After 3 years of testing, let’s compare A2 Hosting vs GoDaddy and find out how they’ve performed so far…
A2 Hosting vs GoDaddy – 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.
- GoDaddy’s Speed was the fastest throughout 2016. They maintained similar speeds in 2017, but other hosts started to outperform them. And now the most recent results for GoDaddy in H2 2018 have plummeted to the slowest of all active hosts.
- GoDaddy is currently 5th and A2 is 9th in our Speed Rankings.
H2 2018 Results
H1 2018 Results
H2 2017 Results
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.
- GoDaddy have performed brilliantly when it comes to Uptime over the last 3 years. Unfortunately, there was 2 blemishes on their record, during Week 73 they incurred 96 minutes of downtime and Week 130 they had 47 minutes of downtime. To put this into perspective, across the other 138 weeks of testing, they have only had 107 minutes of downtime. Even with these poor weeks, they are still one of the better performers.
- GoDaddy is currently 3rd, while A2 is 10th in our Uptime Rankings.
View the Weekly Uptime Tests
A2 Hosting vs GoDaddy – 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.
- GoDaddy’s performance has was excellent across the board in 2016, however, across 2017 & H1 2018 there have been a couple of hosts that have overtaken them in both the speed and uptime departments. The biggest disappointment has been their H2 2018 speed, which has seen them fall well behind our top 2 hosts.
- GoDaddy is currently 3rd, while A2 is 10th in our Overall Rankings.
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