154 Southgate Street, Gloucester
GL1 2EX, United Kingdom
+44(0)844-583-0777
Fasthosts was founded in 1999 and has been collecting awards for excellence in the hosting industry ever since. Fasthosts makes their home in Gloucester, in the heart of England, and offers shared Windows and Linux hosting, plus virtual and private server hosting services.
Review
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Pricing
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Fasthosts offers shared Windows and Linux hosting and virtual and dedicated servers. I chose a Linux hosting package that afforded me 5 gigabytes of space and unlimited bandwidth for $7.19 a month. Fasthosts runs about average in their pricing structure.
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Uptime
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I have a premium uptime monitor attached to my domain names and that’s what I used to track the uptime record of Fasthosts. Though I did see small periods of downtime, as referenced above, Fasthosts was dependable overall.
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Sales
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Fasthosts takes sales questions by email, telephone and FAX. I took to email, asking the reps a few questions about their shared hosting plan. It took a little longer than expected to hear back from Fasthosts—about 24 hours—but the answers to my questions were all there, and I found the experience to be a pleasant one. Unique to Fasthosts is that they will give UK residents a free telephone call back. Users need only fill out an online form with their telephone number and then await the call.
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Help & Support
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Support with Fasthosts was hit or miss. Offering support by phone, trouble ticket system and email, when Fasthosts does respond to questions or concerns, they’re fast and efficient—more than living up to their name. On many occasions, however, I got no response at all to my questions.
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Setup
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I purchased a shared hosting account from Fasthosts. The sign-up process was simple and straightforward, and my account was completely setup and ready to use within one hour of payment. Along with my invoice, I was sent a detailed letter from Fasthosts that laid out the specifics of my hosting plan and linked me to an area of their website that provided further setup instructions. Very smooth!
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Reliability
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I maintained an account with Fasthosts for a period of one year. Fasthosts’ server speed was excellent, and my website pages always rendered quickly. I did experience a few episodes of downtime and a period of four days where my email server was down, making access to my email impossible.
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Billing
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Fasthosts takes PayPal and all major credit cards. I paid for my hosting account with a credit card and was properly billed. I had no trouble with the billing department until it came to cancelling my account. I sent an email cancellation notice well in advance, but my credit card was charged the following month regardless. A call to the billing department seemed to clear up this issue..until the following month when I was once again charged for a service I was no longer using. Because you cannot deregister a credit card with Fasthosts, I was continually billed for three months until contacting my bank to put a block on Fasthosts, preventing them from being able to charge my account.
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Guarantee
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Terms of Service
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The Terms of Service for Fasthosts are online. Highlights include:
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Account cancellation must be requested 14 days prior to account renewal.
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Domain credits are non-refundable.
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Spam strictly prohibited.
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Bottom Line
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Advantages
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Average prices, plus discount offered during sign-up.
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Free sales and support telephone callback support in U.K..
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Reliable hardware.
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Disadvantages
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No uptime guarantee.
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No live chat support.
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Support is hit or miss.
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Billing department needs an overhaul.
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