Fasthosts web hosting service (Fasthosts.co.uk)

Member Name: julwhite

Product:	Fasthosts.co.uk
Date:	22/04/08 (119 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Superb service

Disadvantages: Appear to have bad reputation, but my experiences good

I've never seen a company so badly reviewed on dooyoo, so it with some trepidation that I would like to offer an alternative view. I hope I don't regret to say this, but my dealings with Fasthosts have been superb.

Fasthosts offer a wide range of services, but I use them as my provider of reseller accounts, which costs 50 pounds per month and which offers unlimited hosting without further charges, unless you require additional services or the domain name itself needs renewing.

I've read through all of the reviews which other users have placed and would just add my thoughts in each of the following categories.

BILLING:

Fasthosts's billing system is robust from my experience, and has never produced an incorrect charge. Charges are taken from the provided credit card and they have done so promptly, correctly and also all of their invoices are available on-line and are also e-mailed.

Although I've never had to query one of their bills as they have all been correct, compared to other web space providers in the past, the invoices are much clearer.

SERVICE AVAILABILITY:

The service has always to my knowledge been available. I have had no complaints of any down-time, nor have I ever had problems accessing any of my web-sites, any e-mail or any problems with FTP access. I do not run very large web-sites, so it may be true that larger site operators might struggle, but so far, they seem fine to me.

OFFERS:

I'm not sure if it is still running, but Fasthosts offered me 3 months of hosting free, with absolutely no charges. I found no fault with their service in this time, hence why I continued with the paid service. I have received offers before from other web providers, but none this generous.

SURCHARGES:

I was with HostEurope for a long time, and they surcharged all over the place. Their invoicing was terrible and I was once surcharged four thousand pounds after some sort of attack on a web-site. Fasthosts claim that they provide unlimited bandwidth, so that wouldn't have been a problem. I understand from their help-files that if a site is attacked, they might take it down whilst the problem is occuring, which seems a better solution than HostEurope and their surcharges.

CUSTOMER SERVICE:

I had a problem with a domain name, which wasn't Fasthosts fault, it was the fault of a previous registrar. Fasthosts's customer service response times were the best I've ever experienced from a provider, sometimes responding within seconds. Some of the responses were full of poor grammar, but this wasn't important, it was important my query was resolved, which it was. The customer service was way above average, but I've only had one query.

COST:

I've previously used Corpex and HostEurope for my domain name registration and site hosting over the last ten years. Fasthosts works out much cheaper than Corpex and cheaper than HostEurope. HostEurope charge fees for each site held with them, which Fasthosts don't, and HostEurope's surcharges are much higher.

SITE HELP:

The Fasthosts site has a comprehensive help section which I've used when I was trying to change the tags from my previous provider. I had no problems with the help offered, and thought that the support site was userful and kept up-to-date.

Overall, although this sounds like an advertisement in places, I have been very impressed with Fasthosts. It may be that previous problems have meant their customer service is acutely aware of needing to respond quickly to problems, or maybe they've lost trade and are trying to build back up.

It may well be that I suddenly find myself in a position where Fasthosts let me down, but for the moment, their service over the last six months has been the best I've had from any web-space provider in the last ten years.

Summary: The best web-site hosting experience I've had