A hosting service is basically a place where you are provided with a space to store all your website’s data and documents. Finding the perfect hosting service for your website can be a daunting task since there are so many options in the market and very few unbiased reviews about them.
In this article, we’re going to compare the two popular hosting services – Hostinger and A2 Hosting. Both of the platforms have gained popularity in the recent past and here’s all you need to know to decide between the two.
Introduction to Hostinger and A2 Hosting
Hostinger is a shared web hosting service which basically means that your website will be on a server that also hosts other websites. A2 Hosting is more than just a shared web hosting service, it also provides users with dedicated servers and VPS hosting and promises “high powered hosting” to all its users. While shared hosting is not the most powerful form of hosting, many people prefer to go for them to save on the costs.
Let’s discuss what both these platforms offer in detail.
Hostinger Plans
Hostinger offers three major plans for its customers. They are Single, Premium and Business Plans. The major differences between them lie in their pricing, the number of websites you can host, storage space, number of email accounts and the total monthly visitors.
- Single Plan
The single plan costs approximately $9.49 per month and if you prefer a yearly plan, you will have to pay only $2.99 every month for the first year. The single plan renews for $5.99 for a month in the year commitment plan after the first year. In case you’re fully sure about hosting your website on Hostinger in the long run, you can opt for their 4-year plan that will bring the monthly costing down to $1.39. This plan is called the single plan because it lets you host only one website at this price and provides you with one email address in total. The storage provided is 30 GB and up to 100 GB of data transfers with an average of 10,000 monthly users. - Premium Plan
This plan costs you $10.95 for a monthly plan, $5.99 per month for a yearly plan for the first year and renews at $8.99 per month for the yearly plan after the first year. It gives you the option to host up to 100 websites with unlimited data transfers, 100 GB storage and up to 25,000 monthly visitors. It also gives you a free domain and free SSL with all its prices. - Business Plan
The business plan offers everything that the premium offers with an added inclusion of daily backups, more than 100,000 visitors a free CDN for helping your websites run with optimum speed. It costs $15.99 each month for a monthly plan, $6.99 per month for the first year if you go for a yearly commitment and $10.99 per month from the second year.
A2 Hosting Plans
A2 Hosting plans are very detailed since they have several types of web hosting available. They offer shared web hosting, WordPress web hosting, VPS hosting, Reseller Hosting and dedicated server hosting.
Let’s first talk about their shared web hosting plans:-
- Shared Web Hosting
This is an ideal plan for startups and small businesses that are just starting out in the market. There are 4 types of shared web hosting plans:-
- Startup
The cost goes up to $10.99 for their one month plan, $6.99 per month for their yearly plan and $2.99 per month if you purchase their 36-month plan. This plan lets you host a single website and provides you with 100GB SSD storage, unlimited email addresses, a free SSL certificate, a free website builder, website staging and cPanel. - Drive
It costs $12.99 for one month, $9.99 each month on a yearly commitment and $5.99 each month for a 36-month commitment. They provide you with everything that the startup plan offers with the option to host unlimited websites and unlimited SSD storage and free automatic backups. - Turbo Boost
Get everything included in the drive plan with a 20x faster speed boost with a turbo boost plan. It costs $15.99 for a month, $10.99 per month for a yearly plan and $6.99 for a 36-month plan. - Turbo Max
This plan gives hosting that is 20x faster plus 5x more resources with the price of $22.09 monthly, $16.99 per month for a year and $12.99 for a 36-month commitment.
- WordPress Hosting
The WordPress hosting plans are pretty similar to those of shared web hosting. The key difference between the two is that WordPress hosting provides hosting which is optimised for WordPress performance.
- VPS Hosting Plans
Unlike Hostinger, A2 Hosting moves away from shared hosting and provides its customers with virtual servers that have dedicated resources. If you wish to scale up your business, this is the best way to go further. It lets you choose from several different pricing and plans. They are divided into two – managed and unmanaged VPS. The managed VPS plans are as follows:-
| Plan Name | Lift 4 | Lift 8 | Lift 16 | Mach 8 | Mach 16 | Mach 32 |
| Price Range | $39.99 – $59.99 | $54.99 – $69.99 | $67.99 – $99.99 | $59.99 – $89.99 | $89.99 – $119.99 | $99.99 – $152.99 |
| RAM | 4 GB | 8 GB | 16 GB | 8 GB | 16 GB | 32 GB |
| Storage | 150 GB SSD | 250 GB SSD | 450 GB SSD | 150 GB NVMe | 250 GB NVMe | 450 GB NVMe |
| Bandwidth | 2 TB | 3 TB | 4 TB | 2 TB | 3 TB | 4 TB |
| Cores | 2 | 6 | 8 | 2 | 6 | 8 |
| cPanel | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
The unmanaged hosting plans are as follows:-
| Plan Name | Runway 1 | Runway 2 | Runway 4 | Supersonic 8 | Supersonic 16 | Supersonic 32 |
| Price Range | $4.99 – $6.99 | $7.99 – $12.99 | $9.99 – $16.99 | $34.99 – $49.99 | $54.99 – $83.99 | $74.99 – $114.99 |
| RAM | 1 GB | 2 GB | 4 GB | 8 GB | 16 GB | 32 GB |
| Storage | 150 GB SSD | 250 GB SSD | 450 GB SSD | 150 GB NVMe | 250 GB NVMe | 450 GB NVMe |
| Bandwidth | 2 TB | 3 TB | 4 TB | 2 TB | 3 TB | 4 TB |
| Cores | 1 | 2 | 4 | 2 | 6 | 8 |
| Root Access | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
- Reseller Hosting Plans
You can choose to start your own hosting business with A2 Hosting. It provides you with white-label reselling options that you require with 20x Turbo Host servers for the best performance. There are 4 plans in these that range from $18.99 per month to $49.99 for a month. They also provide you with a 99.99% uptime commitment which is an added benefit. - Dedicated Server Plans
There are 2 kinds of dedicated server plans – unmanaged and managed. They let you have the customisation options and dedicated resources of having your own BMD server. The managed plans range from $179.99 to $599.99 and each of them includes an Intel or AMD CPU, a minimum of 16 GB of RAM 2×1 TB SSD or NVMe storage and much more. On the other hand, the unmanaged plans range from $99.99 and go up to $619.99 for a month.
Comparison between Hostinger & A2 Hosting
Let’s discuss in detail both the hosting services:-
- Pricing
In the long run, you can definitely save up a lot more with Hostinger since A2 Hosting prices are on the higher end. Once your plan renews after a year, A2 Hosting’s prices almost double making it extremely expensive for a long time unless your business keeps scaling up in a similar fashion. - Overall Performance
Both the service providers give their users SSD storage making the experience extremely smooth and quick for website owners and users. Hostinger provides you with a LiteSpeed web server with every plan you choose while with A2 Hosting, you have to choose a higher pricing plan to receive LiteSpeed and you will have to work with Apache. Hostinger’s data centres are widely located in terms of geography as it covers smaller countries as well while A2 Hosting has data centres mostly in larger countries. - Features
As seen above, Hostinger and A2 Hosting have a wide range of features that they provide with their plans. Most of the features are top-notch in both that include storage space, RAM and more. However, A2 Hosting comes with the traditional cPanel and Hostinger gives you the latest hPanel to work with but has slightly lesser advanced features. Hostinger provides you with automated weekly backups while A2 hosting does not have a feature like that for low-cost plans.
Other than these, Hostinger will also provide you with a free domain in some of its plans. The email accounts provided by Hostinger start from 1 on their single plan and on the other hand, A2 Hosting provides you with the option to have unlimited email addresses. - Security
It is safe to say that both platforms provide you with good enough security features. However, A2 Hosting goes a little further to make it better for you. Both of them provide you with SSL certificates on all of their plans and are always updated with the latest malware protection measures to keep your website safe.
Hostinger and A2 Hosting offer DDoS protection but the difference is in the rest. Hostinger provides server-side firewalls and A2 provides a dual firewall. The key benefit of A2 hosting is that it provides one with the Patchman security tool that helps you detect if the software is outdated and also quarantines suspicious files instantly. - Customer Support
If you’re choosing any of these service providers, you will have the benefit of 24×7 customer support by live chat, email or phone as per your convenience. However, based on some personal customer experiences, Hostinger has proven to be better with actual support. Many complain that A2 hosting does not have its own customer service team and most of it is outsourced.
Final Verdict: A2 Hosting or Hostinger?
Now that we have understood the key differences and other details, let’s sum it all up.
Compared to Hostinger, A2 Hosting provides better performance due to its higher availability in terms of data centres. On the other hand, Hostinger offers cheaper plans to choose from. A2 remains one of the best and fastest low-cost hosting solutions but Hostinger is also catching pace slowly. Hostinger has a better customer support and A2 Hosting gives its users free SSL certificates with their plans.
Overall, we would say that A2 hosting is better than Hostinger but it totally depends upon what features are of higher priority to you. Some websites and business owners prefer to go for cheaper hosting plans since they’re starting out in the market while some focus on getting the best services regardless of the cost. Business owners also prefer if their website speed is optimum and A2 hosting provides a turbo boost in speed.
Which is your choice? Let us know what you think of both the servers.
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