A2 Hosting
Turbo servers built for speed-obsessed developers.
The verdict
A2 Hosting positions itself around raw speed with its "Turbo" server tier, offering up to 20x faster page loads. It appeals to developers with root access, free site migrations, and a choice of data center locations across the US, Europe and Asia.
The full picture
A2 Hosting, founded in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2001 as Iniquinet, built its identity around a single claim: speed. The Turbo plans that headline the range put fewer accounts on each server, add LiteSpeed with LSCache in place of Apache, and enable an aggressive caching layer the company calls Turbo Boost and Turbo Max. The marketing says up to twenty times faster page loads. The reality is that Turbo plans genuinely are among the quickest shared hosting you can buy, and the non-Turbo plans are ordinary.
That split runs through the whole company. A2 is developer-friendly in ways budget hosts usually are not: SSH on every plan, staging, Git, Node.js, Python and Ruby support, a choice of PHP versions going back years for legacy applications, and free Cloudflare CDN. It also keeps cPanel, which makes it a comfortable landing spot for anyone migrating off a traditional host.
The friction is commercial. The anytime money-back guarantee is prorated rather than full after the first 30 days, renewal pricing climbs steeply, and the entry-level plans are slow enough that buying A2 without Turbo somewhat defeats the point of buying A2.
What you get
- Turbo Boost servers
- Free site migration
- Perpetual security
- Choice of data centers
- Anytime money-back
Every hosting type it sells
| Product | From | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Shared hosting | $2.99/mo | Startup through Turbo Max, cPanel on every tier. |
| Managed WordPress | $11.99/mo | Preconfigured WordPress with A2 Optimized plugin and staging. |
| VPS hosting | $2.99/mo | Unmanaged, managed and core VPS tiers with root access. |
| Dedicated servers | $105.99/mo | Unmanaged or fully managed bare metal with hardware choice. |
| Reseller hosting | $18.99/mo | WHM-based reseller accounts with white-label branding. |
Plans & pricing
- 1 Website
- 100 GB SSD
- Unlimited Websites
- Turbo Speed
What the price actually costs you
- Headline pricing needs a three-year prepayment; shorter terms cost substantially more.
- Renewal typically lands two to three times higher than the introductory rate.
- The anytime guarantee is full only within 30 days; after that it is prorated on unused time.
- Turbo tiers cost roughly double the entry plan and are the reason to choose A2 at all.
Technical specification
| Control panel | cPanel on shared and reseller, WHM on VPS |
|---|---|
| Web server | Apache on entry plans, LiteSpeed on Turbo |
| Storage | SSD standard, NVMe on Turbo Boost and Turbo Max |
| PHP versions | PHP 5.6 through 8.3, useful for legacy applications |
| Runtimes | Node.js, Python, Ruby, Perl in addition to PHP |
| Backups | Free automatic backups on all plans, restorable from cPanel |
| Staging | Yes, one-click on WordPress plans |
| SSH access | Yes, on every plan including entry level |
| Free migration | Free site migration on all plans, handled by the team |
| CDN | Free Cloudflare CDN integration |
| Uptime SLA | 99.9% commitment with credit policy |
Performance in practice
Turbo is the whole story. On a Turbo plan, LiteSpeed plus LSCache plus roughly a third the account density of the entry tier produces cached time to first byte in the 150 to 350 millisecond band, putting it in the same conversation as managed WordPress hosts at five times the price. On the Startup and Drive plans you get Apache, higher density and results indistinguishable from any other cheap shared host. Four data centres — Michigan, Arizona, Amsterdam and Singapore — give reasonable global coverage, and the Cloudflare integration fills the gaps.
Infrastructure & support
Support channels
- 24/7 live chat
- 24/7 phone support
- Email ticketing
- Ticket system
Data centers
- United States (Michigan)
- United States (Arizona)
- Netherlands
- Singapore
Security & compliance
- HackScan proactive scanning included on all plans at no charge
- Free Let's Encrypt SSL with automatic renewal
- Dual firewall with kernel-level hardening and brute-force protection
- Free automatic backups with self-service cPanel restore
- Two-factor authentication on the customer portal
- Reinforced DDoS protection at the network edge
Moving a site in
A2 migrates sites free on every plan, including multiple sites on higher tiers, and the team handles cPanel-to-cPanel transfers cleanly. Because cPanel is on both ends for most moves, this is one of the lower-friction migrations in the market.
The trade-off
In its favour
- Genuinely fast Turbo servers
- Developer-friendly tools
- Multiple datacenter regions
Worth knowing
- Interface can overwhelm beginners
- Turbo tier costs extra
Who should look elsewhere
- Buyers who will not pay for a Turbo plan, since the entry tiers are unremarkable
- Anyone expecting a full refund after the first month
- Sites needing a modern custom dashboard rather than cPanel
- Global audiences needing more than four origin regions
The company behind it
| Ownership | Privately held, independent |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States |
| Founded | 2001 (as Iniquinet) |
| Scale | Hundreds of thousands of sites across four global data centres |
| Notable | Carbon-neutral through green energy matching since 2007 |
How it got here
- 2001 Founded in Ann Arbor as Iniquinet.
- 2003 Rebrands to A2 Hosting after the Ann Arbor area code.
- 2007 Commits to carbon-neutral operation through renewable energy matching.
- 2014 Introduces Turbo Servers built on LiteSpeed with reduced account density.
- 2021 Adds Turbo Boost and Turbo Max tiers with NVMe storage and higher resource ceilings.
Common questions
What makes A2 Turbo servers faster?
Turbo servers use fewer accounts per server and NVMe caching for higher performance.
The bottom line
Buy the Turbo tier or buy something else. With Turbo, A2 is one of the fastest cPanel hosts available and unusually generous on developer tooling, SSH, legacy PHP and free migrations. Without it, you are paying A2 prices for ordinary performance.