For the Love of Writing

Web Hosting is a service that allocates space and resources on a server specifically for the files that make up your website. It allows you to publish your website on the internet so your audience can access it and view it.  

That's a loaded description of Web Hosting. Let's look at a wider view of it.

Just as you need a physical location if you want to construct a store, building or house, you need a physical location for your website. All of the files (text, images, databases, videos etc.) that your website is made up of takes up space. While a domain name is essentially the address of your website, all of your website's files need to be stored somewhere. Web Hosting gives you that storage place.

Your files are stored on a server. A server is basically a very powerful computer that stores those files, but also is designed to deliver them to your visitor's web browser. The server where your website's files are stored is given an IP address. This IP address allows your visitors' computers to find your website to view it.

Shared hosting, also sometimes referred to as virtual hosting, is a web hosting environment where each individual hosting account is stored on a single web server. Think of a web server as a very powerful computer loaded with resources. Each of the accounts on the server shares the server's system resources. These resources include disk space, data transfer and server processing power.

Shared Hosting offers you an affordable solution to get your web site up and running because all the related server hosting costs are shared and spread out among the other users/accounts who are being hosted on that server.

There actually isn't a difference between the two. Rather Shared Hosting is a type of Web Hosting service.

Shared Hosting is an affordable solution perfect if you have a small blog, a personal website with minimal traffic or if you are launching a new website. At A2 Hosting, our Shared Hosting is user-friendly making it ideal for both new and experienced users, regardless of resource needs.

If Shared Hosting doesn't sound like it will fit your needs, A2 Hosting offers a wide range of other Web Hosting options including:

• Dedicated Server Hosting - This type of service is designed for websites with the most intensive resource needs. With Dedicated Hosting, only your files, websites, databases and email are hosted on the server. You don't share the server with any other users.
• VPS Hosting - A virtual private server (VPS) falls between Shared and Dedicated Servers. With a VPS, you are hosted on a server shared with other users. However, through the use of virtualization, your account is partitioned off from those other users.
• Reseller Hosting - This service is perfect if you're looking to start your own hosting company or are looking to host customer websites of your own. You can also sign up for Reseller Hosting if you'd like to have a separate cPanel control panel for each of your websites.

Web Hosting is absolutely essential If you would like to have a website published online for the world to see. A common thought is that registering a domain name is all that is needed to have your website online. Yes, a domain name is an important part of the puzzle as this is the address your visitors will type into their browsers to access your site. Web Hosting, on the other hand, is what makes it possible for your web site to be accessed by your visitors.

Web hosting is essentially the space you buy on a server that stores all the pieces that make up your websites. Once you your website is hosted by A2 Hosting, your visitors will be able to access your site by typing your domain name into their internet browser. Their computer is then connected with the server where your site is being hosted. The server then delivers the files that comprise your website to your visitors' browsers so they can view your site.

Shared hosting is a perfect platform if you have modest website needs. In particular, this means if you are just starting a website, have a small business website or just run a website as a hobby with minimal resource needs. Shared Web Hosting is also a popular option if you run a simple blog or forum. In short, Shared Hosting is ideal if you have small websites or are just getting started since it is a good learning environment to get your “ feet wet” with a minimal investment.

Shared Hosting is also a popular option if you don't quite know what sort of resources you need yet. You'll be happy to learn that A2 Hosting customers never pay account upgrade fees. That means you can upgrade to a larger Shared Hosting account or even move into a VPS or a Dedicated Server if you discover more server resources are needed than what is included with your Shared Hosting account. Of course, our 24/7/365 Guru Crew Support Team is standing by in case you have any questions about which web hosting plan you should choose.

Advantages of Shared Web Hosting

At A2 Hosting, a key advantage of our Shared Web Hosting packages is obviously speed. However, the other pros of these plans include affordability and convenience. Our shared web hosting environment means we can offer reasonably priced web hosting plans because our customers are not only sharing server resources, but they are also spreading the cost of hardware, server maintenance, security updates and other costs among the other customers hosted on the server. As an A2 Hosting shared web hosting customer, you also do not have to worry about server uptime and technical support because that's our job. That's our expertise!

Our Shared Web Hosting packages each come with large amounts of resources like disk space, data transfer and email accounts that are perfect for your personal and small business websites.  These are just a few of the reasons why we offer the best web hosting for small businesses and personal sites.

Possible Disadvantage of Shared Hosting

Please note that each account on a shared server does not feature root access. Users looking for administrative level access to their server should consider using our VPS Hosting or Dedicated Server plans. Additionally, customers who have eCommerce sites or existing websites that receive a large number of visitors each month may want to use VPS Hosting as well. Otherwise, you'll discover that A2 Hosting's Shared Hosting is an excellent solution for your website.

We highly recommend that you select our Turbo Web Hosting package. Our Turbo plans load sites up to 20X faster compared to competing web hosting solutions. Why does website speed and page load times matter? Your site speed has a direct impact on your conversion rate. In fact, studies have shown that a mere 1-second delay in page load speed drops your conversion rate by 7%. That's a lot! Our Turbo Servers can give you the boost your site needs!

Even if you don't sell anything on your site, you should care about your site's speed. After all, a slow page also negatively impacts your bounce rate and your visitor satisfaction rate. Not only that, but site speed is included in search engine ranking algorithms. That means your faster site can get a rank boost over competing slower sites.

While we recommend our Turbo servers to all users, we understand if you're not quite ready for that level of service. To decide between our lower or middle-tier hosting packages, you will want to consider what your resource needs are. In particular, you will want to consider how many websites you plan on hosting on your package. If you plan on hosting more than 1-site, our middle-tier web hosting package should suit your needs quite well. If you only plan on hosting a single website, our lower-tier web hosting solution would be a good option for you.

Remember that our Web Hosting solutions are completely scalable. That means we'll have a Web Hosting solution perfect for you even as your site and your resource needs grow. 

Are you still not quite sure which Web Hosting package you should select? Just contact our Guru Crew's Sales department. They'll be more than happy to direct you into the appropriate Web Hosting solution!

You'll have an easy time getting started with your new Web Hosting account! After you have purchased your A2 Hosting Web Hosting package, you will be sent a Welcome Email with login details to the My A2 Hosting control panel. My A2 Hosting includes everything you need to manage your Web Hosting account. You will find important information in your control panel including:

• Email Login Information
• FTP Connection Details
• SSH Connection Details
• cPanel Login Details (cPanel is the control panel you will use to manage your websites, files, email, databases and more. You will also find Softaculous in your cPanel control panel. Softaculous gives you the ability to install the web's most popular software to your web hosting account with 1-click. Install software like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Magento and more in a matter of seconds.

Publishing Your Website

To publish your web site's files so your audience can view it, upload the files to your account's public_html directory. You are able to update your web site files whenever you want to. However, your audience will not be able to view any files not included in the public_html directory (or within the subdirectory beneath public_html).

Configuring Your Domain Name

If you have a domain name that was not purchased from A2 Hosting that you would like to use with your A2 Hosting account, you will need to update that domain's nameservers (DNS). You won't have to do this if you bought your domain from A2 Hosting. It has already been done for you.

The nameservers and their IP addresses are listed in the Product Details of My A2 Hosting. The nameservers for your web hosting account are ns1.a2hosting.com, ns2.a2hosting.com, ns3.a2hosting.com, and ns4.a2hosting.com.

Requesting A Free Website Migration

Do you have an existing website that you would like to migrate to A2 Hosting? A2 Hosting will migrate it from your previous host for free! You can request your free website migration by completing this form.
 

At A2 Hosting, our motto is "Our Speed. Your Success." Those aren't just merely words but actually something we strive for each and every day. We really want you to succeed!

Why is site speed so important? Your visitor satisfaction rate, bounce rate and most importantly your conversion rate are all directly impacted by your page load speed. Each extra millisecond it takes your website to load has a negative impact on each of these critical metrics. There are a number of ways that you can ensure that your site loads quickly. That includes making sure that your software is up to date, using caching solutions and remove any website plugins that you're not using. However, one of the biggest factors that determine your page load speed is your host. A2 Hosting uses the best hardware, software and optimizations to ensure we offer the fastest Web Hosting. That means you get the fastest page loads speeds possible.

Do you have any Web Hosting service questions? You're in luck! Our amazing 24/7/365 support team fittingly named the Guru Crew is here to help. They're friendly, knowledgeable and are standing by ready to help! Just contact them via live chat, email or give us a call!

You may not be sure which plan to get started with. The good news is that our plans are completely scalable. That means that as your website grows, so can your hosting plan. Our team can help seamlessly move your sites and account into a higher resource Shared Hosting plan if you outgrow your existing plan. And if you happen to outgrow your Shared Hosting package, we'll even help move you into one of our VPS Hosting or Dedicated Server solutions. The good news is that you can stick with A2 Hosting for the entire live cycle of your website. We're excited to grow with you!

Get started now! You make amazing projects and need a Shared Hosting provider who can keep up. That's A2 Hosting! Trust us. We've been doing this since 2003. You're going to absolutely love our service! We're so confident of that fact, we offer an Money-Back Guarantee. That means you can you try us completely risk-free.  If you decide we're not that right host for you (which won't happen), we'll give you a hassle-free refund! What are you waiting for? Give both your site and business the boosts they deserve! Choose A2 Hosting!

We strive to be different than those other Shared Hosting providers. We're not some generic service. As you know, our goal each and every day is to be the fastest web hosting provider and offer tools that other hosts are simply unable to offer you. Below are just some of the speed enhanced features available on our SwiftServers, our exclusive speed-enhanced hosting platform. Every A2 Hosting customer, including you, is hosted on our SwiftServer platform! While we won't give away the entire recipe for our special speed sauce, here are a few ingredients that ensure blazing fast performance for your websites. 

• Turbo Server Option - If you really want to give your site an advantage over your competitors, you'll definitely want to consider hosting your sites on our Turbo Servers. Why? They feature up to 20X faster page loads compared to competing Web Hosting services. Now that's really fast! Just a few of the features that make our Turbo Servers perform so well are that they use a speed enhanced, drop-in Apache alternative, host fewer users on each server and every user has more resources allocated to their Web Hosting account. Our Turbo Servers also includes our exclusive A2 Optimized tool that makes caching a breeze. You can read more about this tool below:
  • A2 Optimized Tool - Not only do we offer caching for Memcached, OPcache and Turbo Cache on our Shared accounts so you get the fastest page load speeds, but our exclusive A2 Optimized tool lets you setup these solutions with just 1-click so you get the easiest experience as well! Those other web hosts either don't allow these caching solutions on their shared hosting servers or they are simply unable to. Not at A2 Hosting! We actually give you our exclusive tool to help you set up caching for your sites! How do these caching solutions make your site load faster? By storing key components of your website in memory for faster retrieval each time your site is accessed by one of your website visitors. This prevents every piece of your website from having to load for each of your visitors. Your site is instead more readily available because key pieces of your website (broken down further below) can load faster:
    • Memcached - Boosts the speed of your databases by keeping the most important pieces of your MySQL databases in memory for faster access when visiting your site.
    • Turbo Cache - Makes it possible to load all the HTML content of your site without even having to run PHP!
    • OPcache - Offers up to 50% faster PHP response times! 
• Solid State Drives (SSDs) - Did you know that A2 Hosting was one of the first hosts to offer solid-state drive web hosting? SSDs are included for free in our SwiftServer platform and feature up to 300% faster page loads compared to traditional hosting! Unlike those traditional hard disk drives that use spinning disks to access your data (think of a record player/turntable), Solid State Drives use flash technology to access its data. Flash technology is more compact, lighter and most importantly provides faster performance for your website.
• Choice Of Data Center Locations - While A2 Hosting is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States, we know that your visitors may not be. You want to host your website as close to your visitors as possible to reduce latency, or the amount of time it takes your site's data to reach your visitors. That's why we offer data center options located around the globe! You can choose to host your site in the data center located closest to your visitors. That means you get all the A2 Hosting speed features with the added benefit of reduced latency.
• Free Content Delivery Network - While you can choose your data center location at A2 Hosting so your site is hosted as close as possible to the majority of your website visitors, you still want to cater to the rest of your visitors if they don't live so close! That way ALL of your visitors can experience how fast your site loads. That's why we've also included a free content delivery network (CDN) with your Web Hosting account. Our CDN automatically routes your traffic through its smart global network to automatically optimize the delivery of your site. How does it work? The CDN features a number of data centers located across the world. The CDN is able to create the fastest, most efficient data/website-delivery route from these data centers to your audience.
• Anycast DNS - When typing in a domain name into a web browser, traditional DNS works by translating that domain name into the IP address where that website can be found. The computer is connected with the web host and the web site can be viewed once this IP address is located. The DNS record is located on a DNS server found in one location. For example, if you're located in the United Kingdom, but your visitor is located in the United States, it can take some time for that DNS server and your visitor's computer to communicate with each other. This can slow down how fast a web page loads. A2 Hosting uses Anycast DNS because that resolves this issue. Instead of just one DNS location, Anycast DNS copies your DNS record on our network of global servers. This means that your DNS record is much closer to your visitors and Anycast can direct visitors to a DNS server located more closely to them. In short, Anycast DNS is another A2 Hosting solution that can help your site load even faster for your visitors.

Right alongside awesome support and blazing fast server speeds is the need to have a web hosting provider that you can depend on. Depend on A2 Hosting! We're the best shared hosting provider! We understand that there's nothing more frustrating than server downtime. When your website is down, it means that your visitors can't read your content and most importantly they can't purchase from your site. It's a total loss of opportunity as well as a waste of your time and hard work. We understand! That's why we handpick our engineers and use only the very best hardware, networks, data centers, software and industry techniques to ensure our servers run at optimal performance. At the end of the day, we want you to sleep easy knowing you made the right decision choosing A2 Hosting for all of your web hosting needs. We want you to feel confident that your business is in our trusty hands. That's why your Web Hosting account will also include our 99.9% Uptime Commitment!

One of the tools not listed in the cPanel features above is something called Softaculous. Use Softaculous to install the web's most popular software to your account with 1-click. That includes some of the web's most used solutions including WordPress, Drupal and Joomla. With Softaculous, you won't have to worry about fumbling around with download files, uploading install files or having to hire a developer to help you install the software you want on your Web Hosting account. All you will have to do is log into cPanel and click the Softaculous icon. From there you'll see categories of solutions you can add to your account. These categories include blogs, content management systems, eCommerce carts, forums, wikis and so much more. You can also use the Softaculous search feature to find the exact software solution you want to use.

You'll even receive an email from Softaculous informing you when new versions of the software you've installed are available. You can log right into your cPanel account and update your software with a click of your mouse within the Softaculous interface. This will ensure that you have the most up to date features helping keep your site both secure and running at optimum performance.

Are you an experienced developer? You'll be happy to hear that we actually made a name for ourselves for being the "developer-friendly" web host. In fact, we were one of the very first hosts to offer PHP 5! Of course, technology (and PHP versions) have changed a lot since we started back in 2003. However, our dedicated commitment to loading your account with the very best web development tools has not! You get support for the very best versions of PHP, MySQL, Apache, Python and more as well as resources like free SSH access, version control software (like Git) and so much more.

 It doesn't matter if you have a Mac, Linux or Windows-based computer, you can choose our Linux Hosting regardless of your computer's operating system. Your Shared server will support the very best versions of Apache, PHP, MariaDB and many more! That way you know you can host your favorite software solutions on our servers!