Looking for a perfect web host
I decided after several years with my current web hosting company (I won’t say who they are) to find a perfect web host. The key priorities I was looking for, as most people do, were, great customer service, value and functionality. To that end, after careful research, I decided on A2 Web Hosting. I had read many great reviews on A2 Hosting and decided I would give them a try. As with many web hosting companies they offer a money back guarantee for 30 days. Based on this, I marked my diary for 30 days out, and signed up.
NOTE: READ OUT A2 Hosting 2019 FULL Review here
They provide hosting in several countries and in particular offer hosting in Europe, as I was keen to get the physical infrastructure as close to the UK as possible, and as I would be looking at hosting eCommerce sites (see Shopiwoo for eCommerce Platform), and with the advent of GDPR (Data protection), hosting in Europe (Amsterdam) was key for me.
As with all new things, it wasn’t long before I had to raise a case, well several in fact. More due to the lack of knowledge on my side, but more because my previous provider had such a clunky system and didn’t have a Control Panel, I had to learn a new way of working.
Within 30 mins I had a reply, and before I knew if I was porting several of my sites over, point existing domains to A2 Web Hosting and quickly installing several instances of WordPress.
I’m now 240 days in, and have already bought a couple of domains from them, opened a reseller account and already learned lots of useful techniques and capabilities, plus played around with cPanel and WHM (Web Host Manager), allowing me to sell hosting and domains to other people.
Some of the key considerations
- Your specific hosting needs
- Server uptime
- Customer service and SLAs
- Cost
- Server backup and updating capability
- Application support i.e. Click to install WordPress etc.
- Add-on Domain capability
- Free SSL Certificates (Let’s Encrypt)
- Renewal pricing i.e is first 12 months cheaper, then is goes up.
- FTP/SFTP Access / capability
- E-Commercial features
- Security – Do they charge extra for some features
- CPANEL support
- Live chat support
- 24/7/365 support
Just some of the major considerations…
Summary
We tend to stick to what we know, and sometimes put up with second best. It’s still early days, but the positive experience I have had and the ease of both finding information, navigating their website and the Control Panel, has made it a real pleasure. If I had to rate them therefore, I would say 9/10, my previous provider, whilst probably good value, I felt had been keeping me back, with lack of capability and less control over my environment.
Who ever you are using, it does no harm therefore, to try another provider. Most seem provide a 30 day money back guarantee. So even if your happy with your current provider, it doesn’t do any harm looking at what other web hosting companies are out there.
To take a look at A2 Hosting and specifically their UK site try here.
For Our A2 Hosting 2019 FULL Review look here