A2 Hosting vs FatCow – Which Web Hosting is Better?

There are lots of web hosting providers out there. 

So much so, it can be a bit of a hassle to pick just one. 

This is why, to help you, we’re comparing web hosts side by side. 

And today, we’re going to look at an A2 Hosting vs FatCow comparison review.

As you can see, both web hosts offer great features in their most basic Shared Hosting plans. But we want to find out which is the better one for YOU. 

So let’s get comparing! 

A2 Hosting vs FatCow - A Side By Side Comparison 

Since A2 Hosting and FatCow offer many services, we’ll keep this comparison simple by comparing the most basic Shared Hosting plans.

We’re going to compare the two with these categories: 

• Uptime and performance
• Website building
• Migration services
• Products and Features
• Security
• Pricing
• Customer Support

May the best web host win! 

Uptime and Performance

Since you’ve been looking for a web host, you’ve probably heard of the word ‘uptime’. Uptime is simply the rate at which your site is accessible. In other words, it’s when your site is up and running. 

To consider a web host reliable, it should have an average uptime of at least 99.9%. 

For A2 Hosting, this seems to be an easy feat as their uptime average is at 100% (August 2023).

A2 Hosting also offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee, which lets you receive credits if the web host falls short of this SLA. 

As for FatCow, its uptime average is at 99.90% (August 2023).

So you can trust that both A2 Hosting and FatCow are reliable providers. 

We only wish that the same excellent results would continue with site speed, but unfortunately, FatCow needs a lot of improvement in this area. 

At the moment, FatCow’s average speed is at 1,426 ms (August 2023).

A2 Hosting, on the other hand, has speeds as impressive as its uptime rate. Today, your site can load as fast as 288 ms (August 2023) with A2 Hosting. 

Website Building

We all love FREE site builders. 

It’s convenient, economical, and exciting to use. 

Sadly, A2 Hosting doesn’t offer this. Instead, its site builder, A2 SiteBuilder, comes as an add-on. The simplest plan starts at $2.99 a month. 

Now, don’t be fooled by the cheapness of it. This basic plan only lets you do one web page and lets you choose from just 10 templates. 

So if you want more features, you have to get the more expensive site builder plans. 

Then, you have FatCow, which comes with a FREE drag-and-drop site builder. It also has dozens of templates to choose from, accompanied by a photo library. 

You can also use their website builder to create an eCommerce-ready website. 

But despite all that, both A2 Hosting and FatCow also have a 1-click WordPress installation, in case you prefer to use that. 

Migration Services

Transferring your website to your new web host? 

Then it’s a big PLUS if your new web host offers to migrate your website for you. 

Thankfully, both A2 Hosting and FatCow offer FREE site migration services to their new users. 

Products and Features

What is inside A2 Hosting and FatCow’s basic Shared Hosting plans? Let’s compare them.

FatCow Shared Hosting only has one plan. So if you’ll notice, there are a lot of unlimited features available.

This makes it an ideal plan for small and medium businesses. This is also a good choice for those who are slowly transitioning to bigger teams. 

What we especially love in FatCow’s plan is that you already get free backups and unlimited storage space. 

A2 Hosting’s basic plan is not bad either. Aside from the absence of a free site builder, the basic plan has all the essentials and enough storage space for small businesses. 

Security

Security features may be a difficult topic to talk about, so let’s keep it simple. 

As a site owner, the feature you will love to have is an SSL certificate, firewall protection, and malware scanning. 

Both web hosts have FREE SSL certificates in all of their plans, so that’s a big plus. 

As for firewall protection and malware scanning, only A2 Hosting offers these services for free in its Shared Hosting plans. 

For FatCow, however, you get spam filtering in your mailboxes. 

Pricing

In the table above, you might have noticed the huge difference in prices between the basic plans of A2 Hosting and FatCow. 

In this section, we’ll also look at the other services and how much they might cost you.

If we’re only looking at the most basic Shared Hosting plans, A2 Hosting is definitely more affordable. 

However, this might not be the case if you look at the other plans and services. The edge of FatCow is that it generally has more affordable plans. It has fewer add-ons, too. 

Customer Support

And finally, we go to customer support. Customer support is one of the most important features simply because you never know when your site encounters a problem or when questions pop up. 

A2 Hosting and FatCow have amazing customer support teams with live chat and phone lines available 24/7. 

A2 Hosting vs FatCow - The Verdict

Winners board:

Which is the better web host?

From our winner’s board, we see that A2 Hosting has more wins. 

It excels in uptime and performance, security, as well as pricing. 

However, that’s not to say that FatCow isn’t great, too. 

As we saw, it offers a lot of freebies in its basic Shared Hosting plan. Plus, you can always count on them for good customer support. 

So it’s up to YOU to decide which is the better one.