After 3 years of testing, let’s compare A2 Hosting vs DreamHost and find out how they’ve performed so far…
A2 Hosting vs DreamHost – Testing Method
- Prior to testing, I have setup identical content on all 8 Live Test Sites
- Each week over 80,000 speed & uptime tests are run using independent tools, GTmetrix & Pingdom
- Test results below are from 04 Apr 2016 to 22 Dec 2018
Test #1: Speed
The GTmetrix Speed Test checks how long it takes for a website to fully load using a desktop internet browser. This test is then repeated every hour throughout the week (1,340 times).
- A2 Hosting’s Speed was impressive in 2016, and they typically found themselves in the top 2 of our 8 hosts. Unfortunately, their extremely poor uptime performance led to their removal on 28th Jan 2017. Read below for more details.
- DreamHost has been consistently slow, but were still competitive in 2016. This situation worsened considerably in 2017, in particular the last 9 weeks, where their average speed dropped to 7.15s. As a result of these unacceptably slow times, DreamHost was replaced by Lightning Base on 23 Apr 2017.
- A2 is currently 9th and DreamHost is 10th in our Speed Rankings.
H1 2017 Results
Test #2: Uptime
The Pingdom Uptime Test confirms that the website is actually accessible to visitors. This test is then repeated every minute throughout the week (80,640 times).
- A2 Hosting performed extremely poorly when it came to Uptime. This was especially evident in Q4 2016, where downtime was a whopping 575 minutes, which is almost 10 hours. This continued into 2017, with a further 939 minutes downtime in just 3 weeks. This unbelievably bad performance resulted in A2 Hosting being replaced by Namecheap for future testing.
- DreamHost’s uptime was acceptable during 2016, finishing mid-table. However, 2017 has been really disappointing, with the last 9 weeks resulting in a downtime of 476 minutes.
- DreamHost is currently 9th while A2 is 10th in our Uptime Rankings.
View the Weekly Uptime Tests
A2 Hosting vs DreamHost – Overall Test Results
The Overall Ranking accumulates the results from the speed & uptime tests to determine the #1 Host.
- Even though A2 Hosting were able to perform impressively when it came to loading times in 2016, their weakness was always poor uptime. This became a serious problem in Q4 2016 and continued into 2017. Unfortunately, this led to A2 being unable to compete with our other hosts, and ultimately requiring them to be replaced.
- After being competitive in 2016, and even showing signs of improvement, DreamHost has dramatically fallen off the cliff in the last 9 weeks of 2017. With no actionable solutions coming through from their support team, DreamHost needed to be replaced as they were not able to compete with our other hosts in both speed and uptime.
- DreamHost is currently 9th, while A2 is 10th in our Overall Rankings.
Hi, I'm Clint!
