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PO Box 2998
Ann Arbor, MI 48106
1-800-LINUX-HOST
A2Hosting.com is one of the better established hosting companies on the Internet. In business for nearly nine years now, A2Hosting offers shared, reseller, VPS, managed VPS and dedicated server Linux hosting, in addition to merchant accounts and domain names. A2Hosting’s offices are located in Michigan, where they specialize in environmentally friendly Linux hosting.
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Review
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Sales
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Sales questions are taken by live chat, telephone and email. I first attempted to reach A2Hosting by live chat, but over the course of a four day period, live chat remained unavailable. Next, it was off to the phone lines. I had better luck with A2’s toll-free telephone number. A representative picked up on the second ring, walked me through all the available plans that fit my hosting needs, and gave me a coupon worth more than 50% off A2’s regular hosting rates.
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Setup
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It takes about five minutes and one online form to register for an account. I was able to sign-up and apply my sales coupon with ease. My welcome letter arrived within moments of paying for my new hosting account, and things couldn’t have gone smoother.
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Billing
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A2Hosting accepts all major credit cards, PayPal, checks, money orders, Google Checkout, 2Checkout and wire transfers. I had one issue with the billing department, which turned out to be an error on my end, and they were able to rectify the situation in under an hour.
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Pricing
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A2Hosting coupon codes are regularly available and posted to their website and elsewhere. With a 51% off coupon code, I paid just $4.88/month for an unlimited Linux shared web hosting plan. I could have paid as little as $2.43/month if I had chosen to pay 36 months in advance or as much as $9.95/month had I no coupon. With a coupon, A2Hosting is very reasonable, but without such a money saving deal, their prices run at the high end of the hosting spectrum.
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Reliability
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A2Hosting is known for their reliability, even publicly displaying their uptime on their website. During a two year stay, I had just one instance of downtime that totalled four minutes. A2Hosting maintained a near 100% uptime otherwise. The server hardware was equally reliable, with no outages or failures to speak of.
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Support
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There are numerous ways to contact A2Hosting support, including live chat, telephone, email, a trouble ticket system and a website-based user forum. I found the support team to be impressively helpful, often going to great lengths to solve my issues and then explain the problem to me in great detail. On the other hand, A2Hosting won’t win any awards for speed. Trouble tickets often took several hours to be answered and live chat, when available, frequently disconnected or referred me to telephone or trouble ticket support. A mixed bag!
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Uptime
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My premium uptime monitor indicated that A2Hosting maintained a near 100% uptime record over a two year period.
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Guarantee
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30 day money back guarantee.
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99.9% uptime guarantee.
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Terms of Service
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The Terms of Service for A2Hosting can be read on their website. Highlights include:
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Violation of Terms of Service will result in immediate account suspension.
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Accounts must be manually cancelled within 25 days of renewal date.
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Audio and video streaming not allowed.
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Spam forbidden.
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No file storage or file sharing permitted.
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Advantages
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Impressive uptime.
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cPanel control panel easy-to-use.
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Automated account backups.
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Green friendly hosting.
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Telephone and email support teams are well versed in Linux and works to resolve issues quickly.
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Disadvantages
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Live chat not always available or helpful.
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Prices can be high without coupon.
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Support answers can be slow in coming.
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