Posted in: Blog

BlueHost vs A2 Hosting vs CloudWays: 2022 Ultimate Comparison

a2hosting bluehostcloudways

BlueHost vs A2 Hosting vs CloudWays Which one should I choose?

I have clients who use all three of the hosting companies you mention so I can answer your specific question and then offer my recommendation.

Cloudways :

With Cloudways you can have a very powerful, inexpensive virtual private server setup for you. You also get a control panel that takes a *little* bit of getting used to if you want to do fine tuning but to a beginner it’s no more complicated to learn than the older cPanel interface. A basic Cloudways account can cost as little as $10/month. They have an excellent knowledge base but not so much live support.

I’ve never needed to contact Cloudways for a client once the site is setup and running. Cloudways gives you unlimited free Let’sEncrypt SSL certificates. They’re easy to find and install.

A2Hosting:

A2Hosting  used to be very good hosting with excellent support. It was pretty inexpensive too. Signup is probably the most complicated, because while it’s nice to have so many options it’s pretty daunting if you don’t know you can accept almost all the defaults. (I used to send clients a 13-step signup cheat sheet!) Over time A2Hosting support has slowed down considerably, and in my subjective experience the hosting performance has slowed down a bit. Their interface last time I checked (a few months ago) was the standard cPanel.

I’ve rarely needed to contact A2Hosting after setting up a client’s site but when I’ve needed troubleshooting for a later server issue it has sometimes taken a day or more to get a satisfactory answer.

You can get quite good performance with A2’s middle-tier “Drive” or “TurboBoost” packages, though I wouldn’t say you get better performance than with a $10 Cloudways package.

A2Host gives you unlimited free Let’sEncrypt SSL certificates. They’re easy to find and install.

 

BlueHost:

Dollar for dollar I don’t know if BlueHost has ever been exactly good value. Unlike the other two web hosting they have support people you can call or access via chat. But then in my experience I always have to make at least one contact with their support people per client. I’m not sure why but BlueHost seems to change their back-end interface often enough that on at least three occasions in the last three years the support person has paused and said something like “they just changed how this works, hold on a minute.”

You have to fish around after you log in but eventually (by clicking “Advanced,” in a sidebar at the moment anyway) you can find the cPanel interface for control your web hosting.

Based on historical experience of moving clients from BlueHost to both A2Hosting and Cloudways, BlueHost’s performance for the exact same WordPress site is way lower than A2Hosting or Cloudways.

BlueHost makes it surprisingly difficult to add or change their non-Let’sEncrypt SSL certificates. You’re only allowed one free certificate so if you have multiple sites on an account you have to start paying them.

Based on my experience my answer to your question would almost certainly be Cloudways first, followed by A2Hosting. Unless and until they get their acts together on performance, price-for-performance, ease of interface, and support I wouldn’t recommend Bluehost.

 

I have used all three extensively, as well as most other major hosting solutions, and your review matches up with my experience pretty well. A2 used to be great but they dropped off a cliff. BlueHost has always been a nightmare, and I’m in love with Vultr via cloudways .

 

I am with cloudways for like 4-5 years now. I am satisfied. As in every other case, it has the up and downs. But I am happy with them. I can help you either here or in private if you have any question about it.

I use MDDhosting for lightspeed shared, and Nestify (AWS ) for VPS. Both are small, have great service, and shockingly good prices. Nestify runs on AWS (Amazon cloud) and only $9/month for unlimited visitors, unlimited sites,10 GB SSD Storage, 1 CPUs 2 GB Ram and free migration. You can try them out for a week no charge. Backups are done daily, and the restores are seamless… I just did one 3 minutes ago.

What criteria do you have? If you are trying to save money Bluehost or A2 hosting maybe the best choice. Cloudways are more for people who need faster performance.

Before that, I think you might need to know the differences between Shared hosting, VPS, Cloud Computing and control panels.

Read more from reddit:

Hostinger! The best! I use hostinger share for 6 years and 2 months early i paid for a dedicated account for 100gb. For 4 years. 300euro + extre services.

 

Finally, go with a2hosting for your next web development project will be best choice to your website.