You may have noticed that we offer both Windows and Linux Hosting service options. Which one of these options should you choose depending on your computer's operating system? You may be relieved to learn that It actually doesn't matter what your computer's operating system is. You can choose Linux or Windows Hosting whether your computer's operating system is Windows, Linux, Mac or another option. Your hosting account's operating system is NOT dependent on your computer's operating system. That means if you a Windows operating system for your computer, you can choose either Windows or Linux Hosting for your A2 Hosting account.

Now that you know that you can host with either Linux or Windows regardless of what your computer's operating system is, you may now be wondering which OS option you should choose for your A2 Hosting account. What we recommend doing is looking at the requirements for the software you are looking to run on your hosted account. This is one of the best ways to decide which operating system you should select.

• If the software you want to use requires solutions like PHP, MySQL, Apache, Perl, Python or PostgreSQL, you'll most likely want to choose Linux for your A2 Hosting account operating system.
• If the software you want to use requires solutions like ASP, ASP.NET, MSSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Windows Server or .NET Core, you'll want to choose our Windows Hosting selection.

Whether this is the first site you've ever hosted or the one-hundredth site, our website hosting services are loaded with tools to make your experience as easy as possible.Your first step to get started with A2 Hosting is to choose your hosting solution and your domain name. If this is your first site or if you are a beginner, we recommend our Shared Hosting solutions. These are affordable plans loaded with intuitive tools to help you get your site up and off the ground quickly and easily. Essentially Shared Hosting is a perfect way for you to dabble with our web hosting services at an extremely affordable price. Visit our Service Comparison page to see a complete breakdown of our Shared, Reseller, VPS and Dedicated server options. We also offer a comprehensive Getting Started guide to help you along the way!

One of the reasons that we're confident you'll have an easy time hosting your site with us is because your A2 Hosting account includes a user-friendly control panel. Your control panel provides you with all the tools you'll need to manage your software, websites, email, databases and more. You'll receive an email providing you with login details explaining how to access your control panel. If you sign up for a Linux Hosting account, you'll receive access to the cPanel control panel and if you choose one of our Windows web hosting services, you will receive access to the Plesk control panel. Both of these control panels are graphical and extremely intuitive!

The next step to getting started is selecting what software you would like to use to power your site. Are you running a content-based site? You may want to consider using a CMS like WordPress, Drupal or Joomla. Are you looking to run a forum site? phpBB, SMF and MyBB are all popular forum software options. You'll want to install the software you want to use onto your hosted account. Don't worry! This may sound complicated, but we make it easy at A2 Hosting with our 1-click software installers! cPanel users get access to the 1-click software installer Softaculous in their control panel while Plesk users get the Applications option.Use these tools to install software solutions to your account in a matter of minutes! Best of all, you'll have hundreds of software options to choose to add to your account from within these 1-click installers!

Of course if you still have questions about getting started, the A2 Hosting Guru Crew Support team is standing by to help! Just contact us via live chat, email us or call us. We're available around the click to help!

We won't give away all the ingredients to our special speed recipe, but we'll show you a few reasons why we're faster than competing hosts. All of our speed optimized solutions make up our SwiftServer platform. Our SwiftServers are available on each of our hosting solutions. Here are a few of the features that make up our SwiftServers:

• What really makes our service faster is our Turbo Servers option featuring up to 20X faster page loads compared to competing solutions. Our Turbo Servers feature a drop-in, speed enhanced Apache alternative, more resources per user and less users per server. Our Turbo Servers also offer a number of caching solutions that can be easily configured in our exclusive A2 Optimized tool. Caching solutions improve page performance by storing key pieces of your website in memory, instead of having to load each portion of your page each time your site is accessed.
• Originally, our SwiftServers started with Solid State Drives (SSDs). We were actually one of the very first hosts to offer SSDs. Unlike old fashioned hard disk drives (HDDs) that use old fashioned spinning disks to access information, SSDs use flash technology to improve pages loads by up to 300%. Each of our Web Hosting solutions include SSDs for free!

Do you still have a question about our web hosting services? We have an answer! Just visit our Contact page for assistance now!

After contacting our esteemed support team, appropriately named the Guru Crew, you'll see that the quality of support we offer is just one of the clear advantages of choosing A2 Hosting for your web host needs! Best of all, our support is available 24/7/365!

We have carefully handpicked our support team selecting only the best and brightest brains in our industry. That way users like you get only fast, knowledgeable and accurate answers to your questions. Whether you prefer to speak via live chat, via email or on the phone, we've got you covered! If you have a question pertaining to a software or another solution that we're unfamiliar with, rest assured that we'll do our due diligence to research that solution for you. We'll quickly let you know how that solution can be supported by our server and make it available to you if possible.

Are you a user who prefers to find answers to your own website hosting questions? We've got you covered there as well! That's because we have a Knowledgebase loaded with answers to the most commonly asked questions (and not so common questions) by our customers. We've also spent countless hours loading our knowledgebase with helpful, step-by-step guides complete with screenshots and images to help you along the way. It's going to be a truly invaluable resource for you!