A Small Orange In 2020: What Do A Small Orange Client Reviews Say?
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Our overview of A Small Orange…
Expert Opinion
Hear from our web hosting expert, Claire Broadley.
Best Reviews
See what 35 A Small Orange customers have to say.
Hosting Plans
Compare the best A Small Orange hosting plans and their prices.
FAQs
Most asked Questions about A Small Orange – answered!
A Small Orange Introduction
A Small Orange has been providing hosting services since 2003. Although it isn’t one of the best-known hosts in the industry, it has grown rapidly. Having originally been based in Atlanta, Georgia in the US, it is now located in Durham, North Carolina.
The company was founded by Tim Dorr, a web designer, and then bought out by HostGator’s customer service strategist Douglas Hanna in 2010. A Small Orange was acquired, with HostGator, by the Endurance International Group in 2012. Hanna stayed on as brand CEO until 2014.
Hosting Plans
A Small Orange splits its hosting into five types of plans: shared, reseller, business, cloud VPS, and dedicated. All hosting is provided on Linux servers only, and there are no Windows hosting packages on offer.
The company used to offer unlimited resources on shared hosting, but it has moved away from offering unlimited storage and bandwidth and towards setting a fixed limit on each plan. There are three shared hosting packages with resources that scale up at each price point. You’ll need to choose a plan that suits your website and the amount of transfer you’ll need. Free domains are included with the top two plans, but only if you pay upfront for a year or more.
Business hosting is shared hosting with added features and resources. For example, every business plan comes with an SSL certificate, and A Small Orange ensures that servers are PCI compliant.
Reseller hosting plans follow roughly the same model, but allowances and prices differ, as you would expect.
A Small Orange advertises WordPress hosting plans. These are not strictly managed WordPress plans; they are optimized for WordPress. Again, there are three tiers. There are some important differences between these plans and regular shared hosting. For example, you can create unlimited websites with all of the WordPress packages. You still get access to cPanel, and it’s important to note that WordPress is provided as a one-click installer, rather than a pre-installed package.
Cloud VPS hosting is priced on a sliding scale, according to the number of cores, RAM, storage and bandwidth. Plans above a certain price point come with a free cPanel license. Dedicated servers are sold in a range of configurations. All have free cPanel/WHM, and include full management and 5 IPs. Hybrid servers used to be available, but these appear to have been discontinued.
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A Small Orange Reviews by Our Community
Overall Rating from 35 Reviews by A Small Orange Customers
| Support | |
|---|---|
| Quality | |
| Features | |
| Value |
Most Helpful Reviews
Patrick Swift freedenton.com
Sep 19, 2018
Ned Yousefzadeh supportbay.com
Dec 20, 2017
The worst hosting ever. I am a 50 year old man, and I cried today after dealing with the chat representative for 30 days straight. No way to speak with them.
The chat representatives are just operators. They take your problem and create a case and the case gets passed around. Never handled.
I cannot even get a refund. It’s the worst experience I have had with any hosting company. I purchased a hosting plan with a dedicated server.
It’s been 30 days today and with so many down time, I have lost a lot of money. Please do not make the same mistake I did. Take your money someplace else.
The level of service is extremely poor. The tickets don’t get handled and when they do they are not handled correctly.
Toby Tull thehgf.com
Feb 01, 2017
I joined ASO back in 2013 and it was an incredible service and business. Now I can’t wait to move all of my sites to a new service. I’m at 50% and as soon as ASO gets my server back online (been down for 2 weeks) I will move the others.
I’m just lucky I’m a psycho about having backups of most of my important sites backed up to drop box. This is the 5th time in a year that my dedicated server has gone down in 1 year….all with pathetic support and no answers, etas, or any help. This company is literally the worst…
Uptime
A Small Orange advertises a 99.9% uptime guarantee, and will provide a 1 day credit for every 45 mins’ unplanned downtime beyond 0.1%, to a maximum of 1 month’s service. If you believe you are due a credit, you need to submit your claim within 10 days of the end of the month.
The company is not clear how many datacenters it uses, or where the facilities are located, but we did find status updates suggesting that at least one facility is in Dallas. The site does say that the company’s servers are monitored with CCTV and protected with backup battery and diesel power.
Customer Service and Support
Support is provided 24/7 via ticket. Support staff are based in the USA. The ticket system is hidden behind a login screen.
A Small Orange doesn’t advertise a telephone support service on its website.
All A Small Orange customers are provided with cPanel (and WHM, if applicable). You may have to pay for this, depending on your plan.
Money-Back Guarantee
If you change your mind after buying a shared hosting, reseller, or cloud VPS plan at A Small Orange, you can claim a refund under its 90-day money-back guarantee. If you want to cancel your plan after that point and you’ve paid annually, the company will refund your unused time on a prorated basis.
There’s no refund policy for other plans.
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Summary
Since A Small Orange was acquired, it has had a change of leadership, and it has been absorbed into a much larger hosting brand. This has allowed it to provide more packages, and re-align itself more effectively towards small businesses. It has also modernized its shared hosting with the addition of specific plans for WordPress. While shared hosting customers no longer get unlimited resources, the limits on the plans are not restrictive.
It’s a shame that telephone support isn’t available. Maybe it just isn’t advertised. However, we know that a lot of customers like to know there’s someone on the end of the phone. The good news is that there’s an uptime guarantee with a fairly solid system of compensation for downtime, and the long 90-day money-back guarantee should give customers enough time to get a feel for its service.
Most Popular A Small Orange Hosting Plans
| Tiny Shared | Small Shared | Medium Shared | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Disk Space | 250GB | 1GB | 5GB |
| Bandwidth | 5GB | 20GB | 100GB |
| Price | $2.92 / mo (Billed as $2.92 Per Month) ⓘPrices in are approximate, based on current exchange rates. The host will likely charge you in USD, or at a different exchange rate. Usual price: – Get % off! | $5 / mo (Billed as $2.92 Per Month) ⓘPrices in are approximate, based on current exchange rates. The host will likely charge you in USD, or at a different exchange rate. Usual price: – Get % off! | $10 / mo (Billed as $2.92 Per Month) ⓘPrices in are approximate, based on current exchange rates. The host will likely charge you in USD, or at a different exchange rate. Usual price: – Get % off! |
| Visit A Small Orange Now | Visit A Small Orange Now | Visit A Small Orange Now |
| Plan | Disk Space | Bandwidth | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small Reseller Reseller | 3GB | 30GB | $15 / mo Visit Host Now |
| Large Shared Shared | 15GB | 300GB | $20 / mo Visit Host Now |
| Business Startup Shared | 10GB | 100GB | $20 / mo Visit Host Now |
| Cloud 1 VPS Cloud | 30GB | 500GB | $20 / mo Visit Host Now |
| Medium Reseller Reseller | 5GB | 50GB | $25 / mo Visit Host Now |
| Cloud 2 VPS Cloud | 50GB | 1000GB | $30 / mo Visit Host Now |
| Large Reseller Reseller | 10GB | 100GB | $35 / mo Visit Host Now |
| Small Business Shared | 20GB | 200GB | $40 / mo Visit Host Now |
| Cloud 3 VPS Cloud | 75GB | 1500GB | $45 / mo Visit Host Now |
| Enterprise Shared | 30GB | 300GB | $60 / mo Visit Host Now |
| Managed Dedicated Server Shared | 1TB | 5TB | $109 / mo Visit Host Now |
A Small Orange Frequently Asked Questions
- Will A Small Orange give me a domain?
Yes. All their plans come with at least one free domain for the first year except for the lowest tier of shared hosting, which does not include a domain.
- What sort of support is available?
All plans include 24/7 email support based in the US as well as live chat.
- What programming languages does A Small Orange support?
All their plans support PHP, Ruby on Rails, and Python. They also support MySQL and NodeJS.
- Does A Small Orange have an uptime guarantee?
Yes. They offer a 99.9% uptime guarantee per month on their shared and reseller hosting. If they fail to meet that level, customers are credited with 1 day of service for every 45 minutes the site is down. The first 45 minutes a site is down is not credited. VPS and dedicated server plans do not include an uptime guarantee.
- Does A Small Orange have a money-back guarantee?
Yes. They offer a 90-money back-guarantee on all their hosting products save unmanaged dedicated hosting. They also offer a 10-day money-back guarantee on their web design service. See the Terms of Service for more information.
- Can I run all the usual applications with A Small Orange?
Yes. All A Small Orange plans come with access to Softaculous and with it, all the most common applications, including WordPress and Magento.
- Does A Small Orange have unlimited bandwidth and storage?
No. A Small Orange states the limits for each plan on their website.
- Does A Small Orange offer a content delivery network (CDN)?
No, none of the products A Small Orange offers a CDN.
- What backup options are there with A Small Orange?
A Small Orange runs automated daily backups on all their products. Backed up files are available for 7 days.
- What security options are available with A Small Orange?
SiteLock is available for an additional cost to all shared hosting plans. They also include a range of security measures like password-protected directories, IP-blocking, and hotlink/leech protection on their shared servers as standard. Some plans also include SSL certificates and all plans can add SSL certificates as an add-on product.
- Does A Small Orange provide a website building tool for beginners?
Yes. Customers have the option to purchase a drag and drop website editor for a monthly fee. Alternatively, A Small Orange has a website building service for a one-off fee. Contact customer service for the specifics.
- What control panel does A Small Orange provide?
All their hosting plans come with cPanel access and some come with WHM, if applicable.
- What payment options are available with A Small Orange? What’s the billing cycle like?
Billing cycles with A Small Orange are very flexible. You have the option to pay monthly, annually, biannually, or triennially on all available products. Customers can pay via major credit card or PayPal.
- Are there any discounts available?
Yes. A Small Orange usually offers discounts for a longer contract (eg, triennially).
- Is there an affiliates program available?
Yes. A Small Orange has an affiliates program with a set payment for each successful referral.
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I have been with A Small Orange since 2015. I cancelled one account without any issues in 2017 and I continued to use the service for my site freedenton.com. I July of 2018 I decided I no longer needed the hosting for my site and I went to cancel the service.
One, they do billing cycles now for every 3 months, so if you don’t say "Immediate" cancellation on the Ticket then they will keep charging you until the cycle is complete. Two, after I realized what was happening and I was charged again and so I did the Live Chat. I confirmed with the chat person to cancel my account immediately and I was to get a refund.
Three, I was not given a refund and then charged Again! I put in another support ticket and did a Chat. After hours of dealing with the support group they finally refund Only the last charge, saying I needed to confirm twice for an account to be cancelled.
fourth, They refunded to my Credits and not in cash. Even though I closed my account and will no longer use A Small Orange, I cannot get any of the cash back. They get to keep my cash unless I spend it at their site!!! They refunded my money to themselves!