Last Updated on December 4, 2023 by Ewen Finser
Are you looking to build a robust website for your business? Did you know that one in four visitors will abandon a website that takes more than four seconds to load? Every additional one second delay on your site reduces customer satisfaction by 16%.
The bottom line is that website speed is super important, and one concrete way of optimizing it is by picking a reliable hosting service. You will come across various hosting service providers today, but how do you choose the right one? They all seem to have friendly offers and unbeatable deals, but what aspects should you analyze to get the best one for your business.
In this piece, we will break down two popular hosting services- A2hosting and Bluehost. We will look into the critical features of any hosting services that matter to help you select one that fits your needs.
Read on;
It’s a very affordable hosting solution, Bluehost allows you to build a site with WordPress which gives you complete control and flexibility over your website.
Main Differences Between A2 Hosting and Bluehost
The Main Differences Between A2 Hosting and Bluehost are:
- A2 Hosting provides reseller and cloud hosting, whereas Bluehost does not.
- A2 Hosting offers regular WordPress hosting services, whereas Bluehost provides premium WordPress hosting services that help users every step of their way to build and market sites
- A2 Hosting promises a server uptime guarantee of 99.9%, whereas Bluehost has no uptime guarantee
Overview
A2 Hosting was established in 2001 by Bryan Muthig and a friend to serve a few businesses. In 2005, the company was among the first web hosting services to support PHP 5.
Over the years, A2 Hosting kept improving its services, most notably with the introduction of MySQL 5 in 2006, cPanel 11 in 2007, VPS hosting in 2007, and SSD hosting in 2013.
Today, A2 Hosting is known for some of the fastest page loading speeds and strong uptime.
Bluehost is one of the famous names in web hosting and has been in service since 1996. Matt Heaton established it as a free hosting service called 0catch.com.
The free service offered limited features, and the increasing needs made the owner rename it to Bluehost in 2003. From here, it started offering shared hosting plans at different price points, making it suitable for individuals and companies of all sizes.
Bluehost has become the recommended WordPress hosting service, and it was acquired under the Endurance International Group family of brands.
Today, Bluehost is recognized as one of the best hosting services for entities that do not want to get into the technical aspect of building a site. They offer a plethora of drag and drop templates that allow one to set up a reliable website within a short time.
Main Features
Here, we will compare how these two hosting providers measure up based on their main features.
Shared Web Hosting
This is a cheap way to get web hosting services. Here, your site shares the hosting resources with several other sites, thus lowering the price. However, all the other sites you share the resources with can reduce speeds and even take your site down when they experience traffic spikes.
A2 Hosting has three levels of Linux based shared web hosting.
Lite |
Swift |
Turbo |
$7.99 |
$9.99 |
$18.99 |
One website |
Unlimited websites |
Unlimited websites |
Five databases |
Unlimited databases |
Unlimited databases |
No turbo |
No turbo |
Turbo (Up to 20X faster) |
All these packages come with unlimited storage, unlimited transfer, cPanel control panel, free SSL and SSD, free and easy site migration, and a money-back guarantee.
Bluehost offers no month to month shared web hosting plans as all the packages are billed annually. Its packages are tiered as shown below;
Basic |
Plus |
Choice Plus |
Pro |
$7.99 / month |
$14.99 /month |
$14.99 /month |
$23.99 /month |
One website |
Unlimited websites |
Unlimited websites |
Unlimited websites |
50 GB SSD storage |
Unlimited SSD storage |
Unlimited SSD storage |
Unlimited SSD storage |
One domain |
Unlimited domains |
Unlimited domains |
Unlimited domains |
25 subdomains |
Unlimited subdomains |
Unlimited subdomains |
Unlimited subdomains |
All the plans allow unmetered bandwidth, a free SSL certificate, and standard performance except for the Pro plan that offers high performance. Except for the basic plan, you get a single Microsoft 365 mailbox and spam experts.
Note that all these web hosting services have deeply discounted introductory prices that can change once the period elapses. However, we have listed the accurate fees charged for these packages to help you get a good view of how much they will cost you once the introductory periods elapse.
VPS hosting
Virtual private server hosting is an improved version of shared hosting. Here, you share resources with other sites, but the number is limited to give everyone an improved level of reliability. A VPS hosting service can take multiple traffic spikes without affecting your site.
A2 Hosting offers both managed and unmanaged VPS hosting services. Managed VPS services are for the tech gurus who want to take control of their hosting environment and tweak it using a command-line interface.
The managed services have an easy control panel, and the hosting provider does all the technical work, allowing you to only focus on your applications. Most hosting platforms offer either of the two, and it is good to see A2 Hosting give you all these options.
The unmanaged VPS services are available at the following prices;
- Entry – starts at $5 monthly
- Mid – starts at $10 monthly
- Elite – starts at $15 monthly
- The managed VPS services cost;
- Power+ starting at $25 per month
- Prestige+ starting at $35 per month
- Pinnacle+ starting at $50 per month
Besides, A2 Hosting has a different tier of VPS plans called Core VPS. They are similar to the managed plans, with the main difference being that this class of services has root access.
The resources available for these VPS hosting plans max out at 8GB RAM, 150 GB of storage, and 8 vCPUs, which are sufficient to accommodate a growing website.
Bluehost provides three tiers of Linux based VPS hosting. They are;
- Standard starting at $29.99 per month (2 cores, 30 GB SSD storage, 2 GB RAM, and 1 TB bandwidth)
- Enhanced starting at $59.99 per month (2 cores, 60 GB SSD storage, 4 GB RAM, 2 TB Bandwidth)
- Ultimate starting at $59.99 per month (4 cores, 120 GB SSD storage, 8 GB RAM, 3 TB Bandwidth)
Bluehost does not offer Windows-based VPS.
Dedicated Web Hosting
This is a powerful form of web hosting that gives your site full resources. If you want the best performance and expect high traffic, this is the way to go.
A2 Hosting provides these services in four tiers, namely;
- Unmanaged hosting services starting at $119.99 (fully customizable and perfect for developers)
- Discount SSD server starting at $192.99 (fully managed with SSD)
- Managed flex server at $169.99 (fully managed and 100% worry-free)
- Core flex server at $169.99(fully managed with root access)
Only the Unmanaged Flex server and Core Flex server have root access. This is intended for experienced developers who need ultimate control and customization of the server.
Bluehost offers three tiers of dedicated hosting services, namely;
- Standard starting at $119.99 (4 cores @2.3 GHz,500GB mirrored storage, 4 GB RAM, 5 TB Bandwidth, and 3 IP Addresses)
- Enhanced starting at $159.99 (4 cores @ 2.5 GHz, 1 TB mirrored storage, 8 GB RAM, 10 TB Bandwidth, 4 IP Addresses)
- Premium starting at $209.99 (4 cores @ 3.3 GHz. 1 TB mirrored storage, 16 GB RAM, 15 TB Bandwidth and 5 IP Addresses)
WordPress Web Hosting
WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems, and it powers over 30% of the sites available today. It is easy to use, has a plethora of themes and plugin that let you get the best out of any website.
A2 Hosting has a few WordPress hosting plans similar to its shared web hosting plans. Besides, it offers more managed plans that make things easier for you, but at a higher cost.
The upside of A2’s WordPress hosting environment is that it is highly optimized to improve page loading speeds, making it faster than conventional hosting.
All the WordPress hosting packages by A2 Hosting have unlimited storage and monthly transfers, making it one of the best WordPress hosting services out there.
Bluehost is the recommended WordPress hosting service, and for this reason, people pick it over the others when developing a site on this CMS. However, it is paramount to check what it offers and not pick it blindly.
The WordPress hosting packages by Bluehost are;
- Basic at $7.99/ month (1 website, 50 GB SSD storage, 5 parked domains, and 25 subdomains)
- Plus at $10.99/ month (unlimited websites, unlimited SSD storage, Unlimited parked domains, unlimited subdomains, and 1 Microsoft 365 mailbox)
- Choice Plus at $14.99 (unlimited websites, unmetered SSD storage, unlimited parked domains, unlimited subdomains, CodeGuard Basic Backup, and 1 Microsoft 365 Mailbox)
All the plans come with a free SSL certificate, free domain for one year, and $200 marketing credit.
It’s a very affordable hosting solution, Bluehost allows you to build a site with WordPress which gives you complete control and flexibility over your website.
Reseller Hosting
This is where the entity purchasing hosting services can use their resources to host websites on behalf of third parties. Think of it as a wholesaler who sells hosting services to retailers in small portions.
Reseller hosting is popular since the entities can break down hosting costs and avail services to third parties at much lower prices than what the leading hosting companies charge.
A2 Hosting has a couple of reseller hosting packages as shown below;
- Kickstart starting at $34.99 (60 GB SSD storage, 600 GB transfer, Free Blesta)
- Launch starting at $49.99 (100 GB SSD storage, 1000 GB transfer, Free WHMCS or Blesta)
- Grow starting at $69.99 (170 GB SSD storage, 1700 GB transfer, Free WHMCS or Blesta)
- Scale starting at $79.99 (270 GB storage, 2700 GB transfer, Free WHMCS or Blesta)
All these plans come with Free SSL certificates, cPanel, Fast 24/7 support, and a money-back guarantee.
Bluehost offers reseller packages through a third party called reseller club. They do not own these services, and we won’t list them here as we are exclusively reviewing Bluehost hosting services.
Cloud Hosting
Cloud hosting is becoming more popular. It is a technology where the hosting is spread across multiple resources in a network and not a single physical server. It provides more reliability and cushions the hosting service from failure.
A2 Hosting has a few cloud hosting tiers, but they are limited to Linux operating systems. They are;
- Entry plan starting at $5 monthly ( 20 GB SSD storage, 1 core, 2 TB transfer, and 512 MB RAM)
- Mid plan starting at $10 monthly ( 30 GB SSD storage, 1 core, 2 TB transfer, and 1 GB RAM)
- Elite plan starting at $15 monthly ( 50 GB SSD storage, 4 cores, 2 TB transfer, and 1 GB RAM)
All these plans come with root access and Turbo option.
Bluehost does not offer cloud hosting services.
Customer Service
Hosting service providers guarantee the best uptime, but as it is with technology, things can go wrong. Besides, you can experience difficulties using some of the resources and need help. Customer service is a critical aspect of hosting services as they determine how long your website remains down.
A2 Hosting has a dedicated customer support team called Guru Crew. The team members are available 24/7 on phone or live chat. They respond to customer queries quickly and are among the best customer service teams in the hosting space. Besides, A2 Hosting has a money-back guarantee on all their services provided you cancel the account within 30 days.
Bluehost has reliable customer services through telephone, online webchat, and a ticket-based system. The customer service reps are available 24/7 and will quickly respond to your concerns regardless of how you choose to contact them.
Bluehost has a 30-day moneyback guarantee, which allows you to cancel the account if you are not impressed by their hosting services.
Both these hosting services have excellent customer service.
The Good and Bad
Pros of A2 Hosting
- Great hosting packages
- Excellent customer service
- Terrific uptime
- 30-day money-back guarantee
- Turbo server feature for improved speeds
- Free migration
Cons of A2 Hosting
- No provision for windows servers
- Costly than other hosting providers
- No free domain
Pros of Bluehost
- Free domains for most services
- Free SSL certificates
- Industry-leading hardware
- Endorsed by WordPress.org as the recommended hosting service
Cons of Bluehost
- No cloud hosting services
- Lacks free automatic backups
Frequently Asked Questions?
How good is A2 Hosting?
A2 Hosting is one of the lesser-known but reliable hosting service providers out there. It combines performance, speed, reliability, excellent customer service, and a refund policy to give you one of the best hosting services you can find today.
Where is A2 Hosting located?
A2 Hosting owns all its web servers, with the primary ones located in Michigan (United States). Additional servers are located in Amsterdam and Singapore.
Which is the best server location when choosing a hosting service?
You will need to look into a few things to determine the best server location for you. First, determine the server specifications you require based on your needs and consider your target audience. If you reside in the USA, it is better to pick servers located here for optimal performance. Look at which data center your web hosting service provider uses and their performance to see if they suit you before selecting one.
Verdict-Which is the Best Hosting Service?
It is hard to separate A2 Hosting from Bluehost since they are both top hosting services that will easily meet your needs satisfactorily. However, you can only have one, and we will break down a few things about the two for easier distinction.
If you are looking for a cheap hosting platform, you will see that most of the features and costs provided by A2 Hosting and Bluehost are not far apart in terms of price. Besides, we tend to pick the cheapest hosting service as one that offers value for money and not just the one charging the lowest prices.
Bluehost is the most affordable hosting service here since it charges a bit less for its services and offers more. All these, coupled with its dominance in the shared hosting space, makes it the most valuable pick. It is known for its excellent hardware and additional extras at a price point that is much lower than most hosting providers.
In terms of WordPress hosting, Bluehost and A2 Hosting offer reliable services, but Bluehost just about gets the nod. Since it is the recommended hosting service endorsed by WordPress themselves, it has improved its services around simplicity and speed-two key components sought by most WordPress users.
It’s a very affordable hosting solution, Bluehost allows you to build a site with WordPress which gives you complete control and flexibility over your website.
Don’t get me wrong; A2 Hosting also has excellent WordPress hosting offerings, including their all-SSD infrastructure and site builder provisions. However, Bluehost continues to live up to the billing as the top WordPress hosting service provider.
A2 Hosting has the edge in terms of features offered since it ventures in areas that Bluehost has not bothered to check. A good example is cloud hosting, which is becoming more popular, and their dedicated reseller services.
With all this listed, there is no doubt that Bluehost gets the edge over A2 Hosting if you need a top hosting provider. However, understand that these are fine margins, and A2 Hosting should comfortably take care of your hosting needs as well.
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