A Small Orange Review – Is It Worth It?

A Small Orange specializes in web hosting for website designers, publishing companies, SMEs, and NGOs. Aside from shared hosting, it offers dedicated servers, reseller hosting, cloud VPS hosting, and Weebly website builders. I decide to review it to give you the feedback and insights that can help you choose.

Creating a professional-looking website with a Small Orange is much cheaper than most competitors. Currently, it hosts over 45,000 websites in its Dallas and Dearborn data centers.

Our A Small Orange review will cover everything, including the pros and cons. Because A Small Orange offers many features, we will also discuss the testing speed and contacting support.

A Small Orange Overview

Founded in 2003 in Atlanta, Georgia, A Small Orange specializes in providing world-class customer service. As part of their charitable efforts, they offer discounts to charitable organizations. In 2012, EIG acquired A Small Orange, dominating the web hosting market.

Types of hosting availableCloud Hosting, Dedicated Server,  Web Hosting, and Reseller Hosting
Price RangeStarting at $10.65/month (Small shared plan)
Free SSL CertificateYes
Free Professional EmailYes
Storage5 GB to 250 GB Plans are available
Specific Offers90-day money-back guarantee, 99.9% uptime guarantee, Weebly website builder, SSD storage, 24/7/365 customer support, Free domain included
Speed and Uptime99.99% uptime guaranteed
Best forAll types of Shared hosting, from beginners to professionals
Extra FeaturesSecure hosting infrastructure, Automatic failover, Scalable, Secure, and reliable, free cPanel, world-class datacenter

A Small Orange Key Features

  •  Professional Website Builder

Besides the WHMCS front end for billing and account management, A Small Orange’s web management console has the usual selection of buttons for tasks and areas ( email accounts, backups, File Manager, plus the option to launch the full-strength cPanel.

You can install any platform using A Small Orange’s Softaculous app installer. Alternatively, you can use Weebly’s drag-and-drop builder. You get a free Weebly account with every hosting package. With free access to Weebly, you can create unique websites.

  • A Small Orange E-Commerce Specialist

A Small Orange will cover all your needs when selling your products. Startups, Small Businesses, and Enterprises can access hosting services at the company, including Payment Card Industry and a free (SSL) certificate. Remember that a shared server with fewer accounts will perform better.

  • A Small Orange Performance

A WordPress website’s performance is determined by its loading speed. To keep your site loading quickly, A Small Orange offers the following features:

  • Varnish and NGINX caching solutions: A Small Orange uses two separate caching tools to ensure its website is fast and responsive.
  • SSD servers: SSD servers significantly reduce loading times, which is why we use them for all our sites.
  • Limited-density servers: You can ensure your site runs smoothly by limiting the number of customers per server.
  • Enterprise-level servers: The host only uses enterprise-level hardware to power its servers.

Despite its small size, A Small Orange offers a good deal of performance.

  • A Small Orange Uptime and Speed

Hosting services must guarantee website uptime. The website downtime will prevent clients from finding you or gaining access to your services or products.

I monitored the uptime of my Small Orange-hosted test site over 14 days with an online website monitoring tool. I receive an email every 15 minutes if the tool cannot contact my website for more than a minute.

Over two weeks, A Small Orange never went down once. The website you run will work flawlessly, thanks to it. To assess the performance of a web host, I use Load Impact.

I use a reasonably simple method. With the least expensive shared hosting plan, I launch a website using WordPress without plugins or themes and run the URL through testing. My focus was not on website speed, which varies according to caching and other factors, but on the tool’s grades.

Despite promising results, A Small Orange’s website wasn’t as fast as ours. It sounds great, but our Speed Test result is less than ideal. When we add content to our website, the speed will slow even more because our website does not have any content yet.

  • A Small Orange Ease of Use

A Small Orange is fun and easy to use. This website looks silly with its cheesy, bright-clementine design. Instead, you’ll see bright, clean colors, and it’s easy to find anything.

The plan recommendation system at A Small Orange provides a great starting point for exploring the plan options. Click “not sure what you’re looking for from the homepage.”. A page will appear with four questions about your experience.

Your answers will determine how A Small Orange recommends you. The tool surprised us by making recommendations we’d recommend rather than overselling unnecessary packages. EIG’s brand is particularly noteworthy.

  • A Small Orange Security Features

Hosting packages include various security features. You can trust that leech/hotlink protection and password-protected directories are available even for the most basic plan. The cost of a standalone SSL certificate is similar to that of an SSL certificate.

SiteLock offers even greater security. SiteLock executes daily malware scans, monitors file changes, and performs automatic malware removal as part of its security packages.

Likewise, A Small Orange’s MailChannels email service can’t provide additional security due to its limited support for DomainKeys Identified Mail.

  • A Small Orange SSL

A Small Orange provides daily backups, server security, and an encrypted connection between the website and the user through its SSL certificate. Most browsers will display a warning when accessing unsecured websites, even though it may seem only necessary for sites that take personal information.

Therefore, SSL certificates are crucial for every website. Small Orange is inexcusable for not including one, and the fact that it charges so little for one only makes matters worse. By joining A Small Orange, you will receive a free SSL certificate.

A Small Orange Price and Plans

Prices from A Small Orange are slightly higher than those from top providers. Small plans, however, include SSD storage, free domains, and unlimited hosting for a reasonable price.

For those seeking large amounts of storage or bandwidth, the hosting prices here are not the most competitive compared to other top US providers. A Small Orange’s limited plan is comparable to competitors’ unlimited data storage and bandwidth.

The shared hosting plan can be purchased monthly, annually, biennially, or triennially, as opposed to the Tiny plan, which is available for one, two, or three years.

Web Hosting PlansFeaturesPrice
TinyStorage: 500MB SSD Bandwidth: 5 GB Number of sites: 1$ 7.88/Month
SmallStorage: 5GB SSD Bandwidth: 50GB Number of sites: unlimited$10.65/Month
MediumStorage: 15GB SSD Bandwidth: 150GB Number of sites: unlimited$19.97/Month  
LargeStorage: 30GB SSD Bandwidth: 500GB Number of sites: unlimited$33.28/Month

Pros and Cons of using A Small Orange 

Pros

  • Return policy of 90 days
  • Softaculous auto-installs WordPress and 100s of other apps
  • CPanel website management
  • Helpful live chat support
  • Cost-effective
  • Host plans for all budgets
  • High test uptime

Cons

  • No Windows server is in use
  • Support by telephone is unavailable
  • Competitor’s high-end specs are better
  • Registration hassles

A Small Orange Customer Support

Across all EIG brands, there are two ways to contact customer support. In the same way, A Small Orange provides live chat and email support around the clock. It is still better than many EIG siblings, even though it has a lower support quality. Unlike other web hosts, the EIG live chat agent was always direct during our review.

You can resolve issues yourself by using the knowledge base. The knowledge base at A Small Orange is easy to navigate and stuffed with valuable articles, making it better than most EIG brands. The articles are also detailed enough. Simple answers come with screenshots, but more complex tutorials have step-by-step instructions and screenshots.

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Frequently Asked Questions – FAQs

Why should I choose Small Orange Web Hosting?

They offer inexpensive hosting options for both individuals and small businesses. Besides offering many packages, they also provide a user-friendly cPanel interface suitable for many users. A Small Orange web hosting plans are ideal if you want a budget-friendly web host.

Is A Small Orange compatible with WordPress?

Yes, A Small Orange is compatible with WordPress. With the Softaculous app installer, you can easily install WordPress on your website.

What is the login process for A Small Orange Hosting’s cPanel?

The first step you need to take after setting up is to install WordPress. For this to work, you must log in to your cPanel account. In cPanel, you can access Softaculous, from which you can install WordPress simply with a few clicks.

Your cPanel and Customer Area access links and login instructions were emailed after signup. Alternatively, you can use A Small Orange’s ‘lost password’ service to reset your login details at any time if you don’t have this information accessible.

Upon logging into the Customer Area, you can access your cPanel account by following the steps below.

  • Register in the Customer Area
  • Click Your Services in the “Your Services” section
  • Afterward, click “View Details” next to the domain you wish to use
  • Go to the “Information” tab
  • You can log in to cPanel A Small Orange by clicking “Cpanel Login.”

You should now be able to access the cPanel area after following these steps. Click the Softaculous link and select your desired domain name to install WordPress.

What is A Small Orange’s managing hosting process?

Log into your hosting control panel from the website’s homepage to manage your account. Under the “services” section of the client area, select the domain you wish to administer.

What are A Small Orange’s nameservers?

After registering for an account with A Small Orange, you will receive an email containing your server address and nameservers.

Conclusion

Among A Small Orange has low prices, good features, and ease of use. As a result, I do recommend it if you want a budget-friendly web host to create multiple low-to-medium-traffic websites.


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