The number of hosting companies out there can make it tough for consumers to decide on which one they should go with, and that’s where I come in.
There’s so much to wade through when it comes to all of the different features, levels of support, plans, and more that it could drive a person crazy.
I use my personal knowledge on services that I’ve done test runs on, used for my clients, and my business. I have reviewed dozens of other hosting companies in the past.
Today’s review is going to cover FastComet, one of the lesser know hosting companies available.
Background
Let’s start with the company background!
FastComet was established over seven years ago and started by offering System Administration to business and private clients.
They’ve grown a lot since this beginning to be able to boast of having over 11,500 clients in over 70 countries.
Proud of their customer service they note that they’ve handled over 47,000 mail requests, over 142,500 live chats, and over 292,500 instant ticket updates.
They also pride themselves on having excellent standards in not allowing businesses that are involved with shady practices, like child pornography, scams, violence, intolerance of race or religion, viruses, and spam.
FastComet Plans and Pricing
There are a wide variety of plans available through FastComet, and they’ve recently reduced their pricing structure.
They offer Web Hosting, Cloud VPS Hosting, Dedicated Server Hosting, Open Source Hosting, WordPress Hosting, Joomla Hosting, Open Cart Hosting, and Social Engine Hosting accounts.
Web Hosting, WordPress Hosting, Joomla plans, Open Cart Hosting, and Social Engine Hosting are all very similar in their offerings.
These plans start at a little under three dollars with eCommerce plans hitting at a little under seven dollars.
The single website plan is the small plan and offers the ability to only host one website, have a free domain for life, unlimited traffic and 35 GB of SSD space.
The multiple website offering gives you the freedom to host several websites, a free domain for life, unlimited traffic, and 55 GB SSD space.
The eCommerce plan allows for multiple websites, free domain for life, unlimited traffic, unlimited SSD space, and free SSL. Each plan then has a varying level of additional features that go with each level.
Cloud VPS Hosting plans start at a little under 50 dollars and goes up three levels to a plan that is a little under 130 dollars. The VPS Cloud 1 plan grants you a single 2.80 GHz CPU, 1 GB RAM, 24 GB SSD Space, and 2 TB bandwidth.
Whereas the VPS Cloud 4 Plan gives you six of the 2.80 GHz CPU, 8 GB RAM, 192 GB SSD Space, and 8 TB bandwidth. The two plans between these two offer an increasing amount of features that can help fit your particular needs.
The additional perks and features offered with each plan will depend on the level of hosting you decide upon.
Dedicated Server Hosting starts at a little under 140 dollars and goes up three levels to a plan that’s a little under 420 dollars.
The DS 1 Plan offers four 2.80 GHz CPU, 4 GB RAM, 96 GB SSD Space, and 4 TB bandwidth. The DS 4 Plan offers 12 2.80 GHz CPU, 32 GB RAM, 768 GB SSD Space, and 20 TB bandwidth.
The two additional plans also fall between these two plans with varying levels that may better fit your actual needs. Each also has their own varying level of features offered.
The beauty of so many different levels of plans is that you’re able to go through to find the perfect level for your actual needs.
No one wants to pay for more than he or she actually needs, so having several levels, especially when it comes to the Cloud VPS and Dedicated Server Hosting, can be very helpful in keeping your costs to around where you want them for what you’re going to use.
Uptime
Uptime is a figure presented in a percentage of how reliable your website will be on a particular hosting company’s servers meaning how often your website may be unavailable to visitors.
Most hosting services promise a 99.9 percent uptime, and FastComet is no different. The difference for many of these companies is whether or not they’re able to uphold this percentage for their customers as some services may not deliver.
When it comes to FastComet, it appears that they’re able to keep a 99.98 percentage per my research and observations. This is a tad above the guarantee, so that’s sure to please users.
Satisfaction
FastComet has a very decent money back guarantee in that they offer a 45-day money back guarantee. While this isn’t the industry’s longest period for a money back guarantee, it’s a very respectable number.
Many services offer a 30-day guarantee, so FastComet does give you some time to evaluate whether or not you like their service.
They will give users a full refund for valid cancellation requests that meet the guidelines. This does not go for renewals, and if you go past the refund period, you will not receive a prorated refund.
Not only does the money back guarantee fall under the banner of satisfaction for many interested people, but the support that’s offered plays a big role in how happy people can be with their hosting service.
They offer live chats, email, and support ticket support, and doing a search online with how satisfied people are with support shows an overwhelming number of people happy with response times.
In fact, there were reports of some users getting responses back to their questions through support tickets in under 10 minutes. That’s pretty impressive considering how many customers they serve.
There’s always going to be some that aren’t happy with how their particular issue was handled, but the majority of users online seem very happy with FastComet’s customer support.
They also have tutorials available in a variety of topics including WordPress, Dolphin, Joomla, and Magento.
Features
If you’re looking for features that are going to help you pick FastComet over competitor hosting services, they certainly have quite a few to crow about for their customers.
They offer fast speeds, a large number of freebies, advance caching mechanism, backups, and security monitoring to name a few.
Backups is a nice feature as many hosting services make you pay for this feature. You have both daily and weekly backups. This is a good feature to have if you’re not familiar with it as it helps to keep a saved copy of your website at that particular point which comes in handy if something goes wrong with it.
Say you install something that doesn’t work just right; you can go back to your backup and have your website back to how it was before the funky installation.
One of the very cool freebies offered is the free domain hosting. You pick your domain, and rather than having to pay the yearly renewal fee as you do with many of the other hosting services that offer a free domain, they pick up the renewal tab. This is pretty great for your purposes.
Another feature that’s pretty outstanding is that you’ve got a chance to get your hosting for free by offering referrals to the service to your friends. Even if you only get one friend to sign up, you still get a nice break from paying your shared hosting fee for three months.
Drawbacks
We all wish that the services that we use are 100 percent positive, but that’s almost impossible. There’s always going to be some drawbacks to a service that’s being used no matter if it’s a hosting service or going to your favorite weekly restaurant.
To provide the most well-rounded review to allow you to make an educated decision, I’ve included what I’ve deemed potential issues that some may have with this hosting company.
- The first is that although the money back guarantee is for longer than other services, it does have the potential drawbacks in that renewals don’t fall under this, and partial refunds are not processed.
- Another potential downfall for some developers is that Ruby on Rails is not supported by this hosting service. This can be a very popular open source web application framework and may be a deal breaker for some.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Variety of hosting and plans options
- 99.9 percent uptime
- Huge offering of features
- 45-day money back guarantee
- No contract required
- Renewal price does not go up
- Divine customer support
- Fast websites
- Free tutorials on a large number of subjects
- Weekly site backups
- Security monitoring
- Policy on what materials allowed on servers
- Domain hosting for life
- Free hosting opportunity
Cons
- Some drawbacks to cancellation policy
- Doesn’t support Ruby on Rails
Recommendation
My overall recommendation on FastComet Hosting is that for the starting price, and the fact that you can keep that price for a renewals is highly recommended for just about everyone, from big business to individuals with hosting needs.
There are plenty of positive features that makes this hosting service very comparable to what’s being offered throughout the web, but you really can’t go wrong with the pricing strategy.
The domain hosting, tutorials, speed, backups, security monitoring, and other features is the icing on the cake for this hosting company. The wide number of hosting options makes this an ideal choice for just about any purpose.