A2Hosting

A2Hosting

Company Profile & Results

Your website hosting provider has a huge impact on your page load speed and ultimately your bottom line. That's because faster sites have better SEO rankings, lower bounce rates and higher conversion rates. We're your fast hosting provider and you've come to the right place! Whether you have a brand new blog or a popular business site; if you've never run a website before or are a professional developer, we've got you covered with a high-performance solution!
Disclaimer: Descriptions are provided by the company.

Historical Performance Summary

Year<$25$25-50$51-100$101-200$201-500Enterprise ($500+)Woo Commerce
2023
2021
2020
- Top Tier - Honorable Mention - No award

2023 WordPress Results

$101-200/Month Summary

A2 Hosting had some extreme highs with it being the fastest Static test with an incredible 5.3ms average and 12ms p95. A2 Hosting also managed 99.998% and 100% uptime on each monitor. A2 Hosting was the third fastest average speed on WPT and the fastest in 6/12 locations. Toss in an A+ SSL grade for good measure. There were so many impressive results. Unfortunately, the Load Storm test proved a bit too much which saw a slow down around 1400 users and a number of errors later. You can tell it has a lot of things going for it - leading the pack in speed in multiple metrics. I can't wait to see it get fully put together and earning Top Tier status in the coming years.

<$25/Month Summary

A2 Hosting stood out on the Static test with an staggeringly fast 5.4ms average response time, a mere 0.2ms behind Pressable, for second fastest average. It also tied Pressable for fastest p95 in the test. Uptime was perfect and 99.975%. A2 Hosting also had the fastest average speed on WPT and was the fastest in a single location. It also earned an A+ SSL grade. Unfortunately, A2 Hosting struggled with the Load Storm test and started to slow down around 300 VUsers and errored out later. There was a lot to like in the A2 Hosting's performance, but there's a little work left to be done before it earns Top Tier recognition.

$25-50/Month Summary

A2 Hosting had some incredible highs, like the Static test which say it record an average response time of 6.1ms and 14ms p95. A2 Hosting recorded perfect uptime. A2 Hosting also was a force to be reckoned with in the WPT test which saw it earn the fastest average and fastest individual speed in 8/12 locations. It also recorded an A+ grade on the SSL test. Unfortunately, the Load Storm test proved its undoing this year with a slow down starting around 400 VUsers and errors as well. There's some much potential here, I can't wait to see them get the Load Storm test figured out and joining the Top Tier.

Enterprise ($500+/Month) Summary

A2 Hosting's first entry into the Enterprise Tier is a nice signal they are going to be competing. The Static test saw A2 Hosting take third place for average response time with 5.4ms and tied for second at 13ms for p95. A2 also had perfect uptime and an A+ SSL test. Unfortunately, the Load Storm test was a bit too much for with the server beginning to slow down around 4250 users. It's great to see A2 Hosting competing in the Enterprise tier and the Static test showed they certainly can compete, but there's a little improvement still left to do before they earn Top Tier status.

LoadStorm

Load Storm is designed to simulate real users visiting the site, logging in and browsing. It tests uncached performance.

K6

K6 is designed to test cached performance by repeatedly requesting the homepage.

WebPageTest

WebPageTest fully loads the homepage and records how long it takes from 12 different locations around the world.

Uptime

Uptime is monitored by two companies: HetrixTools and Uptime Robot. A self hosted monitor was also run in case there was a major discrepancy between the two third party monitors.

WPPerformanceTester

WPPerformanceTester performs two benchmarks. One is a WordPress (WP Bench) and the other a PHP benchmark. WP Bench measures how many WP queries per second and higher tends to be better (varies considerably by architecture). PHP Bench performs a lot of computational and some database operations which are measured in seconds to complete. Lower PHP Bench is better. WP Bench is red in the chart, PHP Bench is blue.

SSL

The tool is available at https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/

CompanyQualsys SSL Grade
A2 Hosting 2023 200A+
A2 Hosting 2023 25A+
A2 Hosting 2023 50A+
A2 Hosting 2023 entA+

2021 WordPress Results

$101-200/Month Summary

A2Hosting put on a good show with 99.9% uptime. It had very fast WP and PHP Bench scores. A2Hosting had the third fastest average response time on WPT. K6 test went smoothly. Sadly, we didn't get a clean Load Storm test and wp-login security measures prevented us from seeing how good the product might truly be. Potential for an award winning product limited by security measures.

$25-50/Month Summary

A2 Hosting has been a regular in these benchmarks. This year wasn't the best for them. The highlight was probably the K6 test which was smooth. The Load Storm was was ok with a single spike. The problem was the uptime, there were many timeouts which caused the uptime to drop below the 99.9% threshold unfortunately. It seems like a solid product with a few little things left to work out before it earns awards.

LoadStorm

Load Storm is designed to simulate real users visiting the site, logging in and browsing. It tests uncached performance.

K6

K6 is designed to test cached performance by repeatedly requesting the homepage.

WebPageTest

WebPageTest fully loads the homepage and records how long it takes from 12 different locations around the world.

Uptime

Uptime is monitored by two companies: HetrixTools and Uptime Robot. A self hosted monitor was also run in case there was a major discrepancy between the two third party monitors.

WPPerformanceTester

WPPerformanceTester performs two benchmarks. One is a WordPress (WP Bench) and the other a PHP benchmark. WP Bench measures how many WP queries per second and higher tends to be better (varies considerably by architecture). PHP Bench performs a lot of computational and some database operations which are measured in seconds to complete. Lower PHP Bench is better. WP Bench is red in the chart, PHP Bench is blue.

SSL

The tool is available at https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/

CompanyQualsys SSL Grade
A2Hosting 2021 200A
A2Hosting 2021 50A+

Internet.nl

The tool is available at https://internet.nl/test-site/.

Mozilla Observatory

The tool is available at https://observatory.mozilla.org/.

CompanyMozilla Observatory
A2Hosting 2021 200F
A2Hosting 2021 50C-

2021 WooCommerce Results

WooCommerce Summary

A2Hosting put up solid load testing results. The K6 test was flat which is what we like to see. The Load Storm test was went relatively smoothly. Unfortunately there was some uptime issues which dropped the uptime below the 99.9% threshold required to earn any sort of recognition.

LoadStorm

Load Storm is designed to simulate real users visiting the site, logging in and browsing. It tests uncached performance.

Load Storm Average Response Time by Profile

This takes deeper look at the results and analyzes the performance of loading HTML mime types, to ignore a lot of static assets which are cached and bring down average response times. This tests how fast the initial pages are delivered, which is what a user would experience before loading all the other assets like css, javascript and images.

K6

K6 is designed to test cached performance by repeatedly requesting the homepage.

WebPageTest

WebPageTest fully loads the homepage and records how long it takes from 12 different locations around the world.

Uptime

Uptime is monitored by two companies: HetrixTools and Uptime Robot. A self hosted monitor was also run in case there was a major discrepancy between the two third party monitors.

WPPerformanceTester

WPPerformanceTester performs two benchmarks. One is a WordPress (WP Bench) and the other a PHP benchmark. WP Bench measures how many WP queries per second and higher tends to be better (varies considerably by architecture). PHP Bench performs a lot of computational and some database operations which are measured in seconds to complete. Lower PHP Bench is better. WP Bench is red in the chart, PHP Bench is blue.

SSL

The tool is available at https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/

CompanyQualsys SSL Grade
A2Hosting 2021 WooCommerceA+

Internet.nl

The tool is available at https://internet.nl/test-site/.

Mozilla Observatory

The tool is available at https://observatory.mozilla.org/.

CompanyMozilla Observatory
A2Hosting 2021 WooCommerceD+

2020 WordPress Results

$51-100/Month Summary

The good news was A2 Hosting had over 99.99% uptime on both monitors. The bad news is they failed both load tests with response times rising significantly. Not sure what happened this year but hopefully they make some improvements next year and do much better.

<$25/Month Summary

A2 stepped up their game this year after struggling with Load Storm last year going from a 0.57% error rate to a perfect zero errors. With the uptime monitors showing 100 and 99.99% uptime, A2 earned Top Tier honors this year.

LoadStorm

Load Storm is designed to simulate real users visiting the site, logging in and browsing. It tests uncached performance.

K6

K6 is designed to test cached performance by repeatedly requesting the homepage.

WebPageTest

WebPageTest fully loads the homepage and records how long it takes from 12 different locations around the world.

Uptime

Uptime is monitored by two companies: HetrixTools and Uptime Robot. A self hosted monitor was also run in case there was a major discrepancy between the two third party monitors.

WPPerformanceTester

WPPerformanceTester performs two benchmarks. One is a WordPress (WP Bench) and the other a PHP benchmark. WP Bench measures how many WP queries per second and higher tends to be better (varies considerably by architecture). PHP Bench performs a lot of computational and some database operations which are measured in seconds to complete. Lower PHP Bench is better. WP Bench is red in the chart, PHP Bench is blue.

SSL

The tool is available at https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/

CompanyQualsys SSL Grade
A2Hosting 2020 100A
A2Hosting 2020 25A+

About the Author

Kevin Ohashi

Kevin Ohashi is the geek-in-charge at Review Signal. He is passionate about making data meaningful for consumers. Kevin is based in Washington, DC.

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