Buyer Beware! (Fasthosts.co.uk)

Member Name: farcehosts

Product:	Fasthosts.co.uk
Date:	28/05/01 (514 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, Easy to use, 24 hour help desk

Disadvantages: Hidden costs, Poor Support, No refund ever

More a webhost than a dial-up ISP. Fasthosts Webhosting Reseller accounts should be purchased with caution. They have an unwritten limit of 10GB per month data transfer per account and 2GB per site. If you exceed this limit you will get asked for an extortionate amount of money for them to continue to host your sites. If you refuse they close your account without refund for it or any additional services you may have purchased.

Their customer support is appaling with the staff hanging up on you should you wish to complain or speak to a manager.

Letters go unanswered.

Should you sell some space to someone and they then break fasthosts terms and conditions fasthosts will close your entire account not just your customers site.

The 24hour support desk will only log your problem after 6pm as the techys go home then. If the problem is a real problem the help desk won't be able to fix it.

Don't be fooled by the status page, it only logs a tiny fraction of the problems, many problems that effect everyone go unreported. The problems it does log often play down the problem and report it fixed before the problem is fully resolved.

The tech support people will often blame your scripts first and you will need good knowledge and be able to prove them wrong before they will issue you with a problem report no.

They will sometimes not help at all even though the fault is on the server and they will tell you that they will charge a fee (refundable if you are right) to investigate. Its quite easy to show the server is at fault by running your script on another server.

Please Please do a search on google groups before buying.

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=fasthosts&hl =en&lr=&safe=off&scoring=d

or visit the unofficial fasthosts user forum

http://communityzero.com/siteonsite

(fasthosts closed their forum due to the volume of people complaining)

The service they
offer appears to be good value, the website looks professional and promises good user support, do not be taken in.

If you can stick to the data transfer limits I have specified (ask fasthosts what the limits are and how many people they have had to close) don't mind your sites failing every week and you having to intervene to get them working again, then the account is fine. Otherwise steer well clear.

Please ask current /previous users questions before you hand over your money/credit card details.

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