A2 Hosting vs. Cloudways

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
A2 Hosting
Score 7.0 out of 10
N/A
A2 Hosting in Ann Arbor provides business website hosting, featuring free site migration, unlimited SSD, isolated dedicated servers, and related features.N/A
Cloudways
Score 9.6 out of 10
N/A
Cloudways, by DigitalOcean, offers a range of managed hosting solutions, including managed Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, Magento, and others, with a choice of infrastructure providers and media delivery via CloudwaysVPN, and CloudwaysBot notification system.
$10
per month
Pricing
A2 HostingCloudways
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Starting Price
$10.00
per month
Maximum Price
$274.33
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
A2 HostingCloudways
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup fee$25 per application
Additional DetailsCloudways offers 1 free migration to all customers. For any further migration needs the customer can use our free WordPress migration plugin and do it themselves. Or they can request paid migration services for any PHP based application, which start at $25 per application.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
A2 HostingCloudways
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
A2 HostingCloudways
Small Businesses
Flywheel
Flywheel
Score 9.9 out of 10
Flywheel
Flywheel
Score 9.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
WP Engine
WP Engine
Score 8.3 out of 10
WP Engine
WP Engine
Score 8.3 out of 10
Enterprises
AccuWebHosting.Com
AccuWebHosting.Com
Score 9.5 out of 10
Pantheon
Pantheon
Score 8.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
A2 HostingCloudways
Likelihood to Recommend
1.0
(2 ratings)
10.0
(5 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
1.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
1.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
1.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
1.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
1.0
(2 ratings)
9.7
(2 ratings)
Implementation Rating
1.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
1.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
A2 HostingCloudways
Likelihood to Recommend
A2 Hosting
Never would I recommend this company to anyone. [In my experience] they are total nightmares to deal with and depend on. You can't depend on them at all. Plus, [I feel that] they lie and manipulate the search queries based on lies (they do NOT have radio hosting yet they have ads saying that they do).
Read full review
DigitalOcean
When you dont know how to set up a cloud server technically, (The LAMP stack or the PHP settings etc) Cloudways comes handy. You can easily modify the server settings with one click.
Less Appropriate - If you want to save costs, go for direct cloud providers. Setting up technical stuff is a one time job.
Read full review
Pros
A2 Hosting
  • the hosting hardware they provide is decent when you consider the price
Read full review
DigitalOcean
  • Automatic Daily One Click Restore Backups
  • Integrated CDN
  • Easy & Intuitive Alternate Interface to cPanel and WHM
  • Very Affordable for High Specs
  • 24/7 Customer Support is Extremely Helpful
  • Serve & Application Management is a Breeze
  • Choose from Multiple Server Locations
Read full review
Cons
A2 Hosting
  • [In my experience] customer service is awful.
  • [From what I've seen] they don't care about clients.
  • [In my situation their] first reaction is always to blame it on the unmanaged factor.
Read full review
DigitalOcean
  • More flexible notifications
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
A2 Hosting
Never would I use this service. I canceled 7 accounts I believe so far. [In my opinion] it's a waste.
Read full review
DigitalOcean
No answers on this topic
Usability
A2 Hosting
[In my opinion] it barely works.
Read full review
DigitalOcean
They are constantly improving their dashboards and interface to make it easier to use and find the things that we use the most. It's a lot of features to pack in to one UI and they have done a great job of making it user friendly. Their layout is intuitive and easy to learn and is extremely granular. We are able to control every aspect of our websites and applications from an individual level from scaling, to cache, to DNS, security, WAF, and everything in between.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
A2 Hosting
they are only technically available but having someone say hello, i'm here to help, immediately is not real responsive if they actually never address the issue being reported. we don't contact support for the bland greeting, we are actually trying to solve a business process interruption
Read full review
DigitalOcean
No answers on this topic
Performance
A2 Hosting
They are only good if you never update your website and i mean never. Otherwise their main performance diffrentiator is turbo web hosting, their highest shared hosting plan. When caching is working it performs well reducing load times by half, but as soon as you add a new page to the site, the updates don't show up until you clear the cache manually from multiple locations (wordpress a2optimized plugin, cpanel etc..). As they make updates to the turbo hosting A2optimized plugin, they do not test them properly and do not handle customer feedback about them, instead they are in denial and try to immediately convince the customer there is no issue at all! the old developer joke when they don't want to fix feedback: it works on my machine!
Read full review
DigitalOcean
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
A2 Hosting
In my opinion they are unresponsive, rude, incompetent, and untrustworthy to boot.
Read full review
DigitalOcean
Technical support is just 2-3 clicks away and the Cloudways homepage and the operators are available almost 24/7. They also are able to answer any kind of question related to their services, whether economical or technical. I sometimes made mistakes while using their services and they have been keen to help me, and fixed my problems really fast.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
A2 Hosting
[In my experience] it was a mess from the start and created problems ever since day one.
Read full review
DigitalOcean
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
A2 Hosting
No answers on this topic
DigitalOcean
Whilst all the top hosting companies have good customer service. Hostinger is the winner here for me. SiteGround has fast servers, but fees increase significantly in year two. CloudWays has excellent support at a lower price than SiteGround. They win over the other two companies because they make it very simple to manage site hosting, specifically for VPS/cloud hosting. You do not need to be as technical as you would if you're a customer of Hostinger and SiteGround. So, in short, for a fast-growing website with 6k+ sessions per month (low WP maintenance experience), I'd choose Cloudways.
Read full review
Scalability
A2 Hosting
I believe they do not care about addressing failures when they occur. Starting out with a working service counts for nothing if you can't maintain it, fix issues when reported, and actually take the extra step to prevent them from happening again. You have to care about quality and customer service, and A2 couldn't care less
Read full review
DigitalOcean
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
A2 Hosting
  • [In my experience] they have upheaved my entire business many times by not having working servers.
  • [I feel like] they have inconvenienced us many hours with tech calls over stupid things.
  • [In my opinion] they have wasted so much time and man hours.
Read full review
DigitalOcean
  • We were able to reduce load on our main server.
  • By migrating social sentiment platform to cloudways, we were able to scale and run it effeciently.
  • It saved lot of time as well in terms of server management.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Cloudways Screenshots

Screenshot of Managed ServicesScreenshot of Team Management