A2 Hosting vs DreamPress (May 2024)

A2 Hosting and DreamHost are two established and proven web hosting companies offering many types of services including Shared and VPS hosting. While each host has made WordPress a priority with their shared hosting plans, they now both have their own managed WordPress hosting packages. In this comparison, we take a look at how A2 Hosting’s Managed WordPress fares against DreamHost’s DreamPress Optimized WordPress hosting.

A2 Hosting vs DreamPress Details

Category	A2 Hosting	DreamPress	Comments
Setup
Control Panel			Plesk
Data Centers
Website Speed
Security Features			A2 Hosting provides Free SSL and Perpetual Proactive Security.
Data Backup and Restore
Automatic Updates
Servers
Network			DreamPress provides Cloud Platform
WordPress Development			With A2 Hosting you get WordPress Toolkit for managing Multiple Websites.
SSL			Tie. Both provide free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates.
Hosting Features			With A2 Hosting you get Unlimited Email and Plesk Functionality.
Resources			DreamPress utilizes Resource Scaling.
Staging
Customer Support
Money Back Guarantee			A2 Hosting offers their Anytime Money Back Guarantee.
Price/Value

Website Staging

DreamHost has really improved the website staging functionality included with DreamPress. It’s very easy to use and you are notified via email when your website staging events are completed. While A2 Hosting also includes staging with their managed WordPress, the Plesk interface isn’t the easiest implementation of staging that I’ve used. Therefore, in this category, DreamPress is the winner.

Data Backup and Restore

Data backup and restore is another area where DreamHost has made significant improvements to DreamPress. You now get both automatic data backups as well as the ability to perform on-demand backups. And, you can easily access the backup functionality from your DreamPress dashboard. With A2’s managed WordPress hosting, you need to create a Dropbox account to use the backup service. Because of the improvements to DreamPress, they also get the advantage in this category.

Customer Support

A2 Hosting typically provides much faster customer support response times than DreamHost. And when it comes to A2’s managed WordPress hosting and DreamPress, the results are basically the same. However, when it comes to issue resolution, DreamPress was a bit quicker. Also, with the new upper levels of DreamPress, you do get concierge phone support–which is nice. We’ll give DreamPress a slight advantage in this category, but after A2 Hosting’s managed WordPress has been around a while and the support staff becomes more familiar with the packages, things could change.

Recommendation

Because of the improvements to DreamPress, this comparison is much closer than it previously was. With DreamPress, the cost is also somewhat higher than we would hope given the 1 to 3 website limits. Although A2 Hosting’s managed WordPress hasn’t been around that long, and there are some improvements we’d like to see in the future, in this comparison we would recommend A2’s managed WordPress hosting. See our review ratings for A2’s Managed WordPress Hosting below.