A2 Hosting was a shared cPanel host with a WordPress focus; in January 2025 it was acquired by World Host Group, and in April 2025 the brand was retired and the property relaunched as Hosting.com. The shared plans bundle domain email through cPanel with mailbox counts that step up by tier (5 on Starter, 40 on Max), and outbound WordPress mail leaves the server through MailChannels, the relay infrastructure that handles outbound mail for a large share of shared hosting providers. External SMTP servers are blocked on shared and managed WordPress plans, which means WordPress can send through the local cPanel mailbox or via an API-based third-party service, but not via an external SMTP connection. The documented ceiling that bites first is 100 emails per hour, with every recipient on a message counted separately against the cap.
Starter renews at $11.99/month (intro $2.99/month); Plus, Pro, and Max tiers renew higher and the renewal prices are not disclosed on the plans page. Hosting.com sits in the entry shared-hosting band, well below the managed-WordPress tier that Kinsta and WP Engine occupy.
Email on Hosting.com
How wp_mail works by default
A fresh WordPress install on a Hosting.com shared plan sends mail through PHP’s mail() function, which hands off to the server’s local exim configuration. Hosting.com routes that outbound traffic through MailChannels rather than letting the server connect directly to recipient mail servers, so the message leaves the host via MailChannels’s reputation-managed IPs. That relay step gets the mail off a shared cPanel IP that other Hosting.com sites also use. What MailChannels does not do is add a DKIM signature (the cryptographic signature receiving mail servers use to confirm a message came from the expected domain) on its own; the DKIM record is configured per mailbox in cPanel’s Email Deliverability panel, and the signature only attaches when the message leaves from a From-address that matches that mailbox.
The practical consequence: password resets, order confirmations, and contact-form notifications go out through a reputation-managed relay, but they go out unsigned unless DKIM is enabled in cPanel for the sending mailbox, and the From address on a fresh install (wordpress@<domain>) does not correspond to a real cPanel mailbox. The first deliverability fix most operators make is to point WordPress at a real cPanel mailbox via an SMTP plugin so the DKIM signature attaches, or to bypass the bundled path entirely and route through a third-party service with its own authentication chain.
Outbound SMTP port status
| Port | Status | Protocol |
|---|---|---|
| 25 | Blocked outbound to external servers | SMTP (legacy) |
| 465 | Blocked outbound to external servers | SMTPS (implicit TLS) |
| 587 | Blocked outbound to external servers | SMTP with STARTTLS |
| 2525 | Blocked outbound to external servers | SMTP (alternate) |
| 993 | Open | IMAPS (incoming, bundled mailboxes) |
| 995 | Open | POP3S (incoming, bundled mailboxes) |
Hosting.com’s 
external-SMTP policy makes the block explicit: outbound connections to external SMTP servers from shared, reseller, and managed WordPress accounts are not permitted. WordPress can still talk to the local cPanel SMTP server on the same machine over port 587, which is the supported path for sending via a real Hosting.com mailbox; what it cannot do is open an outbound connection to smtp.postmarkapp.com, smtp.sendgrid.net, smtp.mailgun.org, or any other external mail server. Operators who want to use a third-party sending service have to switch to the provider’s HTTP API instead of its SMTP endpoint, and use a WordPress SMTP plugin that supports API mode (covered in the relay section below).
Sending limits
| Limit | Applies to |
|---|---|
| 100 emails per hour | All plans (Starter through Max) |
| 2,400 emails per day | All plans |
| 100 recipients per message | All plans |
| 100 MB per message | All plans |
The 100/hour cap is the ceiling most sites meet first. Every recipient on a message counts as a separate send: a single email to 100 people uses the entire hourly budget. The daily cap of 2,400 sits above the hourly cap if the load is spread out, but a burst of password resets after a security incident or a WooCommerce order confirmation storm during a sale will hit the hourly limit long before the daily one matters.
Hosting.com applies these numbers across plans rather than scaling them with price. The higher tiers buy more mailboxes, more forwarders, more disk, and more databases, but the sending throughput stays at 100 per hour whether the operator is on Starter or Max. For reference, SiteGround publishes 400 per hour on its entry plan, DreamHost publishes 100 per hour per address, and Kinsta ships no default-path WordPress mail at all. Hosting.com’s 100/hour is on the tighter end of the published numbers.
Mailboxes, forwarding, DNS
Hosting.com gives the operator a tiered mailbox count rather than unlimited inboxes. Starter ships with 5 mailboxes, Plus with 10, Pro with 20, and Max with 40. Each mailbox lives under cPanel, with webmail, IMAP and POP3 access, and a 100 MB per-message size limit. The number of email forwarders follows the same shape: 20, 40, 80, 100 across the four tiers. A small business that wants a mailbox per staff member will outgrow Starter quickly; a single operator running a personal site or a small WooCommerce store will not.
Mail clients on phones and laptops connect on the standard IMAPS (993) and POP3S (995) ports without anything extra to configure; the same mailbox credentials work in the bundled Roundcube webmail. Forwarding rules and aliases are part of the same cPanel panel; no separate forwarding service is needed.
Hosting.com runs the domain’s DNS by default for any domain registered or pointed through the account, which is what lets cPanel’s Email Deliverability panel publish SPF (the DNS record that authorises which mail servers can send on behalf of a domain) and DKIM records automatically. If DNS has been moved elsewhere (Cloudflare is the common one), the panel falls back to displaying the records as text and asking the operator to paste them into the external DNS provider by hand.
Authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC)
The SPF record Hosting.com publishes for a shared account lists its own outbound infrastructure: the include domain documented for shared accounts is spf.a2hosting.com (carried over from the pre-rebrand brand and still active as of June 2026; verify against the live DNS zone before use, since Hosting.com may consolidate to a spf.hosting.com include in a future refresh). MailChannels does not require an additional SPF include when used as the relay between the cPanel server and the recipient, because the message envelope still presents the hosting-account return path. DKIM is configurable per mailbox under cPanel → Email Deliverability, with a selector and key the panel generates; it is not signed by default on the PHP mail() path until the operator enables it for the relevant From-address mailbox. DMARC is not published by default; Hosting.com’s deliverability panel exposes it as an optional record the operator publishes after deciding on a policy.
The detail that bites later: if WordPress is sending from a From address that does not match a real cPanel mailbox (the default wordpress@<domain> after install does not), the cPanel-managed DKIM signature does not attach. The fix is either to create the cPanel mailbox that matches the From address and enable DKIM for it, or to switch sending to a third-party service that handles its own authentication.
What Hosting.com does not provide
- A dedicated sending IP address. Outbound goes through MailChannels’s pooled IPs, shared with every other Hosting.com account and a long tail of other MailChannels customers. A site that needs to insulate its deliverability from the neighbours needs a sending service with a dedicated IP add-on: Postmark on the Dedicated IP add-on, Mailgun on its Foundation plan, SendGrid on Pro.
- Bounce tracking, suppression lists, and delivery events. MailChannels handles the relay, but Hosting.com does not expose per-message events back to the operator. There is no log of which messages bounced, no suppression list, no open or click tracking. Mailgun and Postmark publish those events as they happen.
- Marketing or bulk email allowance. The 100/hour ceiling makes any newsletter or campaign work impossible on the bundled path. Marketing mail belongs on a dedicated platform.
- Outbound SMTP to external servers. The single largest constraint: any third-party relay must use the provider’s HTTP API, not SMTP. SMTP plugins that only support SMTP transport will not work; plugins that support both (WP Mail SMTP, FluentSMTP, Post SMTP) need to be configured for the API mode of the chosen provider.
- Detailed sending logs. No per-message log inside cPanel, no transaction log to pull up when a message fails to land. Third-party services provide the visibility the bundled path does not.
When a third-party relay is needed
The Hosting.com default path covers personal blogs and small WooCommerce stores whose transactional volume stays well below 100 messages per hour, where the From address matches a real cPanel mailbox with DKIM enabled, and where occasional spam-folder placement on a shared MailChannels IP is acceptable. Most other shapes need to move sending off the bundled path. The triggers:
- The 100/hour cap bites. A site approaching that ceiling, or one that wants to send a single newsletter-style message to dozens of recipients without burning the whole hourly budget, needs an external service. Postmark is the cleanest fit for transactional mail under 100,000 messages a month and has a documented API that WP Mail SMTP supports directly; SMTP2GO is the cheapest credible option with API support; Mailgun becomes economical at higher volumes.
- A missed A transactional email is the automated message a WordPress site sends in response to a single user action – a password reset, an order confirmation, a form receipt – addressed to the user who triggered it. Read full reference → costs money. Sites where a failed password reset means a churned customer cannot depend on a shared MailChannels IP. A dedicated sending service gives both a dedicated IP and a bounce-event stream.
- You need delivery visibility. The bundled path produces no per-message events. Any third-party service with an HTTP API does.
- You’re sending newsletters or campaigns. The 100/hour cap rules out the bundled path for anything resembling bulk; the policy and the mechanics agree.
A configuration note specific to Hosting.com: because external SMTP is blocked, any third-party provider must be wired up via its HTTP API, not via SMTP credentials. The WordPress SMTP plugins that support API mode are WP Mail SMTP, FluentSMTP, and Post SMTP; SMTP-only plugins, or providers without an HTTP API, are not compatible with Hosting.com’s shared infrastructure.
Verdict
Hosting.com (formerly A2 Hosting) is a reasonable pick for operators who want shared cPanel hosting with bundled domain email and can live with the post-rebrand mailbox caps and the 100-emails-per-hour ceiling. The MailChannels relay path is better than raw PHP mail() on a shared IP, but it requires the operator to wire DKIM up for the sending mailbox and to match the WordPress From address to a real cPanel inbox before deliverability is solid. Sites that send more than 100 messages an hour, that need bounce visibility, or that want to use a third-party SMTP provider should plan on adding an API-based sending service early; the external-SMTP block makes the API the only option.
For the WordPress email setup that supplements Hosting.com’s default path, see how to configure WordPress email.