A2 Hosting vs Hostgator

In this article, we will be doing a comparison between A2 hosting and Hostgator shared web hosting services. 

We will be comparing all the plans, their prices and the features that both A2 Hosting and Hostgator offers. 

A2 Hosting and Hostgator are well-known web hosts and have been in the web hosting industry for a long time now.

With years of industrial experience and customer feedback, both the web hosts try to provide the best features and services.

You can get a wide range of plans that are feature-rich and yet are affordable. You can buy different types of hosting plans from both web hosts such as shared hosting, dedicated hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS and much more.

Plans & Pricing comparison - (A2 Hosting vs Hostgator)

Here we will be comparing the features and pricing for the shared hosting category.

Both A2 Hosting and Hostgator have somewhat similar plans and have prices falling between $2 to $13 range.

Shared hosting plans are most suitable for medium to small scale websites. With increasing competition in the web hosting industry, web hosts try to provide necessary features at affordable prices to all the users.

Here we will take a look at the plans and features provided by A2 hosting and Hostgator and compare them side by side.

A2 Hosting Web Hosting Plans

Hostgator Web Hosting Plans

Features Comparison - (A2 Hosting vs Hostgator)

When Comparing the features in the shared hosting category you will notice that both the web hosts provide some features that are common between both. Some of these features are free SSL certificates, regular website backups, free website designers, free domain transfers.

These and some more features are available for an additional fee. In this section, we will be comparing the features that A2 Hosting and Hostgator provide in their plans.

A2 Hosting Web Hosting Features

A2 hosting has plans specifically designed to fit the needs of all types of customers.

Whether if you need hosting for a very small website or for your online businesses, A2 hosting has you covered. Some of the features that you get with all A2 hosting shared plans are

• 1 Website 
• 5 Databases
• Unlimited Storage
• Unlimited Transfer
• cPanel Control Panel
• Turbo
• Free & Easy Site Transfer
• Anytime Money Back Guarantee
• Free SSL & SSD

All the above-given features are common to all shared hosting plans but A2 hosting provides some curated features with a plan as per the pricing.

As you go higher among the plans you will get better performance due to the better specifications allowed for the servers used to host those plans.

Starting with the swift plan you start to get unlimited bandwidth and unlimited storage space too.

The number of maximum allowed databases and hostable domains also increase as you go up the plans.

A2 hosting provides a special feature called turbo which is available with the turbo plan and provides 20X the performance that you get on any other plan normally.

A2 hosting also provides any time money-back guarantee if you are not satisfied with the services. This service is not provided by Hostgator.

Hostgator Web Hosting Features

Hostgator hosting plans are most suitable for people who want to host small to medium scale websites.

This also includes people who just want to test their website are want to try out some personal projects.

Unlike A2 hosting, HostGator lacks some services/features such as any time money-back guarantee. Some features that are common to all Hostgator plans are -

• Single domain
• Free domain transfer
• Free website transfer
• One-click installs
• Unmetered bandwidth
• Free SSL certificate 

All the above-listed features are what you get with the hatchling plan.

All the preceding plans carry forward the same features with few additional ones such as Free SEO tools, free Positive SSL certificates, and free dedicated IP.

If you are to choose among HostGator and A2 hosting, A2 hosting proves to be a better deal as it provides more features for cheaper prices.

It is recommended to use Hostgator if and only if you are to buy the hatchling plan for personal projects.

Performance Test - (A2 Hosting vs Hostgator)

Performance is one of the most important aspects that should be considered when selecting a web host.

You would not like your website to suffer in any way be it slow loading speeds or inability to handle multiple users at a given time just because your web host is incompetent.

Performance majorly depends on the server on which the website is hosted on. Generally in shared hosting, a single server is allotted to multiple users where each user has a certain quota depending upon their plan.

If the server is not powerful enough, the websites can suffer even if they have enough individual resources due to the nature of the server being a single entity.

Therefore before selecting a web host, you should do a comparison test between multiple web hosts to see which suits you the best.

In this section, we will be comparing the performance of A2 Hosting and Hostgator.

A2 Hosting Performance

The result data of A2 hosting show that the load time for the whole website was 1.63s which can vary from website to website but the performance grade that A2 hosting got is ‘D’ or 69 points which are mostly for the load speeds and requests made.

Hostgator Performance

Hostgator shows better performance in the performance test by scoring a ‘B’ grade with 82 points.

Though the page size was only 404.7 KB that is one-third of what A2 hosting had. But nevertheless, HostGator performed better.

By comparing the results we can see that these tests just don't depend on the web hosts but the website too.

A2 hosting had to load 1.5 MB of data whereas Hostgator had only 400 KB to load.

This gives a slight advantage to Hostgator.

Considering the number of requests made and the connection time we can say that both the hosts are equally good in terms of performance.

Time to First Byte Test (TTFB Test) - (A2 Hosting vs Hostgator)

TTFB also is known as Time to the first byte is a measure of the time taken by the first byte of data to be received by the client after a request is made to the server.

The main purpose of carrying out this test is to determine the data transfer speed of the server between the client and itself.

Slow TTFB time means that the server is not fast enough and this can harm your website loading speeds significantly.

In this test, only the minimum time taken is considered as it is required time to establish a connection between the host and the client. The data loading time may depend on the size of the website and the speed of the internet connection too, therefore it is not considered here.

TTFB is a standard way of testing server speed but there are certain things to keep in mind that might affect the TTFB timings -

TFFB results should be conducted multiple times to get a better idea of the server connection speeds.

The TTFB time also depends significantly on the geographical location of the server and the client. The closer they are to each other the lower the TTFB time will be.

In this section, we will be comparing the TTFB time for websites hosted on A2 hosting as well as Hostgator.

A2 Hosting TTFB

The test results for A2 hosting :

Minimum first-byte time - 31 ms (Toronto server)

Maximum first-byte time - 468 ms (Singapore server)

Minimum connect time - 16 ms (Toronto server)

Maximum connect time - 234 ms (Singapore server)

Hostgator TTFB

The test results for Hostgator :

Minimum first-byte time - 89.6 ms (Toronto server)

Maximum first-byte time - 521 ms (Singapore server)

Minimum connect time - 10ms (Toronto server)

Maximum connect time - 256 ms (Singapore server)

As you can see from the results above, A2 hosting had the minimum TTFB time of 16 ms from the Toronto server while Hostgator had a TTFB time 89.6 ms from the same server.

But Hostgator had a minimum connecting time of just 10.1 ms while A2 hosting had a connecting time of 16 ms.

From these results we can conclude that though A2 hosting had a better TTFB time, Hostgator did pretty good too as it managed to have a lower connecting time.

Uptime - (A2 Hosting vs Hostgator)

Uptime simply refers to the time period for which the website is working properly and is online.

This translates to the availability of the server to serve the user requests.​

Choosing a web host with high uptime rates is what you need if you want your website to be accessible to its users whenever they want.

Most of the web hosts promise 99% uptime throughout but there are instances when this is not possible due to multiple reasons -

Downtimes can be a result of server maintenance in which case the servers might be getting an upgrade or they might be getting fixed.

Other reasons for downtimes can be faulty equipment or server misconfiguration

Most of the Web hosts guarantee 99% uptime but not all are able to achieve that.

In this section, we will be comparing the uptime of A2 hosting and Hostgator and see if they live up to the standards.

A2 Hosting Uptime

As seen from the uptime statistics for the year 2019 we can see A2 hosting had several reported problems from the month of June continuing into December.

While there were nine major sessions of downtime from the month of October following into December.

Hostgator Uptime

Hostgator, on the other hand, less reported issues and very fewer downtime in the year 2019 altogether.

Moreover, Hostgator had only a total of 41 minutes of downtime in the whole year whereas A2 hosting had approximately 5 hours of downtime in the same period.

Comparing the uptime details from both web hosts, we can see that both of them are well within 99% uptime but Hostgator outperformed A2 hosting by a good margin.

Customer Support - (A2 Hosting vs Hostgator)

Customer support is one of the most important qualities of a good web host.

Many people don't consider or try to acknowledge the importance of good customer service when buying a new web host.

Most web hosts promise 24/7 technical support but many of them have huge delays in the response times, Meaning it might take hours to days before you might get a solution from the customer support staff.

Good customer support not only means 24/7 availability but also faster responses and accurate solutions.

Here we will compare the customer support quality of both the web hosts.

Customer support is one important aspect that many people just ignore or overlook while choosing a web host.

Good customer care is really necessary as you don’t know when you will need them.

Good customer support does not necessarily mean quick replies and many ways to contact.

It also depends on how on point is the customer care staff when solving your queries and how knowledgeable they are.

Most of the web hosts out there claim 24/7 customer support but not many live up to that promise.

Long waiting times, huge delays in solving customer queries are some signs of a bad customer care service.

In this section, we will be comparing the customer support offered by A2 Hosting and Hostgator.

A2 Hosting Customer Support

As far as customer support is considered, A2 hosting has got mixed customer reviews. A2 hosting provides 24/7 customer support and technical assistance.

Any user can avail of the customer support via a phone call, live chat or by raising a ticket. The best way to get your quesries resolved is by a phone call but if you need written instructions then live chat or tickets are the better way to go.

If you are a DIY person then you can also the huge FAQs and common problem and solutions database that A2 hosting has created.

If you don’t find your problem listed there then you can revert to using the traditional customer support by the methods mentioned above.

Hostgator Customer Support

Hostgator has got different reviews from different people, some who had a bad experience with the customer care staff while some say it is quite good.

Though the majority of them had a good experience with Hostgator. Like most web hosts Hostgator also promises 24/7 customer support and has multiple ways in which the customer can get their issues resolved.

You can contact customer support on HostGator via phone calls, live chat or by raising a ticket.

You can also use the huge video tutorials available in the support section to solve your issues.

If you are not very tech-savvy or can’t follow instructions properly then you can use the screen sharing feature provided by the Hostgator customer support to share your screen and let the support staff handle the issues on your behalf.

Hostgator has its own community forums that you can visit and ask your question on if you prefer answers from other users such as yourself.

Both HostGator and A2 hosting provide good customer support and have decently quick replies to user’s queries and doubts. But as far as the pre-existing knowledge base is considered for

the users to take information from, Hostgator clearly surpasses A2 hosting due to its huge video tutorials section and concise knowledge base of FAQs and documentation that the users can rely on if they don’t want to contact the customer support.

Conclusion - (Who is the Winner "A2 Hosting or Hostgator")

Hostgator and A2 hosting both are equally good web hosts but you should select either of them depending on your preferences to say the least.

Hostgator has cheaper plans than A2 hosting but it lacks some features too.

Moreover, HostGator is suitable for small to medium scale websites given the specification you get with the plans but if you really need the features that A2 hosting provides then A2 hosting is the way to go. In the end, it boils down to your personal preferences rather than the prices of the plans.

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