Fasthost customer support is slow and issues are never sorted out straight away, it needs at least a 3 or 4 rounds of emails. Worst thing when Fasthost deleted my account including all emails a few days before the end of my contract. All they could offer was an apology. Apparently on shared servers they do not have a proper distaster recovery procedure nor backups. Not very reassuring.
Fast host is a cheep alternative but when you pay the low price you get a low service. The price is good, the costumer service is bad and the host it's sled does not include allot of bandwidth and fast speeds
A very poor company indeed. Well known for reasonable prices but customer service bordering on the appalling.
I have tried to transfer an account froma Fasthosts reseller to my account but have not been successful. After calling their support line I was told this was due to my being on the "Old Version 4 Control Panel" and the reseller being on the new "Version 5". Quite amazing since I just opened my account with them and expected to be on the latest software.
To add injury to insult I was the told they had no timescale to state when the new version would be upgraded on my account. They REFUSED to give me a time instead just telling me "it will be soon...".
That was a month ago and still no upgrade - so I cannot transfer domains!
They are a joke and I strongly recommend going elsewhere if you are serious about your domains.
Also to open an account you need to supply your Credit Card details and they are not deletable once entered. You also need to go through a convoluted process too close the account - they make that as difficult as possible - basically at every step of the way they are a complete pain to deal with.
On the plus side they do answer their support telephone within a frw minutes.
I had been using Fasthosts for some 6 months, using their reseller account and had been reasonably pleased, however upon my recommendation I transferred a major client to Fasthosts. Well what a disaster, they have changed their reseller control panel and basically rolled out a system that doesn't work. We had intended moving some live sites from my Fasthosts account to theirs, a simple job you would think, well no absolute disaster 4 days in and sites still not live. This is a totally unaccepable situation and this needs to to highlighted. I would not normally go on these review sites but as I'm in my clients office and unable to sort the problems as I'm waitng for Fasthosts support to do something I will spend the time telling everyone to be VERY VERY careful of using this Company for any serious websites. The Company I am a consultant to, deal with large PLC's and are the main CDM contractors on the Olympic Swimming Pool, they are not used to dealing with 'noddy' Companies like Fasthosts! I have now been told in no uncertain terms to find another, this time reliable hosting Company.
Sorry Fasthosts you have shot yourself in your foot yet again.
We hate fasthost because:
we are having problems due to the fact that our new bank card has not arrived.
This means we have missed a payment and our supply has suspended.
We under stand that.
However we want to maintain our service and have offer to make payment by any other means.
Fasthosts cant accept any other form of payment and now want to charge us an extra cost.
So we want to pay, we have a problem cause by our bank but can make alternative arrangement
but fasthosts don't want the money, the hassle and are not interested in their customers problems.
We have called them on every number we can find and asked to speak to any one who can help but there is no one.
There phone system will not allow any transfer of calls and there MD has no telephone? neither does customers services, accounts or their finacial director or company seretary.
I and my Company have been using FastHosts for about 4 years. We run a large website for an electric car company with a number of sub-domains and all our e-mail from FastHosts.
Good points: Reliable service (cannot recall a single downtime), easy to use control panel (for e-mail in particular) and easy to transfer domains in and out (we changed company and accounts at one stage and had to transfer the lot).
Bad points: Value is pretty poor compared to other good deals I see on the web but once you're with a reliable provider it does not seem worth to switch. We also had a compatibility issue with our first website design about four years ago causing our marketing guys to host somewhere else for a while. And support is a bit hit-and-miss. Late at night (UK) and in the weekends I get a quick response. During the day it can be quite a few hours.
Bottom line: reliable, never failed to deliver what they promise. But that does not mean you cannot find better value of features elsewhere. I am looking for a host for my personal blog and weighing up 1&1 (cheap domains) against GoDaddy (cheap hosting). Both offer a host of extras that you do not get with FastHosts.
Fasthosts host a number of my domains and websites. I now have a dedicated server.
The uptime would appear to be very good. There has been limited downtime to my knowledge.
They appear to offer most of the common options that are available with most other hosts. In terms of cost they are fairly competitive, I don't think they are either the most expesive nor the cheapest.
However my main problem is with the support. You have very long waits on the automated phone system to get through to support however when you get through they are fairly helpful. Their new payment process cannot seam to handle Mastercard's fraud prevention process.
They are very quick to suspend your account if this does happen which is not great when it is their fault the payment wasn't taken in the first place. I think they have a good selection of packages which would appear to cater for most needs.
I just think that their support and customer service lets them down. I would have no problem recommending them to others with that caveat.
FastHosts is a well-established web hosting company based in Gloucester, UK. The company was established in 1999, giving it over a decade’s worth of hosting experience. Like 1&1 Internet and Sedo.com, FastHosts is now a part of United Internet AG which is a large German internet services organisation. FastHosts offers a comprehensive range of services, from website hosting to broadband and cloud storage.
Domain name registration appears to be the main focus of FastHosts. In terms of hosting, the company doesn’t appear to have a speciality.
Many hosting companies boast a range of awards regarding their services. Whilst these awards are often easy to come by, some are worth noting. In 2011, FastHosts won the award for the Microsoft Global Hosting Solutions partner of the year, which I thought was worthy of a mention in this review.
FastHosts Hosting Plans
FastHosts provide its customers with four different shared hosting packages to choose from. Customers can also choose from either Linux or Windows operating systems for their hosting and can choose from plans up to three years in length to further reduce their cost.
● The Personal package allows customers to host one website, with up to 50 subdomains, 50 starter mailboxes, 1 MySQL database and 5 FTP accounts. This package comes with 5 GB disk space and unlimited bandwidth.
● The Business Bronze package is a step up from the personal package with 50 GB disk space, 500 subdomains, 10 MySQL databases, 500 starter mailboxes and 50 FTP accounts.
● The Business Silver package allows customers to host two websites and provides unlimited disk space, subdomains and starter mailboxes. This allows customers to host 100 MySQL databases with 100 FTP accounts.
● The Business Gold web hosting plan adds unlimited MySQL databases and FTP accounts to the Silver plan. Customers can host up to 3 websites.
There are two reseller packages available through Fasthosts, should customers want to sell their own hosting space. There is a package for new resellers and one for companies with more advanced requirements. Starters get 20 GB disk space and unlimited bandwidth whilst advanced resellers get unlimited space. Both Windows and Linux hosting is available to resell. Interestingly, advanced resellers are also able to resell broadband services to UK customers.
Both Linux and Windows-based VPS hosting is available through FastHosts. There is one Starter package available and two Professional packages. There is also a customisable advanced package, so customers can set up their VPS with a range of hardware capabilities. This starts at 512 MB RAM, 50 GB disk space and 1 processor and goes up to 16 GB RAM, 1 TB disk space and up to 4 processors. Each plan comes with unlimited bandwidth and 2 IP addresses.
For customers who are looking for a dedicated server, FastHosts provide 6 hardware options, ranging from a 2 core processor with 2 X 250 GB SATA disk space and 4 GB RAM up to 32 core processors, 2 X 120 GB SSD & 2 X 2 TB SATA disk space and 64 GB RAM. Customers can choose from a range of Linux and Windows-based operating systems and get unlimited bandwidth.
Cloud hosting is also available through FastHosts, but customers need to contact the sales team directly to discuss it, so I can’t cover it in any detail in this review.
FastHosts Uptime/Downtime
FastHosts does not make any boast about its server uptime, and it does not publish any uptime statistics. VPS and dedicated server hosting customers are provided with an SLA and a 99.99% uptime guarantee, allowing them to claim a days’ worth of free hosting for every hour of downtime.
FastHosts own its own data centre and do not rent space elsewhere. The server farm is located in Gloucester in the UK and is manned and monitored 24 hours a day. The data centres are fully secured and utilise backup power systems to keep them up and running in the event of a power failure.
FastHosts Support
There are a wide range of support options open to FastHosts customers. Support starts with live system status reports, where customers can check for any known issues. There’s also a knowledge base, a range of user guides, a domain health checker, a training center (which includes a number of webinars) and a blog.
FastHosts offer support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week both online and on the phone. The company is also on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+, and the company actively encourages its customers to follow them. More importantly, the company does liaise with its customers through these channels should any support issues arise.
FastHosts in the News
FastHosts is a relatively large hosting company and has appeared in some prominent news sites, although none of the press I found relates to poor service or downtime.
FastHosts Control Panel
FastHosts’ shared hosting customers get a custom control panel to manage their websites. However, there is little available information regarding the control panel, so it is difficult to compare this to cPanel and Plesk.
VPS hosting customers are provided with Plesk.
FastHosts Extras
There are a whole host of extras and freebies bundled with FastHosts hosting plans, with a few extras that other hosts don’t provide. These include a free site builder, Google Adword credits, Bidvertiser credits and Mirago credits. A website statistics tool called MatrixStats comes with each hosting account and there is a free TrafficDriver SEO service for business hosting customers. Often SEO services are chargeable, so this is an interesting addition.
Shared hosting comes with a free one-click installer and supports range of applications such as PHP, Perl, Python, WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and more. Windows hosting customers who purchase Professional Mailbox as an add on also get Outlook 2010 for free.
FastHosts Money Back Guarantee / Cancellation Policy
Unlike most other web hosting companies, FastHosts does not offer any kind of money back guarantee for its customers. However, there is a 30 day free trial of the website builder tool, so customers can to try this out before purchasing any hosting packages.
The FastHosts cancellation policy requires customers to provide 30 days notice. If the customer cancels before the end of the agreed term, they will remain liable for the remaining costs.
FastHosts Summary
FastHosts offer a distinctive range of hosting services, setting them apart from some of the run-of-the-mill hosts I’ve reviewed. The lack of a money-back guarantee may put some off, but then again, a Microsoft award goes a long way towards building confidence in the services FastHosts provides.
The location of the data centre will appeal to customers looking to ensure their website is hosted in the UK, and the massive range of services can only be matched by a few other companies. The level of support options provided by FastHosts is also a big plus, as is its adoption of modern support techniques through social media channels.
The huge array of web hosting options may put some people off, and I think it could be complicated for first timers to get to grips with what’s on offer.
Fast growing shared hosting provider, BlueHost, offers a plan with plenty of features and unlimited domains.
Read our BlueHost Reviews
Web Hosting Hub offer an incredible deal: unlimited bandwidth & disk space, plus phone support, for $4.95/mo. What's not to like?
Read our Web Hosting Hub Reviews
InMotion Hosting was founded in 2001 and is co-owned by Sunil Saxena and Todd Robinson. Today, the company trades under the company name of InMotion Hosting.
Read our InMotion Hosting Reviews
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Fasthosts are a complete waste of time, avoid at all costs. I asked them before I purchased if I could cancel if they didn't meet the uptime guarantee, to which they replied yes.
I had outages of ~5 hours and intermitted outages too. They failed to diagnose the issue until I persisted and a ticket of mine got raised to a senior engineer, who finally admitted they had been having issues. They really didn't want to admit they were having issues all along...
Anyhow, I tried to cancel and then they changed their mind and said NO.
So I then tried to downgrade my hosting and they said NO. There isn't anywhere on their website that says I am not allowed to downgrade - it might be in the T&C but the point is it wasn't made very clear when I signed up.
Avoid Fasthosts - bad ethics, terrible service, not customer focused. You do NOT want to be in business with a company like this. Do not trust a company as bad as this with your own business.