--- title: "A2 Hosting Review: Now Hosting.com | Digital Hosting" url: https://digitalhosting.com/articles/a2-hosting-review description: "Our A2 Hosting verdict: $3.99/mo Starter, a renewal price the vendor no longer publishes, and 235 minutes of degraded time in our 45-day uptime study." lang: en --- Review Provider review # A2 Hosting Review: The Rebrand, the Speed Claim, and the Missing Renewal Price A2 Hosting is now Hosting.com, and that one fact changes how you should read every A2 review written before 2025 — including ours. The stack it built its name on came through the move intact: LiteSpeed caching, NVMe storage, SSH and Git on a $3.99/mo shared plan. What did not come through is the published renewal price. Last updated: October 2, 2026 By: W. Miller (https://digitalhosting.com/about#authors), Editor, Digital Hosting — reviewed independently by the Digital Hosting editorial team. Disclosure: No link on this page earns us a commission. Where we do have a paid link elsewhere on the site, the page says so. Summary verdict ## Our verdict Buy this host for the developer tooling on a budget plan, not for the speed marketing. Starter is $3.99/mo on a one-year term (our pricing record was last verified on September 7, 2026) and the renewal rate is no longer displayed publicly — third-party sources point to roughly $14.99/mo, which would be about 3.8×, and you should get the real figure at checkout before you commit. The old Turbo performance branding is gone, LiteSpeed and NVMe are now standard across the shared tiers, and the only hard performance number we hold is our own external monitoring of A2's public site: 235 minutes of degraded response time across the August 8 to September 22, 2026 window. That is not a measurement of customer sites, but for a brand sold on speed it is not nothing either. Top pick A2 Hosting from $3.99/mo Verified September 2026 Check current pricing (https://hosting.com/web-hosting/) At a glance ## Comparison table ### A2 Hosting: https://digitalhosting.com/providers/a2-hosting Performance-leaning shared hosting Starting price from $3.99/mo Starter, first year, annual billing Verified September 2026 Ease 4 of 5 Performance 4 of 5 Support 4 of 5 Migration Included Email Included See current pricing: https://hosting.com/web-hosting/ ### KnownHost: https://digitalhosting.com/providers/knownhost Disclosed renewals, low-density servers Starting price from $6.71/mo Basic Web Hosting, 3-year commitment renews at $8.95/mo Verified September 2026 Ease 4 of 5 Performance 4 of 5 Support 5 of 5 Migration Included Email Included See current pricing: https://www.knownhost.com/shared-hosting ### Hostinger: https://digitalhosting.com/providers/hostinger Budget-friendly first sites Best for Beginners Starting price from $2.99/mo 48-month prepay renews at $10.99/mo Verified September 2026 Ease 5 of 5 Performance 3 of 5 Support 4 of 5 Migration Included Email Included See current pricing: https://www.hostinger.com/web-hosting | Provider | Best for | Starting price | Ease | Performance | Support | Migration | Email | Get it | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | A2 Hosting (https://digitalhosting.com/providers/a2-hosting)Site owners who want fast shared hosting without managed pricing | Performance-leaning shared hosting | from $3.99/mo Starter, first year, annual billing Verified September 2026 | Ease of use: 4 of 5 | Performance: 4 of 5 | Support: 4 of 5 | Included | Included | See current pricing (https://hosting.com/web-hosting/)Non-affiliate recommendation | | KnownHost (https://digitalhosting.com/providers/knownhost)Owners who want a published renewal price and a fast ticket queue | Disclosed renewals, low-density servers | from $6.71/mo Basic Web Hosting, 3-year commitment renews at $8.95/mo Verified September 2026 | Ease of use: 4 of 5 | Performance: 4 of 5 | Support: 5 of 5 | Included | Included | See current pricing (https://www.knownhost.com/shared-hosting)Non-affiliate recommendation | | Hostinger (https://digitalhosting.com/providers/hostinger)Beginners and budget-focused first sites | Budget-friendly first sites | from $2.99/mo 48-month prepay renews at $10.99/mo Verified September 2026 | Ease of use: 5 of 5 | Performance: 3 of 5 | Support: 4 of 5 | Included | Included | See current pricing (https://www.hostinger.com/web-hosting)Non-affiliate recommendation | Providers in this guide ## About this provider Site owners who want fast shared hosting without managed pricing 4.2 Editor score Pricing from $3.99/mo Verified September 2026 #### Pros - + LiteSpeed caching and NVMe storage on shared plans - + SSH, Git, and multiple PHP versions on shared plans - + 30-day money-back guarantee and free migration #### Cons - − Rebrand to Hosting.com makes older reviews and plan names confusing - − Support response time varies Confirm current pricing on the provider's site. Visit A2 Hosting (https://hosting.com/web-hosting/) Disclosed renewals Owners who want a published renewal price and a fast ticket queue 4.5 Editor score Pricing from $6.71/mo renews at $8.95/mo Verified September 2026 #### Pros - + Renewal rate disclosed on the plan card ($6.71 → $8.95 on Basic) - + LiteSpeed + LSCache, CloudLinux, and Imunify360 standard on every tier - + 24/7 ticket and chat support; Atlanta, Seattle, and Amsterdam data centers #### Cons - − No phone support for technical issues — tickets and chat only - − 'Unlimited bandwidth' on the plan card, but the terms set a per-plan allowance with $20/TB overages Visit KnownHost (https://www.knownhost.com/shared-hosting) Best for beginners Beginners and budget-focused first sites 4.4 Editor score Pricing from $2.99/mo renews at $10.99/mo Verified September 2026 #### Pros - + Low entry pricing on long-term plans - + Beginner-friendly control panel - + Free SSL and basic email included #### Cons - − Renewal pricing higher than intro - − Shared hosting performance varies under load Visit Hostinger (https://www.hostinger.com/web-hosting) ## The rebrand is the headline, not a footnote A2 Hosting was acquired by World Host Group in January 2025 and has been rebranded to Hosting.com; a2hosting.com now redirects there. If you are comparing A2 reviews — this site's older material included — map the plan names before you map the prices, because the product lines were consolidated in the move. That matters practically, not just editorially. A rebrand of this size (new domain, new plan names, merged product lines) is exactly when documentation, billing edge cases, and support scripts wobble, and it is reasonable to approach the brand with that expectation. One concrete example sits in the terms: A2's historical anytime pro-rated refund policy is not what the current pages advertise. The published guarantee is 30 days. We have updated our records to match, and we would read the refund terms at checkout rather than trusting any older write-up. The upside is that the engineering identity survived. SSH access, Git, and multiple PHP versions are on the shared plans per the published specs — still unusual at this price — and cPanel is still the control panel, which is no longer a given among budget hosts. ## The speed claim, and what we can actually say about it A2 has always marketed itself on performance; the Turbo branding was the clearest version of that pitch. Per the current published plans, Turbo as a separate product is gone: LiteSpeed caching and NVMe storage on AMD EPYC infrastructure are standard on all shared tiers. That is a sensible simplification, and it is also a vendor specification sheet, not a result. We do not hold an account here and have run no page-speed or TTFB benchmarks, so we do not endorse the speed claim — we report it. What we do hold is external availability monitoring of A2's own public web presence, on the same five-minute, four-region basis as every provider in our uptime study. Across August 8 to September 22, 2026 — 45 days — A2 Hosting recorded 235 minutes of degraded time across 14 slow episodes, the largest 30 minutes on August 18, and no hard downtime at all. Degraded means the site answered successfully but slowly; we never count it as downtime. Read that for what it is. It measures the site you visit to sign up and get support, not the servers your site would run on, and 235 minutes over 45 days is mid-table rather than alarming. But it is the only independent performance signal in this review, and a host whose entire pitch is speed is the one host where a slow-response record is worth printing. The full table and methodology are in our uptime study, linked below. ## The price you can see, and the one you can't The shared lineup as published in September 2026: Starter at $3.99/mo on a one-year term (up from $2.99 at our July pass), Plus also at $3.99, Pro at $6.99, and Max at $8.99, all with cPanel, free migration, and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Our pricing record for this provider was last verified on September 7, 2026. The full plan grid, with what each tier includes, lives on our provider profile rather than being reprinted here. The renewal is the problem. As of that September 2026 pass, the renewal rate is no longer displayed publicly. Third-party sources suggest around $14.99/mo for Starter, which against a $3.99 intro would be roughly a 3.8× step — in the same band as DreamHost ($2.89 to $10.99) and Hostinger ($2.99 to $10.99) — but we have not been able to verify it on the vendor's own pages, so treat it as an indication and get the figure at checkout. Our standing position on renewals is that an undisclosed one is a worse signal than a steep disclosed one. A steep renewal you can read is a price you can plan around; a renewal you cannot read is a number you only meet after you have moved a site. If you buy here, buy the first term with a calendar reminder and the checkout screenshot saved. ## A2 vs KnownHost: the renewal you can read KnownHost is the cleanest comparison in our roster because it sells the same shape of product — cPanel, LiteSpeed with LSCache, CloudLinux, US and Amsterdam locations — and handles the one thing A2 currently does not. KnownHost's Basic plan is $6.71/mo on a three-year commitment and the plan card prints that it renews at $8.95/mo: a 1.3× step, the smallest disclosed gap of any discounting shared host we track. So the trade is explicit. A2 is $2.72/mo cheaper to start and unknown to keep; KnownHost costs more on day one and $8.95/mo is the number you will actually pay in year four. Over a three-year horizon the disclosed-price host is the easier one to budget, and if A2's renewal really is about $14.99, it is also the cheaper one. If you want the LiteSpeed stack without the renewal uncertainty, that is the swap to look at. ## What this review is based on This is not a hands-on account review. We do not hold an account with A2 Hosting or Hosting.com, have not deployed a site on it, have not benchmarked it, and have not opened a support ticket. This review rests on two things: the vendor's published plan pages and terms, read on a dated pass (plan details as published on hosting.com, formerly a2hosting.com, in July 2026, with the pricing record re-verified on September 7, 2026), and our own external availability monitoring of the provider's public web presence, because A2 is in our uptime study cohort. What that evidence can tell you is what you are contractually buying and what it costs: the plan specs the vendor commits to in writing, the intro price and billing term, the refund window, the migration offer, and whether the company's own public site stayed available and responsive during a measured window. Those are the facts that most often decide whether a hosting purchase goes wrong, and they are checkable by anyone. What it cannot tell you is how fast your site would load on this stack, how good the support actually is, what the control panel feels like day to day, or how smooth the free migration proves in practice. Where those matter to you, treat this review as the price-and-terms half of the decision and the 30-day guarantee as the other half. Vendor pages also change without notice: verify anything here against the current pages before you buy. ### Best fit for - + Developers who want SSH, Git, and multiple PHP versions on a $3.99/mo shared plan - + Sites that want LiteSpeed caching without a managed-host bill - + cPanel loyalists — this is one of the budget hosts that kept it ### Consider another option if - − You want the renewal price in writing before you prepay — this one is no longer published - − You want a brand with a stable identity; the rebrand makes old plan names and old reviews unreliable - − You need guaranteed support depth — response quality has always varied here, and we have not tested it ourselves Questions readers ask ## FAQ No. Following a January 2025 acquisition by World Host Group, A2 Hosting has been rebranded to Hosting.com, and a2hosting.com redirects there. The shared stack and the cPanel, SSH and Git tooling carried over, but plan names were consolidated — map names before comparing any pre-2025 review, including our own older material. Ready to move forward? ### A2 Hosting is our top pick for this category. Check current pricing on the provider's site — promos and renewal rates change frequently. Check current pricing: https://hosting.com/web-hosting/ Keep reading ## Related on Digital Hosting - A2 Hosting plans, pricing & renewal costs → The full plan grid and verified price record.: https://digitalhosting.com/providers/a2-hosting - The Uptime Study: 45-Day Interim Findings → Where A2's 235 degraded minutes sit against the rest of the field.: https://digitalhosting.com/articles/uptime-study-interim-report - The Hosting Renewal Price Index → Intro vs renewal across every provider that publishes both.: https://digitalhosting.com/articles/hosting-renewal-prices Written and reviewed by W. Miller (https://digitalhosting.com/about#authors) — Editor, Digital Hosting W. Miller is the founder of TetraCore, LLC, the software company that owns and publishes Digital Hosting, and has spent 35 years in software development, technology and related services, including cloud and hosting. The uptime monitoring and price-collection infrastructure behind this site's original research is built and run in-house. See our affiliate disclosure (https://digitalhosting.com/affiliate-disclosure) and how we test and score providers (https://digitalhosting.com/how-we-test). ## Structured data ```json [ { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "WebSite", "name": "Digital Hosting", "url": "https://digitalhosting.com" }, { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Organization", "name": "Digital Hosting", "url": "https://digitalhosting.com", "logo": "https://digitalhosting.com/og-image.png", "email": "hello@digitalhosting.com", "description": "Independent hosting review site — comparisons for web hosting, VPS, WordPress hosting, business email, and domain registration. 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