Best SSD Shared Web Hosting
Recently, we have worked out the best SSD shared hosting provider in the market. The winner goes to A2Hosting. We explain the result in below on the company for price, features, uptime, and speed.
In addition, we have introduced some alternative options to A2Hosting, including BlueHost and InMotion.
We have been closely monitoring a website hosted on the shared platform for over six months. At the same time, we have read a lot of comments from customers.
What Is SSD Shared Web Hosting?
Shared web hosting can meet the basic needs of most webmasters. SSDs, or solid state drives, have a much faster read/write speed than traditional hard drives. They are often set at a high pricing level, adding a financial burden to some budget. But on the market, some web hosts provide SSD drives for free. So what you are looking for is shared web hosting which comes with free SSD drives.
With the purchase of SSD shared web hosting service, your website is capable of delivering content to visitors in a faster way. In detail, servers featured with SSD drives will 300x load each web page. After all, it takes HDDs some time to locate the needed information.
Speed is of great importance because visitors often wait for each page for no more than 3 seconds. Especially, eCommerce websites will have a higher conversion rate with the shorter load page time.
Tips to Choose SSD Shared Web Hosting
There is a great possibility that you have no idea where to go. On the market are a lot of SSD shared web hosting providers. In fact, the below tips are crucial for you to make the right choice.
- The hosting fees are not a burden to your budget. Check whether there are hidden fees and whether the regular prices are reasonable.
- A good refund policy will give you the faith to have a try because you have no worry of money security.
- Rich server resources and needed features should be included inside the hosting solutions.
- The easy hosting service should be guaranteed with a helpful website builder and control panel. For example, cPanel will make it easy to make website management.
- Technical support should be available 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. And you have the freedom to choose how to ask for help. In particular, your hosting provider should give real-time options, for example, chat and phone.
- For the sake of SEO rankings, there is the need to get real statistics about the hosting environment from a monitoring tool. Your hosting provider should have good uptime and speed records.
- Take a close look at the industry reputation and take real users’ feedbacks for reference.
Obviously, it costs you much time and energy to find out the truth. Thus our editors take over the tasks, listing out the top SSD shared hosting providers on the basis of the above tips. The first choice should be A2Hosting now that you care much about speed.
In addition to SSD drives, free CDN service is still on the A2Hosting feature list. Besides, more add-on services for speed are available for you to achieve higher performance. Another advantage of using A2Hosting is the anytime refund policy which consists of a full refund one and a pro-rated refund one. The unused service will be refunded when you cancel your account after 30 days.
OS: Windows or Linux?
To put it simply, the operating system should be according to your previous experience and detailed requirements. In most cases, it is advisable to opt for the Linux operating system. If there is a need for Microsoft technologies and the .NET framework, Windows operating system is the only choice for you to better run your website. A2Hosting gives you the option to choose your operating system: either Linux or Windows.
Plan & Price
A2Hosting has released 3 Linux shared web hosting plans, which is highly recommended by numerous users because SSD is integrated.
Regularly, the plan starts at $7.99/mo.
For new customers desiring a hassle-free purchase, the company ensures to give back all their money back if customers are not satisfied with the service. Besides, both credit cards and PayPal are acceptable.
Hosting Speed & Uptime
Since the hosting is featured with SSD, customers are well ensured with the robust hosting environment. First, SSD has no moving mechanical components, meaning that it contains no spinning disks and movable write heads that included by traditional HDD or floppy disks. Second, SSDs are more resistant to physical shock and perform more input/output operations per second with instant access time.
Aside from the powerful function of the device, the company makes sure that customers are able to experience a 300% faster page loading speed than that of other competitors. This web host achieves this using the self-developed fine-tuned SwiftServers platform. Note that this platform is designed with no server overcrowding, 10 Gb/s redundant network, instant account activation and two world-class data centers located in Southfield, Michigan and Reykjavik, Iceland.
Meanwhile, the uptime we have tested in the past 30 days is also very satisfying, and the success comes from the heavy investment in optimizing and maintaining network infrastructure, 24×7 constant server and network monitoring by technicians, dozens of redundant power supplies like diesel generators and UPS.
Features
Many unlimited features are provided containing RAID-10 storage, monthly data transfer, hosted domains, email accounts, MySQL databases and PostgreSQL. In addition, many developer-friendly ones are listed below.
- SSH access, Psync & shared SSL certificate.
- Pre-installed phpMyAdmin & phpMyAdmin.
- Ruby on Rails 1.8 via mod_passenger.
- PHP 5.4 – 7.2, Aphache 2.2, Perl 5.10, Ruby 1.8 & Python 3.2.
As for the control panel, the host adopts cPanel as a control panel integrated with a 1-click script installer for a quick setup of most of the popular applications such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, CubeCart and so on.
Another Three Alternative Options
The alternative hosting providers listed in below are all hand-picked by our professional editors. The result is based on the cost-effectiveness, support service, industry reputation, basic server infrastructure, and reliability. All of these three options are top-rated companies that do a much better job than most of their competitors. They are InMotion Hosting, BlueHost and WebHostingHub.
InMotion Hosting
InMotion Hosting is a CNET verified web host that includes SSD into the hosting packages for free. With the A+ Rating awarded by Better Business Bureaus, this company has been trusted by millions of customers and dozens of organizations around the world.
There are three packages included in InMotion web hosting solution, each of which provides customers with rich features at an affordable price. Customers can enjoy the user-friendly site builder, hundreds of free applications, automatic script installer, popular cPanel control panel, SSH, Ruby, Perl, and the latest PHP and MySQL. Also, all of the three packages promise an unlimited amount of disk storage and monthly bandwidth.
InMotion has two data centers that are located at Los Angeles and Virginia respectively, each of which establishes a solid partnership with Level 3 and nLayer, uses 10 gig Ethernet connection, takes advantage of top-rated network via Brocade, and guarantees power redundancy. Besides, all the web servers located at the two spaces are all of the high quality.
In addition to the utilization of SSD, this company also makes use of a smart routing technology named as Max Speed Zone. If customers and their visitors are within these special zones, the webpage loading speed of their sites can be super-fast. As monitored, this company can achieve no downtime and a short server response time of 237ms in the real world.
BlueHost
This is a trust-worthy web host that concentrates on offering a super-blazing hosting package for customers.
The hosting packages offered by this company include a long list of features that are all needed by customers to better build and manage a website. For instance, it allows unlimited domains, email address, unlimited storage and transfer, 1-click installer, advanced cPanel, up to $200 credits for Google AdWords, and many more.
BlueHost offers amazing technical support that is available round-the-clock. Customers can get the support service by starting a chart, sending them an email, and opening the ticket. All the support staffs are professional and can offer the best resolutions within the shortest time.
WebHostingHub
This is another quality and reliable SSD hosting that has been serving for millions of customers worldwide with a good customer satisfaction level.
Although this company sets a low rate for customers, it does not mean that the hosting service is of low quality. The customer service is highly awarded by customers for they can get the assistance at any time they need via hotline, real-time conversation, and email. In addition, the hosting packages include dozens of features that are all useful and competitive. These include the free domain name, CloudFlare CDN, Softaculous, advertising voucher, cPanel control panel, and many more.
WebHostingHub utilizes the industry-standard data centers. As coming with the complete power redundancy, fast and stable network, Tier 1 bandwidth providers, security systems, and 24/7 monitoring, these centers can ensure a smooth and uninterrupted working for all the web servers featuring quality components and proper configurations.
Why Choose SSD?
SSD can be viewed as an oversized and more complicated USB memory stick that stores information and data in the microchip. With it, you can get several benefits that edge over the traditional mechanical disks. In the following, we have listed some benefits as why you’d better choose SSD.
Long Life Expectancy
It is true that SSD is expensive, but it is surely worth the money due to its long life expectancy of more than 10 years. And for the normal mechanical drives, their life span is around 3 to 5 years. In this case, you do not need to consider the refresh practice after 3 years and to cool the machine using ice water after 5 years.
Better Performance
SSD does not have the moving parts, so it achieves faster seek and access times than that of its mechanical counterparts. In addition, it can perform very speed. This is great for reading and accessing some heavy workloads.
Small Physical Size
Generally, the standard disk is in the 2.5 inches or 3.5 inches formats. But SSD is much smaller with no more than 1.8 inches. The mini size takes little space on the physical machine.
Great Resistance to Shock
SSD has great resistance to drop, shock, bump and outside forces. To be frank, the sudden movement can result in devastating results on any mechanical drives. SSD, however, does not have the moving parts, so it can hardly be affected by some physical abuses.
Low Failure Rate
It is unavoidable for the failure of electrical and mechanical devices. But you can enjoy the much lower failure rate with SSD.
Protection for Power Loss
SSD generally relies on the power circuitry to monitor the voltage changes. If the voltage drops, a secondary hold-up circuit can work at once to ensure sufficient power for drives.