You should have a good idea by now of how important it is to choose a good web hosting service. Whether you’re an individual or a small business, your website needs to be looked after and choosing who looks after it is a crucial decision. Today we will compare two well-known companies offering web hosting services – A2 Hosting vs Siteground.
When it comes to hosting websites, these companies both do an admirable job. They cover all bases and their pricing is competitive. Both are good web hosts, and it’s worth reading on to find out the more subtle differences and figure out if either of them may be the one for you.
Overview: A2 Hosting vs Siteground
Both of these hosting providers have been around since the early 2000s, so they have plenty of experience.
A2 Hosting was started in 2001 under the name Iniquinet, and changed to A2 along the way. Although it originally was started purely as a hobby, they took off in a big way and soon went from running out of a 2-room office to having data centers all over the world. They offer everything from shared hosting to dedicated servers and are one of the fastest hosting solutions out there right now. They also have a reputation for being super easy to navigate for anyone, regardless of your technical expertise.
Siteground was launched in 2004 by a group of friends and has a chilled out, people-focused feel to it. They’re one of the largest web hosting companies out there, hosting close to 2 million domains. They promise high speeds, quality security, and great customer service. They offer web hosting, WordPress hosting, WooCommerce hosting, and cloud hosting. Something for everyone! They are also WordPress approved, which is a badge of honor for a web host.
How To Choose The Best Web Host:
When it comes to choosing who to allow to babysit your website, you should always do some in-depth research before making your final decision. Some of the things you should be looking at are:
Trustworthiness & Expertise
Reputation is key. You want to know who you’re dealing with, how they do business, and that they are going to keep their promises. Customer reviews are a great way to find out if a host is trustworthy.
Speed & Uptime
The speed with which the server responds to requests, how fast your web pages load, and how often your website is offline are extremely important parts of running a successful website.
Security & Backups
Make sure that your website host provides safety and security for your website. There are various components that make up security, and each one covers something different. More is not necessarily better, though, so make sure you’re covered in all the ways you need to be and you’ll be all right.
Customer Support
Customer service is of utmost importance. Friendly, helpful service will always count in the favor of the company, while unhelpful or grumpy techs will put a downer on your experience. It is important to check out what customers are saying about their interaction with the company.
Hosting Plans & Packages
A variety of hosting plans is always a good thing, as it gives your site room to grow and expand. You will want to have a look at bandwidth, storage space, and whatever other extras they have added to each plan.
User Experience
Being user-friendly is an underrated point. The easier it is to use and customize, the more smoothly things will run. The less frustration, the better!
We will compare the above points for A2 Hosting vs Siteground, so you can make a well-informed decision!
Let’s Compare: A2 Hosting vs Siteground
All right, readers – let’s leap into this review and find out the pros and cons of these two companies.
Trustworthiness & Expertise
Having a host you can trust is paramount. Relevant points here are how long the company has been around and what their customers say about them.
A2 Hosting:
18 years in the making, these guys are well-established and known in the market. You can rest assured they have the technical expertise to help you out no matter what you need!
Truly a lifesaver, I am never going to leave A2!
Jen M.
I never thought I would find shared hosting with such great performance.
Obai S.
It has been an amazing experience.
Hussain S.
Siteground:
Slightly younger than A2, with 15 years of experience under their belts, Siteground are known as being one of the largest independent web hosting companies in the world. You don’t get that big by being mediocre!
Super fast load time and relatively low fees.
Hugh J.
Amazing tech support and performance.
Anonymous
All-inclusive.
Jill S.
Speed & Uptime
These two factors are among the most important things to look at. The response and load time make a big difference to the efficiency of your site, and the uptime is a huge draw especially for traffic-heavy sites. We’ve had a look at the stats for these two on Pingdom.
A2 Hosting:
If you want fast hosting, A2 is for you. Their tagline is “Our speed, your success”, which should tell you something about their speed reputation. They offer up to 20x faster hosting, and a 99.9% uptime commitment.
Their stats so far for April suggest that they are keeping both of those promises, with uptime so far this month being 99.98%, and the average response time at 258ms.
A2’s uptime over the past 12 months has been at an average of 99.94%, which is in keeping with their 99.9% promise.
Their site loading time is one of their best services.
Anonymous
Their uptime is worth praising.
Uchchash T.
Siteground:
Siteground offers “super fast website performance”, and although their response time isn’t bad, it does pale in comparison to A2’s. Their uptime is slightly better than A2, though, with an average of 99.99% over the past 12 months, which means their sites are hardly ever down.
Siteground also has data centers all over the world, which make it easier for international customers to get better performance.
The speed of my website has improved.
Obai S.
The loading times are fast and typically get high scores in performance tests.
Derrick H.
Security & Backups
Make sure you are happy with the security offered before selecting your hosting provider. This is something that will run in the background of your site without you even thinking about it, so it is critical that you trust your provider to keep things safe and secure while you’re doing your thing.
A2 Hosting:
A2 does offer free backups. It’s also fairly easy to backup and restore your info using your cPanel control panel on your A2 hosting account.
A2’s security is fairly comprehensive. Their Perpetual Security initiative has several features that cover various security threats. HackScan protects your site from malware, and KernelCare is offered for Linux customers. Siteground also pro free SSL certificates through Let’s Encrypt, and if you would prefer something more substantial you can purchase one from a variety of providers. They also have reinforced DDoS protection to prevent DDoS attacks, as well as SSH access for even more security.
They have a large database of info on their site, which includes a very comprehensive section on security information.
It is good to have SSH access.
Anonymous
A2 is promptly aware of hacking.
Anonymous
Siteground:
You’ll get free daily backups with your Siteground hosting account, so you can rest assured all your latest information is safe.
Siteground has a “security first” mindset. They have had no big hacking incidents as of yet, and maintain excellent security to ensure it has the highest possible chances of not happening. Their firewall is constantly being updated, they run an AI anti-bot system, and they provide a free SSL courtesy of Let’s Encrypt.
There has not been an issue they could not fix.
Madeline L.
To level technology and advanced action for threats.
Mario U.
Customer Support
Customer support is a critical component of picking a web host that works well for you. Having a chat with a friendly, cheerful technical support member and coming to a solution makes for happy customers while interacting with a sullen, unhelpful person is sure to put a damper on your experience. Customer reviews are a great resource for finding out how their customer support is received.
A2 Hosting:
Reviews of A2’s customer service are generally pretty good. You have various options for getting in touch with customer support – phone, email, live chat, or submit a support ticket. Their global support is fantastic – you can find a phone number on this page for whatever country you’re in!
Awesome customer support.
Jestin S.
I got detailed, calm, and fast responses in an otherwise very stressful period.
Anonymous
Siteground:
You’ll be able to get in touch with Siteground techs 24/7, either via phone or live chat. Their reviews are also fairly good all round.
Support is live and great.
Emanuele P.
Some of the best customer service I have ever received.
Kevin S.
Hosting Plans & Packages
These two companies offer some great options at competitive pricing and whatever your needs, you’ll be able to find something that works for you. One of the great advantages that A2 has over Siteground is unlimited bandwidth.
A2 Hosting:
With A2 you can choose from shared hosting, reseller hosting, VPS, or dedicated server hosting. They also have separate options for Windows and Linux, as well as WordPress hosting. Starting at $3.92 per month, up to $99.59 for dedicated hosting, they’re as affordable as they are reliable. Their plans all include unlimited storage, which is a one up on Siteground.
A2 are very versatile when it comes to selecting how to pay for your subscription. You have the options of monthly, annually, biennially, and triennially. Each one has a slight discount.
All plans offer free site transfers, free SSL and SSD, unlimited storage and A2’s anytime money back guarantee. You can compare their Linux plans here, and their Windows plans here.
Siteground:
Siteground has some great options at affordable prices. Your StartUp plan is the most basic, at $3.95 per month, which includes 10GB storage space. GoGeek is, according to Siteground, for “Real Web Geeks”, and will cost you $11.95 per month, giving you unlimited websites and 30GB storage.
One of the best things about Siteground is their variety. You can choose one of their main options, or you can get a bit more specific. They offer WordPress hosting, cloud hosting, WooCommerce hosting, and they also have special deals for students and educators.
You can choose to pay monthly or annually. Selecting the annual option will get you a slight discount!
All plans come with a free drag and drop site builder and email account, with SSD storage and e-commerce solutions. You can compare their basic plans here.
User Experience
Ease of use is also a big thing. If your hosting provider’s control panel is hard to use, you may find yourself struggling and getting frustrated, especially if you’re not familiar with coding.
Both A2 Hosting and Siteground use cPanel, which is a fairly simple to use control panel and has an abundance of tutorials available online. cPanel is known for being easy to use for developers and newbies alike, which makes it the best control panel for everyone regardless of technical ability.
Both A2 and Siteground have cPanel tutorials on their website, and more can be found on YouTube.
A2 Hosting:
I can install most applications with one click.
Miguel U.
Easily manageable control panel.
Jestin S.
Siteground:
The interface is user-friendly and it works perfectly.
Luciano Gabriel G.
Super intuitive and anything you need to do can be figured out pretty fast.
Shawn T.
Other Things To Consider:
There are various other things that are useful to know when it comes to choosing a web hosting service provider. Let’s go through some pros and cons that weren’t covered above.
A2 Hosting:
Pros:
- Free site migration
- Affordable
- They use SSDs for reliability and speed
- Anytime money back guarantee (and a pro-rated refund if you cancel after 30 days, as per their refund policy)
- Unlimited storage space on all plans
- Support a range of hosting platforms
- Free email hosting
- Free CDN with every plan
- They’re green!
Cons:
- Customer service can be slightly slow during peak hours
- More advanced plans can get more expensive in comparison to competitors
- No free domain names
Siteground:
Pros:
- Affordable
- Free email hosting
- Free CDN with every plan
- Your choice of website builder
- Many tutorials available on their site
- Support a variety of hosting platforms
- Free WordPress Migrator plugin
- Free templates
- Multiple data centers globally
Cons:
- Their storage space is limited on their plans
- Domain names only free on certain packages
- Monthly limits on data usage
Customer Reviews:
If those up above weren’t enough, here are some more things real live people are saying about these web hosting companies.
A2 Hosting:
Good Reviews:
The best thing about A2 Hosting is that they do not cripple my shared server with extensive limitations.
Obai S.
WordPress processing speed is incredible.
Hussain S.
Great SSD servers, easy to use and highly reliable.
Travis S.
Bad Reviews:
My managed VPS site got infected with malware. A2 is not helping, and seem to be actively and enthusiastically hindering my efforts to resolve the problem.
Anonymous
Sometimes customer service is untalented.
Tuuli K.
I don’t like the renewal pricing of domains.
Anirudh M.
Siteground:
Good Reviews:
They made it very easy for me to transfer my account.
Conrad K.
Building a website through Siteground is a great experience.
Anonymous
Extremely easy control panel area, and multiple platform support.
Justin G.
Bad Reviews:
It’s really expensive from the second year.
Anonymous
Some of the tutorials on the site are outdated.
Jade C.
I don’t like the support tickets, they take too long to reply.
Barry H.
Conclusion
All website hosting service providers will have mixed reviews and it will be up to you to do your own research over and above this review. We advise you to work out what the most important feature is for you – is it speed? Ease of use? Reliable customer support? Once you’ve decided on that, it will be far easier to find a web hosting provider that fits your needs.
When all is taken into consideration, both A2 Hosting and Siteground have great hosting offers for every kind of website. When compared side by side, though, we would vote A2 Hosting as having a slight edge over Siteground. This is due to their superior speed, and unlimited storage space with every plan.
If you still aren’t sure if A2 Hosting vs Siteground has shown you the hosting provider for you, there are a good many other hosts out there. Check out our reviews:
- Bluehost
- GoDaddy
- Fatcow
- Lunarpages
- Justhost
- Pressable (WordPress)
- 1&1 IONOS
- Kinsta
- DigitalOcean
- Fastcomet
- Cloudways
- InMotion
- Namecheap
- WPX
And our comparison reviews:
- Hostgator vs Wix
- Dreamhost vs Siteground
- Namecheap vs Bluehost
- Bluehost vs Squarespace
- Ipage vs Bluehost
Sign up
If you’ve decided to take the leap and sign up with one of these two, awesome! You can sign up with A2 Hosting here, and with Siteground here.
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