Founded in 2003, A Small Orange’s tagline is “Homegrown hosting,” although it is owned by Endurance International Group, which also owns Bluehost, Hostgator, and Constant Contact.It provides shared hosting, cloud VPS hosting, dedicated servers, reseller hosting, and Weebly website builder subscriptions.
It currently hosts over 45,000 websites out of its Dallas, Texas and Dearborn, Michigan data centers, and the website is in English.
Features and Ease of Use
A Small Orange features shared, VPS, dedicated server, and reseller hosting, but many customers may be most interested in their shared website hosting plans. Common hosting plan features include:
- 90-day money-back guarantee
- 99.9% uptime guarantee
- Weebly website builder
- SSD storage
- 24/7/365 customer support
- Free domain included
It uses Intel Xeon Dual Hex Core processors or better, SSD storage, and comes in Tiny, Small, Medium, and Large plan sizes. Aside from the Tiny plan, the rest all include a free domain with annual purchase.
The entry-level Tiny plan includes hosting for one website, 500MB storage, and 5GB monthly bandwidth. Stepping up to the most popular plan, the Small plan features hosting for unlimited websites, 5GB storage, 50GB monthly bandwidth, and a free domain with annual purchase.
The Medium and Large plans increase storage to 15GB and 30GB and monthly bandwidth to 150GB and 500GB respectively.
Customers with more demanding needs may be interested in A Small Orange’s Cloud VPS hosting plans, which feature enterprise grade hardware and from one to eight CPU cores. Included storage ranges from 30GB-250GB, RAM from 1GB-10GB, and monthly bandwidth from 500GB to 5TB. Other features include automatic failover, 24/7 monitoring, and a free domain for one year.
A Small Orange makes it known that it tries to do business in a green way. The way it does this is by committing to renewable energy in the form of purchasing Renewable Energy Certificates. For every kilowatt hour of electricity used, A Small Orange ensures that another two kilowatt hours are produced using renewable energy, then delivered to the power grid.
Pricing and Support
Hosting from A Small Orange is priced slightly above top providers. However, its popular Small plan is priced at a reasonable rate considering it includes SSD storage, a free domain, and hosting for unlimited domains.
Compared to other top North American providers, hosting prices here are fair, but not the most competitive for those looking for large amounts of storage or bandwidth. Some other competitors feature unlimited data storage and bandwidth for a similar price to A Small Orange’s limited plans.
Except for the Tiny plan, which is available for one, two, or three-year terms, shared hosting can be paid on a monthly, annual, biennial, or triennial basis. If you choose an annual or longer plan, you’ll receive a 10% discount off the monthly price.
Also, note that if registering a domain through the company, you can expect to pay around 40%-50% more than normal.
Customer service is handled on a 24/7 basis and is available via live chat and email. I reached out to support via live chat and received help immediately. There is also a knowledge base with many helpful articles.
