A2Hosting vs HostGator Web Hosting Comparison 2021

There are so many HostGator vs A2Hosting comparisons on the web, but this one is mainly written for e-commerce website owners. To be honest, for this kind of webmasters, web hosting price and hosting performance are the most importance factors. After all, they need a cheap rate to save budget, as well as an all-time available site with fast page loading speed to offer a good website visiting experience for readers.

Now, the question is which one of the 2 companies is the best option for online stores as both of them offer fast and reliable web hosting service at affordable pricing? To come out an objective answer, we have collected hundreds of feedbacks from verified customers to analyze their opinions, and have started the real hosting experiences with the 2 companies to test their services in person.

Editorial Rating

Before presenting the detailed comparison, we’d like to insert an editorial rating chart to give our readers a general impression of the 2 companies’ web hosting solutions. Note that the result is based on customers’ feedbacks and our real hosting experiences.

Criteria HostGator A2Hosting
Popularity rating 5 of 5 rating 4 of 5
Performance rating 5 of 5 rating 4 of 5
Uptime rating 5 of 5 rating 4.5 of 5
Tech Support rating 5 of 5 rating 4.5 of 5
Price Value rating 5 of 5 rating 4.5 of 5

Price Comparison

Almost all the businessmen are budget-conscious people, thus the affordable price can be seen as the top priority. Fortunately, both A2Hosting and HostGator have offered beneficial coupon codes which allow customers to enjoy attractive discounts and purchase with a cheaper price.

  • A2Hosting customers can purchase starting at $3.92/mo by the 51% promotion link with reasonable billing cycles of 1/6/12 months
  • HostGator customers can purchase starting at $3.95/mo by the coupon code BWH25Percent
Billing Cycle HostGator A2Hosting
3 Years $3.71/mo $3.95/mo
2 Year $4.47/mo $4.61/mo
1 Year $5.21/mo $3.92/mo
Full Refund 45 Days 30 Days
Prorated Refund Anytime No

Clearly, the HostGator Unlimited Web Hosting is cheaper than A2Hosting Prime Plan. Besides, as the money back guarantee has become more and more important in web hosting industry, both HostGator and A2Hosting has offered this policy. However, the difference is that HostGator offers 45 days full refund and anytime prorated refund, while A2Hosting offers the 30 days money back policy.

Reliability & Page Loading Speed

This aspect is compared based on our performance testing result came out by Pingdom and their data center infrastructures.

We have built 2 online stores with the same contents, and get them hosted with HostGator and A2Hostign respectively. As tested with Pingdom, both of the 2 sites have achieved a 99.99% uptime in the real world. In terms of hosting speed, HostGator wins a little, achieving a fast server responsive time of 338ms averagely, which is 17% faster than A2Hosting.

How can these 2 companies guarantee such an excellent hosting performance? This is because both of them utilize 100% factory-tested Dell servers, and place these quality servers at multiple cutting-edge data centers.

  • HostGator houses servers in multiple SoftLayer data centers, featuring redundant power, HVAC, fire detection/suppression systems, and 24/7 monitoring.
  • A2Hosting’s world-class data centers are located at USA and Europe, which are equipped with redundant network, redundant power supply, security technologies, and constant monitoring.

Features

Feature A2Hosting HostGator
Disk Space Unlimited Unlimited
Website Builder Yes Yes
cPanel Control Panel Yes Yes
MySQL Databases Unlimited 10
E-Mail Addresses Unlimited Unlimited
Free Advertising Credits Yes Yes
PHP & MySQL Yes Yes
Python Yes Yes
Ruby on Rails Yes Yes
SSH Yes Yes
Perl Yes Yes
SSD Yes no

Due to the fact that HostGator has 3 web hosting packages to meet different individual requirements, we mainly compare the most popular Baby plan with A2Hosting Prime plan.

After reviewing their feature listing, we have found that most of the features offered by them stay the same.

  • Ease of Use – Easy 1-click installer included in powerful cPanel control panel.
  • Advanced Technologies – SSH, FTP, PHP 5, MySQL 5 , Ruby on Rails, Perl, Python, Shared SSL Certificate.
  • Popular Applications – WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, CubeCart, osCommerce, ZenCart.

However, one of the shining features of A2Hosting is its SwiftServer Platform, which contains the latest advanced Solid State Drives (SSD) speeding the webpage loading up to 300% faster, and the Railgun Network Optimizer achieving up to 143% faster HTML load times.

Customer Service

In order to increase customer satisfaction rate, both HostGator and A2Hosting pays much attention to technical support, aiming to offer a perfect trouble-shooting process at any time.

  • Customers can contact support staffs via multiple ways like phone, e-mail, live chat, and forum.
  • The waiting time for the phone call and live chat is guaranteed less than 5 seconds, and the waiting time for the e-mail reply is no more than 15 minutes.
  • For beginners, they can get some basic knowledge about web hosting service and online store building skills in the knowledgebase offered by the 2 companies.

Summary

According to this comparison, HostGator is the better web hosting option than A2Hosting as it offers cheaper price and faster page loading speed. However, it does not mean that A2Hosting is not worth trying. The A2Hosting SwiftServers and 24/7/365 US-based Guru Crew support have been awarded and recommended by a tremendous number of customers.

HostGator