Jimmy ParkerFastComet
FastComet is a web hosting company that offers fast, reliable, and secure hosting services. It has a wide range of hosting options, including shared hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated servers, and more. It provides 24/7 customer support, free domain registration and transfer, free website migration, and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
3.7
Pros
- Reliable and secure hosting services
- Wide range of hosting options
- 24/7 customer support
- Free domain registration and transfer
- 30-day money-back guarantee
Cons
- Higher renewal rates
Table of Contents
About FastComet
FastComet, a web hosting provider, was founded in 2013. It’s privately-owned and headquartered at San Francisco, California.
As of 2018, they reportedly power more than 50,000 websites all over the world. At about the same time, they’re also said to employ around 70 employees in their offices (remember, they’re just a small company).
FastComet currently has 8 data centers strategically located around the globe. They have 3 in the US (one is in Chicago, works well for US and Canada website hosting), 3 in Europe (one is in London, for your UK web hosting requirements), 1 in Singapore (also great for Australian website hosting needs), and 1 in Tokyo.
In this post, we’re going to take up their shared cloud hosting offers one by one.
Pricing
1. FastCloud
This is FastComet’s basic/ starter plan. It’s currently priced at $3.95 per month but its regular price (also its renewal price) is $9.95 per month. You’re allowed just 1 website with this package and it comes with 15GB SSD storage space. You’ll also get unlimited bandwidth with it equivalent to 25,000 visits per month.
The FastCloud plan also includes a 2-core CPU, RAM of 2GB, and 1 free site migration.
2. FastCloud Plus
This is FastComet’s recommended plan for growing websites. This package will cost you $5.95 per month if you get it now. Its regular and renewal rates are computed at $14.95 per month. This package is more powerful than their startup plan and you’re allowed to host an unlimited number of websites with it.
You’ll get 25GB storage space with this package along with unlimited bandwidth for 50,000 visitors per month. The package also comes with a 4-core CPU, 3GB RAM, and 3 free site transfers.
3. FastCloud Extra
You can get FastComet’s most expensive plan for $9.95 per month as an introductory price (its regular price is $19.95 per month. Like their FastCloud Plus plan, this package also includes unlimited websites.
This plan comes with 25GB storage space and unlimited bandwidth that can accommodate about 100,000 visits per month. You’ll also get a 6-core CPU, 6GB RAM, and 3 free site migrations with it.
Here are some things to keep in mind with regards to FastComet’s pricing plans:
- FastComet’s cheapest plan (FastCloud) only carries the most important features (basic) to running a website.
- Their 2 more expensive plans (FastCloud Plus and FastCloud Extra) come with more advanced features (including a rocket booster, a speed enhancer).
- The main differences between the plans lie in the number of websites allowed, storage spaces, bandwidth, CPU core, RAM, and the number of free site migrations.
- All of FastComet’s plans have unlimited bandwidth features. However, this unlimited feature comes with a fair usage clause – that’s why there’s a limit as to the number of visitors allowed per month.
- Note that the number of visits per month listed above is just an estimate as to the number of visitors each plan can accommodate (approximately). It’s just a number to give you an idea.
- All plans come with unlimited MySQL databases.
- All plans get free SSL certificates through FastComet’s partnership with Let’s Encrypt.
- All plans can use FastComet’s CDN feature (to access servers located in different parts of the world).
- FastComet is using SSD drives which is more powerful (and faster) than traditional HDD drives.
Support
FastComet has people (human) support available 24/7 for all their customers. It’s all very simple – you can contact them via e-mail (ticketing), live chat, and phone.
They also have the standard knowledge base of articles, guides, and tutorials on their official site. Just go there if you’re into troubleshooting and finding answers on your own.
What we like about FastComet’s customer service is that they’re quick to respond. Common problems (common for them, that is) can usually be resolved in about 10 minutes give or take a few.
It’s also worth noting that their customer support team is made up of people who know what they’re talking about (they know the ins and outs of FastComet hosting). You’ll find them to be friendly and helpful, so don’t be afraid to reach out to them for your concerns at any time of the day.
Pros
1. Superb customer support
Their customer service gets a thumbs up from us mainly because they’ve managed to provide several avenues for communication 24/7. Also, their response times are quick!
2. Great uptime record
FastComet’s reputation says that you can count on them to keep your site online all the time (99.9% of the time is their commitment).
3. They’re fast
They have lots of features to optimize speed such as the use of SSD and option to use CDN (through your control panel). Speed is important for positive user experience and SEO as well. Because if you don’t know it yet, site visitors tend to leave sites that take too long (more than 3 seconds) to load. Search engines frown on slow sites too – so this will also affect your site’s rankings.
4. Choice of data centers
With FastComet, you can pick which data center to use for your website/s. Note that other web hosts don’t allow for this (they’ll be the one to assign data centers for your sites).
5. Advanced security features
Their plans include A LOT of security features for free (things that other hosting providers charge fees for). These include SSL certificates, daily backups, firewall, malware scanning, malware removal, brute-force protection, and more.
6. 1-click install features
FastComet uses Softaculous for 1-click installations of today’s most popular platforms (e.g. WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, PrestaShop, and more).
7. Lots of payment methods
Should you decide to get a plan from FastComet, you can pay via PayPal and major credit cards (e.g. Visa, MasterCard, Discover, etc.).
8. Options for payment.
You can choose to pay monthly, yearly, biennially, or triennially.
9. Free site migrations
All of FastComet’s plans include free site migrations. So, if you already have a website or multiple websites, you can transfer these to FastComet and they’ll help you out. While their cheapest plan only allows for 1 free transfer, their more expensive plans allow for up to 3 free site migrations. You can transfer more, of course, but they’ll charge you a fee.
10. They use standard cPanel
FastComet is using the standard control panel, so there’s no need for you to learn a new thing when you get your hosting from them.
11. Money-back guarantee
While the standard money-back guarantees for hosting providers is 30 days, FastComet is giving its users up to 45 days to cancel their plan and get a refund. This will give you ample time to test their products and services before making your final decision of staying with them. Of course, you always have the option to cancel after the said time frame (but that will render their money-back guarantee useless).
Cons
1. No uptime guarantees
This is a bit weird – as uptime guarantees are common among hosting companies. However, in the case of FastComet, their lack of an uptime guarantee doesn’t mean that your site will experience a lot of downtimes. Fortunately, in their over 5 years of existence, they were able to maintain an uptime record of 99.9%.
2. There’s a setup fee
If you’re going to pay monthly, know that you’ll need to pay a setup fee of $19.95 (one-time only). If you want to by-pass this fee, you can choose to pay 1 year, 2 years, or 3 years in advance. Paying on those longer terms will automatically waive the setup fees.
Conclusion
Looking at the pros and cons will tell you that FastComet is more than OK. Even their lack of uptime guarantee is forgivable as they have a reputation for keeping the sites under their hosting service online 99.9% of the time (on average).
We also like their speed and customer support features – they’re both great on these 2 important factors in web hosting. And their security measures are also commendable – they even include free daily backups on their cheapest plan. Of course, their more expensive plans get more frequent backup times and a lot more security features.
All in all, we can say that FastComet’s cheapest plan is not as weak as other web host’s starter packages. It even includes free site migration for 1 website. If we’re going to talk about value for money, know that FastComet has it.
With FastComet, you also get to assign the data centers for your websites. This is not a common practice as other companies will assign the location of servers for your sites. So, if you’re particular about this and want to target certain locations for your site visitors, this feature will prove to be useful to you.
Hey, FastComet really makes for a fine choice for a web hosting company. We highly recommend it and we urge you to take advantage of their 45-day money-back guarantee. Try them now and we’re betting on it that you won’t need to use their money-back guarantee anyway.