FatCow Bio:
- Established: 1998
- Sites Hosted: 180,000+
- Location: Boston, MA
- Host Award: "Most Unique"
- Featured Package Price:
$3.15
/month- Storage Space:Unlimited
- Transfer/Bandwidth:Unlimited
- Setup Fee:Free
- Domain Name:1 Free
- Money-Back Guarantee:Anytime
- Uptime Guarantee:99.9%
- Free Website Builder:Yes
- Multiple Domains:Unlimited
- E-mail Accounts:Unlimited
- MySQL Databases:Unlimited
- Control Panel:VDeck
- Operating System:Linux
- Server Backups:Daily
- 24/7 Monitoring:Yes
- Wordpress
- Joomla
- Drupal
- Mambo
- b2 Evolution
- Coppermine
- osCommerce
- phpbb
- Ruby on Rails
- PHPMyAdmin
- Value for Money
- Reliability & Uptime
- Customer Courtesy
- Technical Support
- Features
- Storage Space
- Bandwidth
- Tech Response Time
- Ease of Use
- Server Speed
- Overall Score:
90%
- Our Total Rating:
- Number of User Reviews:
103
- Avg. User Rating:
Our Review of: FatCow
Overview:
"Udderly Fantastic", are the words to describe web hosting services at our #6 rated host, FatCow! FatCow, originated in New Mexico in 1998, currently with thousands of customers and growing strong, they offer a unique, but outstanding web hosting package. From their "Moo Crew" support, to "udderly fantastic" prices, quotas and features, FatCow is a dominating presence in the hosting arena. But don't let their "moo" slogans lead you to believe that their hosting services are any less than cutting-edge, which simply isn't the case.
Their 50,000+ customers are proof that FatCow will try their best to make you a satisfied customer and their "anytime" money-back guarantee proves this! Another plus these days, is FatCow recently went totally "green" in July 2009. All their servers are powered totally by wind energy, generated from windmills, creating no harmful emissions...
Pros:
- Unique but very knowledgeable hosting company.
- Powered totally by wind energy, making them 100% green.
- One of the cheapest hosting providers out there.
Cons:
- A little light on scripts active for each account.
Features & Specials:
FatCow believes in keeping things simple. That said, they offer a one stop hosting package, sure to cater to almost any web site owner and at a price that is "udderly" unbelievable! Their plan offers unlimited disk space and unlimited transfer allowances, free domain name for life, free setup, the ability to host unlimited domains per account, just to start!
They also offer unlimited e-mail accounts, unlimited domain pointing, free comprehensive site builder, web traffic analytics and a whole plethora of scripting resources. Some notable resources not offered with other competing plans, are MySQL, PHP, full CGI directory, Ruby-on-Rails and Python.
Now, for a limited time, they offer free marketing credits at Google and Yahoo! Search Marketing, to get your site noticed. They also offer unbeatable free support, by e-mail, toll-free phone, and live chat.
- Unlimited Domain Pointing.
- Frequently offer out heard of limited time pricing specials.
- Google and Yahoo! advertising credits with each new account.
Reliability & Speed:
With a 99% uptime guarantee, FatCow's reliability is second to none! They're connected via dual OC-48 connections to the world-wide web, ensuring lightning speed service for your web site and e-mail.
They also offer load balancing on all servers, which in short, minimizes site downtime by keeping a copy of your web site on an alternate live server, in the possibility of your main server outage. In addition to this, they also offer daily server backups, making the possibility of losing data almost non-existent. Rest assured the FatCow will keep on trucking, no matter what they throw at it.
Reliability & Speed Factors:
99.9%
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Dual OC-48
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Summary: Utilizes a unique load-balanced architecture, with failover protections. Very good Internet backbone connections help deliver fast loading pages. |
Support:
FatCow isn't bull when it comes to technical support and customer service! They offer all the bells and whistles of other major hosts and then some. Such as free toll-free phone support, which is US based (english speaking), free live chat and e-mail support and a comprehensive knowledge base, containing the most frequently asked support topics.
FatCow also pledges their own unique "HeiferCratic Oath" of customer service, which further distinguishes them from the rest of the pack in providing the utmost in customer support. A couple notable rules of the "Oath" are to call and welcome each new hosting customer within the first seven days of signing up and to answer any tech suppport calls in less than 2 minutes on average, among many other techniques to keep their customers happy and satisfied.
Average Support Wait Times:
5 seconds
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2 minutes
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Control Panel:
FatCow users can maintain their hosting accounts with software from H-Sphere. H-Sphere is a newer, comprehensive web site management tool that allows almost any modifications to your web site with ease. A few notable features of H-Sphere, are the ability to setup e-mail accounts, website statistics, manage databases, domains and employ and automate many different scripts. We also wanted to add that H-Sphere is tweaked up nicely by FatCow, which makes this control panel even easier to operate than usual.
Control Panel ScreenshotWhat sets them apart?
"Great Web Hosting, No Bull." - FatCow |
Their "udderly" low prices and unlimited storage/transfer allowances. |
Their "HeiferCratic Oath", which is FatCow's pledge of great customer support and satisfaction. |
Totally "green" web hosting. Their servers are powered totally by wind energy! |
Summary:
FatCow as chosen as our #6 rated web host, because of their no bull, simple policy to making web hosting fun and easy. We also rated them top "Unique" host on the list, due to their environmental awareness and comical "moo" slogans. Too often these days, Internet companies seem to forget about the footprint they place on the environment, but not FatCow, with their totally green web hosting, powered by wind energy.
Not to forget however, their great prices and huge account feature list, that are sure to convince you that FatCow is the "udderly" irresistible host for you. Check them out today and tell them we said "howdy"!
FatCow Ratings ChartScore: 90%
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FatCow User Reviews
- Value for Money
- Reliability & Uptime
- Customer Courtesy
- Technical Support
- Features
- Storage Space
- Bandwidth
- Tech Response Time
- Ease of Use
- Server Speed
Poor service
Review by: Anthony Raimondo - Acceleratingevolutionllc.com, from Newark, NJ
Poor security back up for your site, copy is backup once every two weeks. They take no responsibility if you site is hacked into. I now have two sites down and they are unable to repair a site they designed. Did not provide me with a backup. I have asked who is responsible for recreating the site and they gave me no answer. A service tech said, "Think of us as a mall if there is a fire in your store it is your problem." My reply was, "If you don't provide security an let anyone into the mall to start fires it is a result of you lack of security."
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Fatcow hosting
Review by: Anders, from Norfolk, VA
Very good niche hosting, for small to medium size sites. They are cheap, green and offer the features we want.
- Value for Money
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Not too bad!
Review by: Gregory, from Bismark, ND
I read some bad reviews for Fatcow, but from my experience they have been good and reliable to work with. The site was only done once for a brief while because of a network problem, but out of their hands. Other than that, I can't complain.
- Value for Money
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Good support
Review by: Nelson, from Bristol, TN
I had an issue with getting a domain name resolved to the right location and they were quick to get it fixed. No problems and definitely a good choice for me. A+
- Value for Money
- Reliability & Uptime
- Customer Courtesy
- Technical Support
- Features
- Storage Space
- Bandwidth
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- Ease of Use
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Fatcow
Review by: Vic, from Herndon, Va
Signed up with them a couple days ago. Quick account setup and got my domain live within minutes. Easy control panel also, than cpanel.
- Value for Money
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Limited to 250mgs
Review by: Beautiful Life, from USA
At first at FC you got a gig, could set your mailbox size, crashes were rare. Then came * unlimited email *only the size of the mailbox, 250mgb. The crashes, your mailbox stops sending , your friends start phoning saying they are getting mailbox full messages. I had to reopen my email box maybe 10 times . The average website is 50 a year , new at FC $66, older customers get charged $107 unless you complain. JUST OFFER EVERYONE THE SAME LOW PRICE, stop pandering to new, make staying worth the price, you wont have to scramble for new, people will stay.
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Fatcow
Review by: Rob, from Oakland, CA
Never had any issues with support, like folks below me said they did. For the price, you will not find an overall better deal for the money.
- Value for Money
- Reliability & Uptime
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Fat cow support
Review by: Garrison, from Pittsburgh
Contrary to the last review, I found Fatcow support to be pretty good, with quick response to questions. You have to remember that for less than 5 bucks a month, you can't expect white glove treatment. My site is always up and nothing I can think of to fuss about. I recommend.
- Value for Money
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Don't Use!
Review by: Xander, from usa
I have an image based website and I have found that each one of my pages take 3 min to load! This is a page that consists of thumbnails. If I wanted to build my site without the hosts tools I would of hired someone to make a superslick site that looked awesome, but All I wanted was a simple site of thumbnails. Fatcow makes my work look unprofessional. I am better off using Facebook and Bluecanvas and they are free. I am upset that I left Yahoo for this horrible service!
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Horrible site
Review by: dissapointed, from sacramento
Do not use fat cow. There customer service is deplorable and they are very dishonest.