Hosting.com (Formerly A2 Hosting): How Has It Changed?

7.6/ 10
SCORE

Hosting.com (formerly A2 Hosting)

Buy at Hosting.com

Pros

• Low introductory pricing
• Plenty of storage on shared hosting plans
• Wide variety of plans
• Auto-install WordPress tools make it easy to set up a site
• Lots of security features even on the lowest-cost plan

Cons

• High renewal cost
• Inconsistent customer service for support tickets and phone

Hosting.com, formerly A2 Hosting, is an independent hosting company we reviewed favorably in 2024. Along with its name change, Hosting.com introduced a new pricing structure, account dashboard and server systems. I re-tested Hosting.com in fall 2025 to determine how these changes have impacted the quality of service.

Although A2 Hosting was previously the best host for beginners, the removal of the A2 Hosting site assistant has made Hosting.com more difficult to use than competitors such as Hostinger and SiteGround. Combined with mediocre server performance and frustrations in contacting customer support, these changes have dramatically reduced the quality of Hosting.com’s service compared to both its past self and many competitors. As such, I don’t recommend Hosting.com -- there are much better options, like SiteGround and Hostinger.

Hosting.com plans and pricing: Variety and value

Hosting offers numerous web hosting types, including shared hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting and reseller hosting.

Shared hosting is the best option for beginners, so I’ve done a detailed breakdown of these plans, providing basic information about the other hosting types to help you choose the best plan for your site. I’ve left out reseller hosting because it’s intended for folks who want to sell web hosting plans, not people who want to create their own website.

I’ve also compiled basic information about these hosting types into the following table:

Shared hosting

Shared hosting, listed on the Hosting.com site as “web hosting,” stores numerous websites on one physical server, allocating a limited amount of the server’s resources -- like bandwidth and processing power -- to each site. Splitting server maintenance costs also allows companies to offer shared hosting for affordable prices, making it ideal for first-time website builders.

Hosting.com offers five shared hosting plans using its own server management system and five plans that use cPanel for server management. All of these plans include:

• Free SSL certificate
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Perpetual security: Daily Kernel updates, DDoS protection, firewall, brute-force protection and virus scanning
• Optimized installation process for WordPress and other popular content management systems
• Auto-updates for core WordPress software
• Anycast DNS for improved loading speed
• 99.9% uptime guarantee
• Free site migration
• Email hosting for unlimited email addresses
• NVMe, Turbo-optimized drives for improved site speed
• LiteSpeed-enhanced servers
• 24/7 customer support

Plans for regular shared hosting and cPanel hosting have the same prices and specs, as listed below:

All prices are based on a one-year term.

Managed WordPress hosting

WordPress hosting is a type of hosting optimized for WordPress, a content management system used to create and maintain landing pages, blog posts and other content. This hosting type always comes with pre-installed WordPress or a guided WordPress installation process and may include other features like automatic WordPress updates and pre-installed themes or plugins. WordPress hosting plans from Hosting.com (and most other web hosting companies) also include the same features as regular shared hosting, such as a free domain for the first year and SSL certification.

Hosting.com offers two types of WordPress hosting: basic "Hosting for WordPress" and managed WordPress hosting. The first option is regular shared hosting with pre-installed WordPress and plugins including Jetpack, All In One SEO, WP Forms, Monster Insights and Optin Monster. This basic WordPress hosting starts at $3 per month ($9 per month on renewal) with a one-year contract, while the most expensive plan in this category costs $7 per month for the first year and $18 per month on renewal.

Managed WordPress hosting includes pre-installed WordPress with all of the plugins included in the basic WordPress hosting plans, plus automated updates for all plugins as well as the core WordPress software. The most affordable managed WordPress plan starts at $12 per month ($28 per month on renewal), while the most expensive option costs $30 per month to start and $60 per month on renewal.

VPS hosting

VPS hosting involves partitioning one physical server into several virtual servers with dedicated resources. These hosting plans typically have more storage, processing power and bandwidth than shared hosting. You’ll also get more server customization options, such as the ability to choose your server’s operating system.

Hosting.com offers unmanaged and managed VPS hosting plans. Unmanaged plans start at $5 a month ($10 per month on renewal) for 80GB of storage (enough for at least 800 pages) and 1TB of data transfer, which ensures smooth operation for up to one million monthly visitors. Managed plans start at $38 a month for the same amount of storage and bandwidth, with the main advantages being that Hosting.com fully configures and maintains the software for these servers, with an emphasis on high-quality infrastructure that allows the company to offer an above-average 99.95% uptime guarantee for these plans.

Dedicated hosting

Dedicated hosting allocates an entire physical server to one customer. This gives you full control over your server’s configuration, plus complete access to its storage, processing power and other resources.

Hosting.com offers two types of dedicated servers: virtual dedicated servers and physical dedicated servers. Virtual dedicated servers are pre-configured and managed by Hosting.com so you don't have to worry about choosing specs or configuring server software yourself; these plans start at $249 per month for 800GB of storage (enough for at least 8,000 pages) and unlimited bandwidth. Physical dedicated servers are custom-built and can use either a managed hosting model (where Hosting.com configures and maintains server software for you) or an unmanaged hosting model (where you maintain server software yourself). You have to contact Hosting.com to set up a custom plan and get pricing for physical dedicated servers.

Ease of use: More complicated than it needs to be

Key takeaways: Hosting.com’s purchase and site setup processes are clunky, but not complex enough to pose a serious problem for most users. Still, I expected better from a host that previously offered some of the most beginner-friendly site creation tools I had experienced in the web hosting space.

To determine how easy Hosting.com is to use, I focused on the simplicity of performing crucial tasks: purchasing a plan, account management and website and server management. These processes were largely straightforward, though I found myself frustrated by upsells during checkout and minor difficulties locating the WordPress setup options.

Purchasing a plan

Selecting a Hosting.com plan takes you to a streamlined purchase page listing your plan and initial price. The discount is clearly marked, with the original price listed beside the cost of your first payment. While it doesn’t outright state that you’ll pay the higher price on renewal, the visual is enough to make that clear to most users.

You’ll also get to choose the server your website is hosted on, with locations ranging from the US to Australia. This lets you pick the server closest to your target audience’s physical location, which can improve site speed for those users because their devices won’t need to pull data from a server on the other side of the globe.

The other choice you’ll make here is how you’ll connect your domain to the hosting plan. I chose to register a new domain. Hosting.com did a quick search and, about a minute later, presented me with a price. This seemed odd, since the domain is free for the first year with all Hosting.com plans, but the price reset to zero when I put the domain in the basket. After some thought, I realized this approach is helpful because it tells you what your domain will cost at renewal time.

So far, so good… until I hit a pair of upsells on the next page. The services offered -- professional email and WP Rocket -- are great, but I dislike being forced through a whole page dedicated to upsells. Moreover, Hosting.com shared hosting actually includes email hosting through cPanel. cPanel email isn’t the most streamlined system, but it is functional, so the professional email hosting add-on is extraneous for many users. I’d only recommend upgrading if you’re running a business website and you need to provide extensive email support.

Next, you’re directed to a shopping cart. This page is simple enough, but going through three whole pages -- and still not being able to enter payment details -- is frustrating, especially compared to the streamlined one-page purchase process Hosting.com used when it was still A2 Hosting. Furthermore, the next page still doesn’t let you enter payment details. Instead, it’s dedicated to creating login credentials.

Once you’ve created an account, you’ll finally be allowed to enter your payment information and complete your purchase. This entire process is rather cumbersome compared to top-ranking web hosts like SiteGround and Hostinger, but it’s still pretty straightforward, even for complete tech newbies.

Account management

The account dashboard is organized intuitively, with prominent buttons leading to management areas for domains, websites and email/office tools. There’s also a sidebar with dropdown links to your existing products and the billing area. Popular web hosts like HostGator often hide links to the billing area, so it’s nice to have it easily accessible.

Website and server management

Unfortunately, setting up a website with Hosting.com isn’t as simple as it was with A2 Hosting. The issues started with domain activation, which required me to enter contact information. This is required for all domain registrations, so I’m used to the process. What I’m not used to is having my phone number rejected. I wasn’t able to fix this on my own; thankfully, customer service was able to fix it for me without much difficulty.

From there, I moved on to building my site. The Websites area of the dashboard leads to a sales page, forcing you to log into cPanel through the Hosting & Servers area to install WordPress. This is frustrating in comparison to both the former A2 Hosting process and other hosts like SiteGround, which let you go directly to WordPress setup.

Moreover, the cPanel itself prominently features a site builder at the top, but WordPress -- the most popular content management system for website creation, powering 43.4% of all websites -- is at the bottom of the page. This can be cumbersome if you're trying to build a WordPress site.

From there, you’ll need to use the Softaculous installer to set WordPress up. This process is fairly straightforward and also installs plugins for things like improving page speed, backing up your website and search engine optimization.

The installation takes around two minutes, after which you’ll need to manually log in to WordPress. Again, this is pretty straightforward, but not as simple as the guided processes offered by SiteGround and Hostinger -- or even the process provided by Hosting.com when it was A2 Hosting.

Things get easier from here, launching you into the Softaculous onboarding assistant. The Softaculous assistant walks you through setting up your site title and tagline, installing plugins to help your website meet its goals, choosing a theme (site template) and creating basic pages like an About page. 

Unfortunately, the templates offered by the Softaculous site assistant are connected to the Pagelayer page builder. This means you’ll need to use the page builder to work with them, removing your ability to work with the regular WordPress customizer or other page builders such as Elementor. This area also only lets you choose templates connected to Pagelayer. You’ll need to wait until after you’ve set up your site basics to select a theme from the WordPress.org database, where you’ll find tens of thousands of highly versatile options.

You can also use the Softaculous site assistant to generate AI content. However, this tool is still in beta, and the content I created with it during my tests was incredibly generic. You’ll have to edit it so thoroughly that it’s likely easier to write your own content.

I had mixed feelings about the plugins Softaculous installed with WordPress. Most are good; there’s a plugin that includes high-quality tools for securing your website, the caching plugin offers numerous settings for improving site speed and the SEO plugin makes it easy to optimize both individual pages and your site as a whole. 

The Backuply plugin should be great for simplifying backups, but the free version only lets you create manual backups. Automated backups are limited to the Pro version. You’ll theoretically get a free trial with your WordPress install, but my code didn’t work. This makes the plugin functionally useless unless you buy it separately. However, Hosting.com does offer free weekly backups through JetBackup in cPanel. You’ll have to manually enable this -- something you won’t need to do with hosts like SiteGround -- but it runs perpetually on its own after activation.

Server management is conducted through cPanel, where you can quickly find tools for things including configuring your DNS settings. This is roughly the same as what you’ll experience with other web hosts.

Overall ease of use

Launching your website with Hosting.com is more complicated than it needs to be -- and more complex than it is with our top-rated web hosts, SiteGround and Hostinger. The extra steps required in the new setup processes are more cumbersome than those of many rivals, and notably worse than the setup process when the company was A2 Hosting. Ultimately, Hosting.com is less intuitive than both of our top-ranking hosts, Hostinger and SiteGround.

Hosting.com performance: Nothing to write home about

Key takeaway: The uptime and site speed I experienced during my week of testing are passable, but not ideal. My site had around five minutes of downtime -- more than the test sites I ran on Hostinger and SiteGround -- and the average speed was uncomfortably close to the slowest acceptable page load time of three seconds.

Server performance can dictate how consistently and easily users can interact with your site. I spent one week testing two critical indicators of server performance on my Hosting.com test site: uptime and site speed. I also researched the hardware and software Hosting.com uses to improve its server performance. These tools don’t directly impact my performance rating -- which is based on the practical experience of visiting the site -- but they're important to keep in mind.

Performance tools

Hosting.com’s Turbo servers are optimized with NVMe storage, which is faster than regular SSD storage, and LiteSpeed architecture, which provides built-in caching (high-speed storage) protocols and advanced security. Hosting.com also layers its own proprietary caching protocols over the LiteSpeed architecture, which theoretically should improve site speed.

Every user also gets a choice of data center, with locationsin the US, Canada, Europe (Amsterdam) and Singapore. Choosing the data center closest to your target audience can reduce the loading times they experience.

These are great tools for ensuring consistent performance. cPanel users who install WordPress through Softaculous will also get a caching plugin to further boost speed.

Uptime

Uptime is the amount of time your site spends online. Hosting.com offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee, promising that sites won’t spend more than 10 minutes down per week because of server issues. I connected my test site to BetterStack for one week to see if Hosting.com lives up to this guarantee.

My site experienced five minutes of downtime during my week of testing. While this puts it within the 99.9% guarantee, it’s not as good as top-ranking web hosts like Hostinger or SiteGround, which both had 100% uptime during my tests. This suggests that Hosting.com servers do fall within the industry standard, but aren’t as reliable as servers from other high-quality web hosts.

Site speed

While Hosting.com achieved a site loading speed under CENT's three-second maximum threshold, it came in slightly under the wire, making it one of the slower web hosts we’ve tested.

Site speed is the amount of time it takes your site to load. Most experts recommend a site loading time of two seconds or less, as bounce rates increase 32% when a site’s loading time goes from one to three seconds. 

I used WebPageTest to benchmark my Hosting.com site’s speed for various locations over the course of five days, testing at a different time each day. This helped me understand how users in other parts of the world would experience my test site, an important consideration if you’re hoping to reach an international audience.

Using the data I captured, I determined the following average loading speeds, measured in seconds (remember, the ideal loading time is less than two seconds; lower is better):

Based on these numbers, I determined that Hosting.com has:

• An average desktop loading speed of 2.09 seconds
• An average mobile loading speed of 3.61 seconds

This gives Hosting.com an overall average site speed of 2.85 seconds. While this falls within the recommended maximum of three seconds, it’s disappointing compared to the 2.34 seconds of Hostinger or even the 2.55-second average Hosting.com had during previous tests. It’s even more underwhelming because Hosting.com representatives told me the company has moved all plans onto turbo servers, which are supposed to be faster than regular servers.

Overall performance

Hosting.com’s performance fell within what I’d expect from a good web hosting service, but both uptime and site speed could be improved. As such, Hosting.com fell solidly behind Hostinger (with 100% uptime and a 2.34 second average site speed) and slightly behind SiteGround (with 100% uptime and a 2.81 second average site speed).

Security: Hosting.com goes the extra mile to keep your site safe

You'll get the standard security features you'd expect from any web host -- SSL certification and firewall protection -- and some extras, including brute force detection, to keep your site running smoothly. These security measures put Hosting.com ahead of most web hosts I’ve tested and place it on equal ground with high-ranking web hosts like Hostinger.

At a bare minimum, a web host should have two security protocols in place:

• SSL Certification: A protocol that encrypts data sent to and from your website -- like email addresses submitted through your contact form -- to make it difficult for malicious actors to intercept this data. SSL certification also signals site safety to web browsers and VPNs; some browsers won’t even let you open a site without it. Moreover, Google uses SSL certification as a ranking signal, making it more difficult to rank well without this feature.
• Firewall: Software that scans data sent to and from your website, filtering out viruses and other malicious data. While firewalls can’t protect you from everything, a good one will be able to prevent common malware from infecting your site, in much the same way that wearing a mask during flu season can protect you from most viruses.

All Hosting.com plans include these protocols. Moreover, Hosting.com provides several additional security features to keep your website safe:

• DDoS protection: Traffic-scanning protocols to prevent your website from being overwhelmed by a flood of malicious traffic designed to shut the server down.
• Brute force detection: Protocols that identify and block brute force attacks, which attempt to break into a website by entering dozens or hundreds of variations of login credentials within minutes.
• Advanced malware protection: Active scanning protocols designed to identify and eliminate malware that gets past the firewall.
• 24/7 security monitoring: A security team dedicated to monitoring all Hosting.com servers so they can quickly identify and eliminate vulnerabilities.
• Weekly backups: Automated backups to an off-site location with a quick-restore option so you can get your site back up and running in minutes if something goes wrong. These are performed through JetBackup in cPanel and must be manually activated.

These security features put Hosting.com on equal footing with many popular web hosts, including our best value pick, Hostinger. Of all the traditional web hosts I’ve tested, only SiteGround and Nexcess provide better security, as they both include proprietary security plugins with most of their web hosting packages.

Hosting.com customer support: Helpful agents, if you can reach them

Hosting.com's service agents are both helpful and professional. This resulted in a more pleasant experience than I’ve had when seeking support from other hosts -- including our second-highest-ranking host, Hostinger. I also enjoyed the intuitive and comprehensive knowledge base Hosting.com offers, which can help you resolve many issues on your own. Hosting.com also offers support via 24/7 live chat, phone and tickets. I tested all of these channels for simplicity, responsiveness and helpfulness. 

Knowledge base

The Hosting.com knowledge base is intuitive, with easy-to-understand articles, and while I’d like more videos for visual learners, the company’s support section is on par with our favorite web hosting providers. 

Hosting.com’s support section is simple to navigate, with a search function at the top and clearly labeled links to tutorials for common tasks like using Softaculous to install WordPress. There’s also a Shared Hosting Quick Start Guide, which explains your account dashboard and how to configure basic DNS settings, cPanel or Hosting Panel (Hosting.com’s alternative to cPanel) and email.

The Shared Hosting Quick Start Guide and other articles in the knowledge base use minimal jargon and provide clear explanations of technical terms when they can’t be avoided. Most tutorials also offer step-by-step guidance for the processes they describe, and roughly two-thirds of the tutorials include images. This is similar to what other top-rated hosts like SiteGround offer, though I wish there were more videos for people who prefer to learn that way.

Direct communication

While many issues can be resolved through the knowledge base, you’ll occasionally need to contact customer service. Hosting.com’s support ticket service can be slow, live chat won’t work if you’re running an adblocker on your browser and finding the phone support number proved difficult, but the support representatives themselves were highly professional and helpful. This places Hosting.com firmly in the middle of the pack, as I’ve had better experiences with companies such as SiteGround, but I’ve also had much worse experiences with many other web hosts.

I started my customer service journey by opening a support ticket. The first response came in about an hour and informed me that my query was being passed on to the domain specialist team. There was also a live counter tracking the time between when I submitted my support ticket and the responses, with an estimate of about four hours until my problem was resolved.

Unfortunately, I didn’t hear from the domain specialists in four hours or even 12 hours, the timeline I experienced when testing Hosting.com under the name A2 Hosting. After 24 hours, I sent a second nudge asking when my issue would be resolved. This time, I received a prompt response, with an apology for the delay and notice that my problem had been fixed. While I appreciated the fix, it shouldn’t have taken 24 hours and a second message to get it. Other hosts, such as SiteGround, have responded to support tickets in two to four hours.

I clicked on the live chat button next. Nothing happened. I thought it might be a temporary site issue, so I returned after the weekend and tried again. Still, nothing. There was no link to live chat within the knowledge base either. 

I opened another support ticket and, within an hour, had instructions to clear my cache. This didn’t work, so the customer service representative then instructed me to pause Adblock on Hosting.com. The live chat button worked with Adblock paused, and I received a response almost immediately. The support agent was polite, professional and able to resolve my issue in around 10 minutes. This is similar to my live chat experience with companies like SiteGround and Ionos.

Accessing phone support was also more difficult than it needed to be. I couldn’t find a phone number anywhere in the account dashboard or knowledge base. I had seen a phone number listed on the website before I logged in, but there was nothing to indicate whether or not active customers should use that number. I had to reach out via support ticket to get this number, which was sent roughly one hour after I submitted the request.

Thankfully, the call itself went well. I was connected with an agent in roughly one minute, and she answered all of my questions quickly and politely. The whole conversation lasted around 10 minutes, making this one of the best and fastest phone support experiences I’ve had when dealing with web hosts, on par with Ionos and SiteGround, our two highest-ranking web hosts in the customer service category. It’s also much faster than the 40 minutes I spent waiting for phone service when testing Hosting.com under the name A2 Hosting.

Overall

Hosting.com’s solid knowledge base offers a decent amount of multimedia content and easy-to-follow step-by-step guides. Trying to contact support was more frustrating, with inconsistent response times via support ticket and some initial difficulties accessing live chat and phone service. Once I got past those early hurdles, however, both live chat and phone representatives were quick, polite and helpful. On the whole, Hosting.com lands behind SiteGround or Ionos, but ahead of companies like Hostinger.

Reputation

Finally, I checked out Hosting.com reviews to get an idea of other users’ experiences. I discovered that Hosting.com has a 4.6 out of 5 star ranking on Trustpilot, based on over 4,000 reviews. Most of the recent reviews also specifically referenced great customer support, suggesting my experience is a common one.

Hosting.com isn’t BBB accredited, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything about the quality of the service, as accreditation is pay-to-play. What is meaningful is that Hosting.com has only had 13 complaints in the past three years and has closed nine complaints in the past 12 months. (BBB doesn’t state if/how many of the older complaints were closed.) This suggests that it’s rare for people to have serious issues with Hosting.com.

Hosting.com value: Where the company shines

Key takeaways: Finally, I compared the lowest-tier Hosting.com plans with the most affordable offerings from our top three hosts, SiteGround, Hostinger and Ionos. In the end, Hosting.com offers many of the best features other hosts will give you for a similar price, and has better storage than most other popular web hosts. 

Here’s a quick breakdown of these plans:

We can draw a few conclusions based on this information:

• Hosting.com offers slightly more affordable introductory prices than other top web hosts, starting at just $2 per month instead of the typical $3 or $4.
• Hosting.com has mid-range renewal prices, costing significantly more than Ionos but notably less than SiteGround, and roughly the same as Hostinger’s renewal price.
• Hosting.com’s security protocols are similar to other top companies’, with things like free SSL and DDoS protection. However, you won’t get automated backups on the lowest-tier plan.
• The LiteSpeed-enhanced servers give Hosting.com similar server performance to other top web hosts, like Hostinger and SiteGround, which offer caching tools to improve site speed.
• Hosting.com offers better storage than most other hosts, with the exception of Hostinger, which offers 25GB -- significantly more than Hosting.com’s 15GB.
• The Hosting.com introductory period is one year, which is average for web hosts offering introductory discounts.

Overall, Hosting.com provides great value compared to many other web hosts, though falls short of our Editors’ Choice winner for the Best Value Web Host in 2025, Hostinger.

The verdict: Is Hosting.com right for you?

To figure out where Hosting.com lands in the spectrum of web hosting options, let’s take a look at how it performed in each of our review categories:

• Ease of use: 7/10. Hosting.com’s purchase process contains unnecessary upsells and the dashboard doesn’t provide an immediate option for installing WordPress. The Softaculous site assistant only provides minimal benefits, especially compared to guided WordPress setup processes from companies like Hostinger and SiteGround.
• Performance: 7/10. Hosting.com had adequate uptime and site speed, but fell far short of other hosts like Hostinger and Nexcess.
• Security: 9/10. Hosting.com goes beyond the standard SSL certification and firewall protection with things like advanced malware protection, weekly backups and 24-hour security monitoring. This puts it significantly ahead of most web hosts we’ve tested, with the exception of SiteGround and Nexcess.
• Customer service: 7/10. Hosting.com provides an excellent knowledge base and helpful, professional customer support representatives. However, contacting these agents can be arduous, losing Hosting.com significant points in this category.
• Value: 8/10. Hosting.com’s basic plan includes many of the same features you’ll get from other popular web hosts, plus more storage than many competitors’ equivalent plans. However, it doesn’t match up to our 2025 Editor’s Choice winner for Best Value Web Host, Hostinger.

My experiences across these categories give Hosting.com an overall ranking of 7.6/10. This suggests a serious drop in quality since the rebrand, as A2 Hosting earned a ranking of 8.2/10 during CNET's 2024 review. Moreover, it puts Hosting.com far behind our Editor’s Choice winners, SiteGround and Hostinger. This makes it impossible for me to recommend Hosting.com, as there are much better options available.