A Small Orange Review
Last updated on Jan 6, 2016
I signed up for A Small Orange last November 2013 mainly to try and experiment with a self-hosted Ghost blog. As far as I know ASO is one of the few hosts who allow Node.js on a shared hosting environment (update: A2 Hosting does too), and they delivered well in this regard.
I chatted with one of their sales reps before I signed up (like I always do) and I was pleased with the way he answered my general questions. No copy-pasted answers and no “buy the more expensive plan instead” suggestions.
ASO is an EIG host so I didn’t expect much, I just wanted to try Ghost and I felt like I had no choice but to go with them. My experience with the sales rep was unexpectedly satisfactory though… He definitely made a good first impression, but sadly good impressions don’t last all the time.
I’ve been a client for months and I can say that their tech support isn’t particularly noteworthy. There were cases when I needed help and the tech support just disconnected from the chat and left me hanging. Sometimes I’d get lucky and be connected to a helpful and friendly support rep though. Note: there’s an update about ASO’s live chat posted at the end of this review. Server speed isn’t remarkable either. Sometimes my site was fast, sometimes not.
From the first day up until now — almost three months after I signed up — my site’s monthly uptime report has been consistently 99.9% and above. This is very refreshing in a sense that people usually have nothing but negative thoughts about EIG hosts, yet I was able to find something good about ASO.
Final Verdict
A Small Orange is a good host when you consider features, uptime, and the price. Their cheapest plan is $35/year and I think that’s a reasonable amount to pay if you intend to use their hosting for not-so-important sites, or projects under development.
I would not recommend them if you’re planning to build a site for your online business (or any other serious website for that matter) as they can be inconsistent in terms of speed and support. There are better hosts out there; don’t risk your online business by signing up with an average host.
A Small Orange Review Updates
Not recommended – A Small Orange may have taken longer to go downhill than other web hosts EIG has acquired but the decline still did happen.
Also be aware that the ASO division of EIG is managing Arvixe now and it’s rumored that they will be running Site5 soon too.
Dont use a small orage
they are scammers they suspended my account and no refund! LMAO
That’s unfortunate, but it’s very possible that you violated their TOS hence they suspended your account.
Their TOS states that they can cancel an account any time for any reason:
9.2. Similarly, A Small Orange reserves the right to cancel, suspend, or otherwise restrict access to the Service(s) it provides at any time, for any or no reason, and with or without notice. A Small Orange is not responsible for any damages or loss of data resulting from such suspension or termination.
That’s why when I went to host with them, I stopped the signup process after seeing the TOS and went shopping for another host.
Most hosts reserve the right to cancel an account at any time for any reason, but I wouldn’t expect *professional* hosts to suspend accounts just because.
“I would not recommend them if you’re planning to build a site for your online business ” what would you recommend? we’re starting a business and just need a website. it’s not for ecommerce, just for information like location, hours, FAQs, etc. we don’t plan to sell anything there. i currently use ASO for personal blog and have had not issues. which is why we may get another account for the new business. thoughts? BTW, thanks for the review.
Hello,
First off sorry for the rather late reply. You’re going to be fine with a regular shared hosting account. I’d recommend Stablehost but support has been rather slow lately. It’s not slow as in it would take them days to answer, but I would rather get a reply in 5-10mins than wait 2 hours to get an issue resolved especially if it’s an urgent issue (email issues in my case). Read my review on them if you want more info regarding this.
I say go with MDDHosting if support is *very* important (i.e. you need them to respond literally in minutes). Otherwise go with Stablehost (~1hour response time) so you could save a few dollars. Both are very good hosts anyway, very fast and solid performance.
Hope this post helped!
no worries. i ended up using my existing plan with ASO. as i mentioned i haven’t had any issues. i would say i know my way around web servers. fortunately, i haven’t had a reason to create a support ticket that needed immediate resolution. as soon as i outgrow or they do something that displeases me, i will checkout your suggestions as a new provider. thanks.
ASmallOrange is no longer a reliable web host. Over the last year or so things have become progressively worse. As a client of ASO you will suffer regular downtime and a total lack of support.
Add that to the fact that their recent outage of five days, yes sites have now been offline for five days and are still offline, any one considering this service is a fool.
They are the worst. Terrible support. They basically turned off their phones when they had too many customer complaints due to systemwide outages. They take 5+ days to respond to tickets and livechat only works on a desktop and isn’t very helpful. We have had TONS of outages and never any solutions.
Do yourself a favor and avoid.
A Small Orange’s collapse is complete. They are now an unbelievably incompetent, uncaring disaster. STAY AWAY. If you’re still there, get out NOW. I have no words for how much they LIE, fail in every way, and will do you harm.