To fasthosts or not to fasthosts that is the question.... (Fasthosts.co.uk)

Member Name: daninmanchester

Product:	Fasthosts.co.uk
Date:	07/08/06 (288 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: nice online control panel for both shared and dedicated hosting

Disadvantages: lack of customer service focus

I've used fasthosts for many years now and on the whole they have been reasonably good.

On the whole the services they provide are very reliable and flexible.

I probably manage more accounts and servers than most being a developer so I have a wider experience of dealing with them when things go wrong which is often where they fall down.

So be warned if you encounter any problems or issues they don’t take a customer service focus and you may struggle to get issues dealt with. They do not like to take responsibility for anything!! at all!! whatso ever!! go away!! we're busy!!

Take a simple example one of my clients sites that runs on their shared hosting plan. On one occasion this site was running painfully slowly so I reported this issue. The response I got back was to try rebooting the server. Anyone who knows anything about shared hosting knows that this is a nonsense answer and had they bothered to check the account details I provided they would have known this.

This is just one example of where their “extreme” support can be extremely pathetic and on the whole I would say their 1st line support is fairly poorly trained on the products they provide. Having said that with some strongly worded emails you do eventually get things sorted in an appropriate manner which is more than can be said for some providers I have had the misfortune to deal with.

Having worked in I.T. for so many years I'm well ajusted to hearing the "well it worked when I tried it", or "it worked last time I used it" but when it is a third party it is extremely frustrating as you can't sack the idiot causing you problems.

One thing you should do is pay careful attention to fasthosts terms and conditions as with all large faceless corporations like this you will get burnt if you miss something in the small print. They are set up as automated money making machines and so if you don’t know what you are doing and require something a bit beyond what they consider normal you will have problems.

So if you are looking for simple hosting solutions or dedicated hosting certainly don’t rule out fasthosts as their prices and service features are competitive. Just be aware that if you get into deep water and you don’t know what you are talking about (even if the problem is not your fault) you could end up paying out.

Summary: Competitive prices and features but far from customer focused