Siteground or A2Hosting? Which hosting provider is the right fit for your needs? Just a quick glance at each host’s services and packages will reveal just how closely matched they are so it can be a little hard to pick a side.

I did the heavy lifting for you and compared each host based on a set of features that matter and A2Hosting comes out on top! Still, based on what you need, Siteground may be the better host for you. Read on so you can decide and get it right even if it’s your first website!

Overall Comparison Siteground vs A2Hosting

Winner: A2Hosting

Overall, if you want versatile hosting options and website load speeds, A2Hosting is the better option. However, Siteground is very closely behind and offers more support options and a wider server footprint. Read on to see how we compare each host and what makes them stand out:

About Siteground and A2Hosting

Siteground is a hosting company founded in 2004 in Bulgaria. Since then, the company has grown into a healthy corporation that crossed 1 million domains in 2018 and then quickly doubled that by 2022. Siteground offers shared hosting, Cloud hosting, WordPress hosting, WooCommerce hosting, and reseller hosting plans. The company also offers email hosting and domain registration, among other enterprise solutions.

A2Hosting is a web hosting company founded just 3 years before Siteground in 2001. The company has grown into a mid-sized host catering to over 110,000 people in over 200 countries worldwide. A2Hosting has focused on keeping its company values without losing its touch from its growth.

Round 1: Hosting features – Key Hosting Features and Services

Key Siteground Features

Siteground offers shared hosting, cloud hosting, and reseller hosting as its main plans, plus specialized WordPress and WooCommerce plans for websites built on WordPress. On every plan, you get a free SSL to keep your website secure out-of-the-box.

For its shared hosting plan, you get unmetered bandwidth and up to 40 GB storage, on its cloud hosting – 5 TB bandwidth and 160 GB diskspace, and on its reseller plans, north of 40 GB diskspace.

To ensure the best performance all your data is stored on high-performance SSD drives and backed up daily. Plus, if you are looking to create a completely new website, Siteground allows you to build your website for free with Weebly and WordPress.

Key A2Hosting Features

A2Hosting, on the other hand, offers shared hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting and reseller hosting plans. On its shared hosting, you get unmetered bandwidth and unlimited storage, apart from its basic plan with 10 GB diskspace. On its VPS plan you get up to 450 GB diskspace, on its dedicated plans, up to 2 TB diskspace, and up to 270 GB for its reseller plans.

Like Siteground, you get high-performance SSD drives, a free SSL on all plans, and free daily backups and restore on every plan except for its most basic plan. Installing WordPress and migrating your website is free, however, the website builder ‘free of charge’ is only good for 1-page websites.

A2Hosting also has WordPress-specific plans plus a very versatile suite of hosting plans for different services and business types.

And the winner is… A2Hosting

This is a very close tie but A2Hosting comes out on top thanks to its higher storage and more versatile hosting plans than Siteground.

Round 2:  Prices & Plans

Siteground Pricing Plans

Siteground basic shared hosting, cloud hosting, reseller, and WordPress-specific hosting plans. These are best suited to:

• Shared hosting – Siteground’s shared hosting plans are its most basic plans and best suited for entry-level websites and websites with one or very few pages not handling so much traffic
• Cloud hosting – Cloud hosting plans designed to give businesses scalable and flexible resources as needed. E.g Ecommerce websites with traffic spikes, news websites, etc.
• Reseller hosting – Best for businesses that want to sell their own hosting and domain plans
• WordPress and WooCommerce hosting – These plans are specially designed for websites built on WordPress and Ecommerce websites built on WordPress Ecommerce solution, WooCommerce.

A2Hosting B Pricing Plans  

A2Hosting offers a catalog of far more varied hosting plans – shared, VPS, dedicated, reseller, WordPress and other special packages. These are best suited to:

• Shared hosting – Basic plans for small and new websites. E.g: portfolio pages, landing pages, etc.
• VPS hosting – Expanded resources and more power than shared hosting, still on a bargain. Best for mid-sized businesses, Ecommerce stores, news websites, etc.
• Dedicated hosting – The most power and dedicated resources – you can manage your server or have it managed by A2Hosting’s team. Best for large corporations and businesses that handle sensitive data
• Reseller hosting – Best for hosting businesses looking to resell their packages
• WordPress hosting – Plans designed for WordPress websites and WooCommerce stores. If you own a WordPress site, these are the best plans for you.
• Other niche packages (by services) – A2Hosting also offers other niche hosting plans like Business hosting, eCommerce hosting, Agency hosting, Blog hosting, LMS hosting, Non profit hosting.

And the Winner Is… A2Hosting

A2Hosting offers far more hosting plans and its basic packages too are cheaper than Siteground.

Round 3: Website performance (Uptime & Speed)

Your host’s uptime and server speed are important metrics to consider. Higher uptime figures mean you can be sure your website will always be online to your users. And quicker response times mean your website will load quicker and you’ll rank higher in search, ultimately more conversions.

Siteground Uptime & Speed

To get a rough estimate on Siteground’s server speeds, I ran the host’s domain (their domain should be hosted on their servers ideally) through GTMetrix and Google PageSpeed Insights – two popular testing tools for website performance. These were the results:

On GTMetrix, Siteground had an impressive time to first byte (TTFB) of 244 ms and an overall performance of 94%:

On PageSpeed Insights, the host had a TTFB of 500 ms for the desktop version and an overall performance of 89%:

A2Hosting Uptime & Speed

I performed the same tests on the same testing tools for A2Hosting. I also performed in the same time frame to get fair results. Check them out:

On GTMetrix, A2Hosting had a very impressive TTFB of 138 ms and an overall performance of 89%:

And on PageSpeed Insights, the host a TTFB of 600 ms and an overall performance of also 89%:

And the Winner Is… A2Hosting

In terms of website speed, A2Hosting performed just slightly better overall. You could even call it a tie and I was truly impressed by each host.

Round 4: Customer Support – Who Has the Best Support System?

Siteground customer Support

Siteground offers a suite of support goodies including 24/7 availability, phone support, live chat, email support, ticket support and a vast knowledgebase. However, the bulk of these support portals are reserved for existing customers.

Still, I was impressed with two support you don’t usually see on other hosts – podcasts and a tutorial page:

I wanted to at least try chatting with a live agent, but the option wasn’t available unless I signed in. In all, as an existing customer, you’ll enjoy high-priority response times and can call, chat with agents live, have a bot attend to your most basic enquiries, and open a support ticket.

A2Hosting customer Support

A2Hosting, also provides similar support options like Siteground. You get 24/7 support, a phone directory, a vast knowledgebase, live chat, ticket and email support.

If you need quick answers to urgent issues, their phone support makes the most sense and there are numbers you can call for very region:

Their knowledgebase has a healthy chunk of information and with a built-in search engine, you can quickly find whatever you’re looking for:

I was happy that I could chat with an agent live on A2Hosting even without signing up and decided to try it out:

I like that they tell you exactly how long you have to wait for and your position on the queue. So I waited… for over 30 minutes…

Eventually, she responded and I asked a couple of questions. The agent was very knowledgeable and answered everything I asked professionally but still took a while.

And the Winner Is… A2Hosting

I’ll still go with A2Hosting for this round just because I was able to chat with an agent live, even though I must say, waiting for 30 minutes is no fun but it’s better than nothing if you’re not yet a customer.

Round 5: Ease of use – Which Platform Is Easier to Use?

Siteground Ease of use

Siteground has a fun user interface with color combinations and icons that pop. You can start finding out important details of the different plans right from the homepage:

Once you’re a customer, you’ll have access to their account management dashboard that’s quite intuitive, decluttered and looks like the industry standard:

From here, you can manage all your account and website frontend shenanigans and access your CMS directly.

One awesome thing about Siteground is that they offer their own custom cPanel – Site Tools – designed for hosting newbies who haven’t seen a lot of backend:

Siteground Site Tools still looks vaguely familiar so if you’re a die-hard cPanel fan, you’ll still enjoy using it.

A2Hosting Ease of use

A2Hosting’s UI plays with a lot of green and orange and I like it. Without needing to scroll down, you can see the hosting categories grouped on top and can contact their live chat or place a call right away:

A2Hosting’s user dashboard is one of the best looking I have seen and places strong emphasis on the host’s support features:

A2Hosting also uses a modern version of the traditional cPanel and it’s just login away from your main dashboard:

For old timers, the cPanel will feel right at home but it may be slightly intimidating for hosting newbies or no-code audiences.

And the Winner Is… Siteground

A2Hosting has an intuitive user interface and dashboard that looks better overall, but Siteground’s custom cPanel is very convenient to use for just about anyone.

Round 6: Security – Which Platform is More Secure?

Siteground Security

Siteground offers all the security essentials out-of-the-box including a free SSL certificate, DDoS attack protection, and daily backups on all its plans to keep your data safe. You get a malware scanner and all plans on the hosting provider are CloudFlare-compatible.

I couldn’t find any information on Siteground’s compatibility with SiteLock Security. The host also provides access to free WAF plugins to add an extra layer of security.

A2Hosting Security

A2Hosting also gives you a free SSL on all of their plans, DDoS protection, and has a built-in firewall that’s impressive. You get a malware scanner that runs periodic checks to ensure your website’s integrity and automatic daily backups on most plans but not on the most basic plan which sucks.

A2Hosting is also CloudFlare compatible and allows you to activate Brute Force Defense, meaning extra security. For SiteLock, I also couldn’t find any information on their compatibility but A2Hosting is compatible with one of SiteLock’s products Patchman that prevents your website from being hacked and automatically quarantines affected files within 24 hours.

And the Winner Is… A2Hosting

A2Hosting provides more security features out-of-the-box on its basic plans than Siteground plus it has a workaround for SiteLock.

Round 7: Server locations

You want your host to have as many servers and data centers globally as possible. This will make your website load quickly and also reduce the impact of any security breaches if they happen.

Siteground Server location 

Siteground has data centers in four continents across:

• USA – Ashburn, Council Bluffs, Dallas, Los Angeles
• Europe – London, Madrid, Eemshaven, Frankfurt
• Australia – Sydney
• Asia – Singapore

Siteground also offers CDN services to help spread your website footprint to:

• Ashburn (Virginia, US)
• Council Bluffs (Iowa, US)
• Dallas (Texas, US)
• Los Angeles (California, US)
• Moncks Corner (South Carolina, US)
• The Dalles (Oregon, US)
• London (UK)
• Madrid (Spain)
• Eemshaven (Netherlands)
• Frankfurt (Germany)
• Hamina (Finland)
• Warsaw (Poland)
• Sydney (Australia)
• Tokyo (Japan)
• Singapore (Singapore)
• Sao Paulo (Brazil, South America)

Siteground also boasts a renewable energy match for its green data centers – i.e all the energy consumed is matched with a renewable source for sustainability.

A2Hosting Server location

A2Hosting has servers located in data centers in:

• USA (Michigan)
• USA (Arizona)
• Europe (Amsterdam)
• Asia (Singapore)

And through its SwiftServer platform, the host provides specialized hosting packages by server location across 35 countries:

And the Winner Is… Siteground

Siteground has more servers and more data centers across the globe than A2Hosting. Plus, its renewable energy match policy makes it the greener host, in a world where energy concerns are rising.

Siteground vs A2Hosting: Final recommendations

When to Choose Siteground?

Siteground is one of the best hosting providers in the world for good reason. Choose Siteground for your hosting needs if:

• You want cloud hosting packages
• You are new to hosting and don’t know how to use the cPanel
• You want the best support
• You want a wider server footprint
• You are green-earth conscious

Go for A2Hosting if you:  

A2Hosting wins this matchup and is best for you if:

• You want VPS hosting
• You want the most affordable hosting packages
• You want the most storage
• You are a large corporation that needs dedicated resources
• You want to resell your hosting plans
• You are a fan of the traditional cPanel