cPanel Hosting Reviews - A2Hosting.com (2023)

We recently checked out A2 Hosting, a company that's big on cPanel hosting options for all sorts of hosting needs and wallets. When we looked closely, we saw some good things and some not-so-good things about what they offer, especially when it comes to their cPanel stuff.

To start, they have different shared hosting plans. The Startup Plan is $4.99 a month, good for one website, gives you 100 GB SSD storage, helps you move your site for free, and throws in a free SSL certificate. It's cool because it also has unlimited email accounts and promises to be up and running 99.9% of the time. The Drive Plan, at $5.99 a month, lets you have unlimited websites and SSD storage and backs up your data automatically. The Turbo Boost and Turbo Max Plans vary between $6.99 to $14.99 a month and are meant to make your pages load super fast—like, up to 20 times faster—and give you even better storage stuff.

They've got these Managed WordPress Hosting plans too: the Run Plan for just one WordPress site, the Fly Plan for as many WordPress sites as you want, and the Sell Plan, which is built for WooCommerce/eCommerce things, each one with cooler features and more space as you go up the scale.

For those of us who need more heavy-duty hosting, their Managed VPS Hosting uses the Lift and Mach Plans to give you loads of space and they handle all the technical server work for you.

Now, we need to talk about the bad stuff. First off, when it's time to renew your plan with A2 Hosting, the prices can go way up. Like, those pretty low starting prices could jump nearly five times higher when you renew. Example: the Startup plan can go from $2.99 to $10.99 a month​ here. They don't give you a free domain either, which means an extra cost if you need one​ Source.

Some people who've used A2 Hosting had a few complaints. The prices they first saw didn't match what they ended up paying, and their 30-day guarantee can be tricky. Folks have struggled with how hard it is to move domains over to them or even canceling their services. Plus, they don't support DNSSEC, so some customers got really frustrated with domain transfers that were messy and caused unexpected website downtime​ Story here.

It also looks like their uptime isn't always what they promise, with too much downtime being reported despite their 99.9% uptime promise​ More on this. Did we mention the renewal prices go way up? They're almost three times the first prices​ More info. And a big concern is the ransomware attack in 2019 that caused a really long outage and data loss, kind of shattering trust in their dependability​ Details.

Plus, it turns out their unlimited services aren't really without limits. Too many files? They could get removed, and the CPU limits don't seem all that high​ The scoop. Be careful of getting locked out of cPanel if you go over the inode limits​ How to avoid this. That free migration help they talk about isn't always smooth; some reviews mentioned long waits, incomplete email moves, and—gulp—more downtimes​ Reviews.

And the last straw for us is how so many people aren't happy with their customer service. They mention a drop in quality, long waiting times, kind of aggressive upselling, and getting mixed messages​ Read more.

All things considered, we're giving A2 Hosting’s cPanel services a 2.5 out of 5 stars. They've got a variety of plans thsat seem cool, with features like Turbo speed and NVMe SSD storage. But the high costs when you renew, no free domain thrown in, iffy service reliability, awkward moving-in processes, and a slump in customer support doesn't sit well with us.