starts at $9.31 each month. It supports unlimited domains, databases and email accounts. In addition, it will come with HTTP/2 and SPDY service for improved site speed.
Ease of Signup: Three step sign up. Not overly hard.
Payment Methods: Credit Card, PayPal, Check or Money Order, Bank Transfer, Skrill and PayULatam.
Hidden Charges and Clauses: Payments made by check aren’t refundable. But frankly, who pays with check ?! There’s also a $25 charge to transfer your account to some other data centre or to downgrade your hosting plan.
Upsells: Really few upsells.
Account Activation: Immediate Activation.
Control Panel and Dashboard Experience: cPanel.
Installation of Programs and CMSs (WordPress, Joomla, etc.): Choice to set up WordPress and other favorite CMSs are offered at checkout.
Do We Recommend A2 Hosting?
Yes. Undoubtedly. Other web hosts may have the large, flashy marketing campaigns. Or the whole blogosphere singing their praises. However, A2 hosting delivers where it matters all: functionality. Despite flying beneath the radar for these years, they offer you a number of the very greatest speed results we have seen. Their customer support is also friendly, attentive and couldn’t be recommended more highly. Want a quick, reliable, and useful web host for just about any kind of website? Give A2 Hosting an attempt. You shouldn’t be disappointed. Free Shoutcast Server Hosting
Click Here to sign up to your A2 Hosting Service