Strong WordPress plans, great customer service
There are many web hosts vying for your dollar, so it takes a special service to stand out from the crowded field and prove itself worthy of your investment. Hosting.com (formerly A2 Hosting) distinguishes itself in the competitive web hosting market with terrific customer service and several feature-rich hosting packages. Notably, Hosting’s high-quality WordPress plans rival those from our Editors’ Choice winner, Bluehost. However, its lack of cloud, dedicated, and Windows server plans prevents it from seizing the crown as one of our top picks overall.Shared Web Hosting
If you want to launch a site without spending a lot of money, check out shared hosting. A shared package places your site on a server with many other sites, so you literally share resources and lower your overall hosting costs. It’s practical and cheap, but it isn’t particularly powerful. The main drawback is that the other sites sharing the server can slow your site’s load speed with a crash or traffic spike.
Hosting.com offers four tiers of Linux-based shared web hosting: Startup, Plus, Pro, and Max. Starter (starting at $7.99 per month with an annual contract) has 15GB of storage, unlimited monthly data transfers, and five email addresses, but you’re limited to a single domain. Plus (starting at $9.99 per month with an annual contract) builds on Startup with 30GB of storage,10 email accounts, and two websites. Pro (starting at $12.99 per month with an annual contract) ups the ante with its 50GB of storage, 20 email accounts, and 10 websites. Finally, there’s Max (starting at $15.99 per month with an annual contract), which offers 100GB of storage, 40 email accounts, and 50 websites. Each plan includes free domain registration for the first year when committing to an annual contract.
These are respectable shared plans, but they’re a step behind HostGator. HostGator features free domain registration, unlimited monthly data transfers, and unlimited email addresses with each shared hosting plan. If you want to explore shared hosting, HostGator is the place to start.VPS Web Hosting
As with its shared hosting plans, Hosting.com has multiple Linux-based virtual private server (VPS) packages. VPS hosting is like shared hosting in that multiple sites exist on the same server. The difference? VPS hosting offers more resources per site. There are far fewer sites on each server, and each is isolated from its server mates.
Hosting.com offers managed and unmanaged VPS servers. With managed servers, Hosting.com takes care of all aspects of server management, including setup, configuration, security, backups, and maintenance. On the other hand, unmanaged servers require you to handle all these tasks yourself for a more hands-on experience.
Unmanaged VPS XS (starting at $9.99 per month with an annual contract) starts with 4GB of virtual memory, 80GB of storage, and unlimited monthly data transfers. The next tier up, VPS S (starting at $15.99 per month with an annual contract), increases the virtual memory to 8GB and storage to 160GB. VPS M ($24.99 per month with an annual contract) lets you work with 16GB of virtual memory and 320GB of storage. Lastly, VPS L ($60.99 per month with an annual contract) is a plan with a hefty 32TB of virtual memory and 640GB of storage.
Managed VPS plans use the same naming structure and offer the same configurations, but include managed server support. As expected, that white glove treatment comes at a much higher cost than unmanaged VPS.
