FastComet Vs A2 Hosting – Which is Good in 2021?
FastComet and A2 Hosting have largely proved themselves as two of the most promising Web Hosting companies over the years. Here is our comparison of FastComet Vs A2 Hosting, and we can say FastComet is the clear winner.
To test FastComet and A2 Hosting, I bought a test account and monitoring the response time and uptime for the last six months. I also talk about other features which will be vital to make the best option.
Contents
FastComet vs. A2 Hosting: Overview
A2 Hosting started back in 2001, and since then, it has done an excellent job by providing users with technologically advanced yet friendly Web Hosting solutions. Also, it is one of those Web Hosting providers that offer an extremely blazing fast speed.
As far as FastComet is concerned, it has been around for the past 9 years now, and all along this journey, it has been largely able to prove its expertise and transparency in the industry.
FastComet Vs. A2 Hosting: Performance
Server Response Time
Performance is an extremely crucial factor in hosting. However, performance has many aspects, and you need to carefully test each of these aspects for good clarity on performance. I tested the server response time of the two hosting companies. To do this, I hosted a site on each of the two platforms.
When I tested the server response time of the two sites, my FastComet site recorded an average server response time of 322 ms, while my A2 site recorded an average server response time of 353 ms. Hence, FastComet has a comparatively better server response time and speed than A2 Hosting.
Uptime
Uptime is another very important aspect of performance. As per the uptime tests I performed on my FastComet and A2 Hosting sites, my FastComet site recorded an uptime of 99.99% with 2 outages and downtime of 2 minutes and 34 seconds. My A2 site recorded an uptime of 99.99% with 2 outages and 3 minutes of downtime.
Hence, there is very little difference between the two services in terms of uptime. If we see it from the downtime duration perspective, FastComet is slightly better than A2 Hosting. Having said that, you can rely on both FastComet and A2 Hosting for uptime.
Load Testing
It is also equally important to finding out how well the hosting services can manage high traffic. To do that, I performed load testing on my sites by sending 500 and 1000 concurrent traffic to the sites.
According to the last load testing results, my FastComet site recorded 45 ms in Clients Per Test ( 1000 Clients in 1 Minute) while my A2 Hosting site recorded 26 ms in Clients Per Test ( 1000 Clients in 1 Minute). Hence, A2 is certainly more reliable than FastComet when it comes to loading handling.
However, going by the FastComet load testing results, it won't be wrong to say that FastComet also has a decent load handling capacity.
Global TTFB
Finding the Global TTFB of the hosting services is extremely important for sites that rely on multiple global locations for traffic. I tested the Global TTFB of the two services by pinging my sites hosted with them from ten global locations.
According to my last Global TTFB test results, my FastComet site recorded an average Global TTFB of 371.84 ms with decent TTFB in all ten locations. My A2 site recorded an average Global TTFB of 418.08 ms with good TTFB across all the ten Global locations.
Even though FastComet's TTFB is slightly better than A2 Hosting, both have pretty reliable TTFB, and sites that need to target multiple locations can get a lot of help from these hosting platforms for sure.
Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals test is a very crucial test of performance since the kind of user experience a site can deliver at the most is directly dependent on this factor. Most importantly, user experience has become an important ranking factor, and that's why you can't afford to overlook this factor at any cost.
As per the last Core Web Vitals test performed on my sites hosted with these two services, my FastComet site recorded a ‘Largest Contentful Paint' of 0.690s, a ‘Total Blocking Time' of 0.021s, and a ‘Cumulative Layout Shift' of 0 while my A2 site recorded a ‘Largest Contentful Paint' of 0.703s, a ‘Total Blocking Time' of 0.012s, and a ‘Cumulative Layout Shift' of 0.
Now, what is noteworthy here is the Total Blocking Time, and A2 has lesser Total Blocking Time than FastComet. However, there is no denying the fact that both FastComet and A2 have good Core Web Vitals.
FastComet vs. A2 Hosting: Support
I contacted FastComet Support many times, and no matter how big or small my query is, I have always found them to be pretty fast and friendly in handling it. This holds for both live chat and tickets.
A2 Hosting support or the Guru Crew support may not be as fast as the FastComet Support. Still, it certainly has exceptionally knowledgeable executives to assist you with your every query or technical difficulty. Just like FastComet, A2 Hosting offers support via live chat, phone, and tickets.
Winner: FastComet
FastComet vs. A2 Hosting: Data center locations
FastComet provides users with 11 data center locations to choose from. It includes Chicago, Dallas, and Newark in the USA, Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam in Europe, and Singapore and Tokyo in Asia.
However, A2 Hosting has only 3 data center locations to offer Michigan in the USA, Amsterdam in Europe, and Singapore in Asia.
Winner: FastComet
FastComet vs. A2 Hosting: Pricing
When it comes to pricing, FastComet allows you to start for as low as $3.95/mo, while A2 Hosting lets you start for as low as $3.92/mo. The difference gets more apparent when it comes to renewals. You can check our FastComet Coupon to enjoy the latest discounts on the host.
While FastComet comes high with renewal price, the renewals in A2 Hosting is comparatively cheaper for unlimited sites hosting plans.
While FastComet unlimited website hosting plan has $14.99/month as renewals, A2 charges less as $9.99/month.
FastComet renewal charges are $9.95, $14.95, $19.95 respectively.
Winner: A2 Hosting
Conclusion
As far as the service quality is concerned, both the Web Hosting companies are undoubtedly brilliant. However, the actual difference can be seen in terms of pricing.
A2 Hosting is pretty fastest yet comes with an affordable price tag. Apart from it, I love A2 Hosting free Cloudflare Railgun optimization on their Turbo plan.