I have been using Fast Hosts for hosting for about 4 years plus. During this time I have found the service to quite adequate. I know there seems to be a lot of bad reviews out there but this is not my overall experience with them. Occasionally there has been some glitches for me when uploading in the early hours but I presume this may be the time when they do maintenance. When I have had problems with the service I have emailed and phoned with enquiries and found the response to be good. My only gripe is that the control panel is not very user friendly for me.
Great value Web Hosting! Domains, email, web hosting & broadband. Check out our latest special offers! www.Fasthosts.co.uk/domains
As the name suggests, they are fast hosts. No problems with server or bandwidth when it comes to performance. UK based servers, which is good if your target audience are in the UK.
Security lock downs are not ecommerce friendly. I've currently lost nearly all visitors due to one of their rules.Customer service is around 30 minute call queue and can be shockingly bad depending on who you speak to.They have a history of taking my sites offline with little or no notice.Great when it works, but just cross your fingers and hope nothing goes wrong because it'll knock years off your life trying to deal with it.
I've had 3 sites with Fasthosts since the beginning of 2006.
Everything was great until recently and now I can't wait to leave them.Last year they changed passwords (due to a security breach!) to absolutely everything, i.e. database, FTP, email, etc. with just one email to advise two weeks prior.
Because I'd failed to read the email properly, my site was taken offline for hours as it couldn't login to the database. Since then, they've gone a bit mental with security lock downs and no longer support a various functions required by ecommerce sites. I, of course, didn't find this out until they managed to take my site offline again.
Not only this, but now I can't rewrite my URLs properly using the .htaccess file which means I have to wait to have my site completely reindexed by the search engines. I've lost virtually all sales from one site since this occurred.Another of my sites was on a problematic server. The PHP engine died constantly (several times every day) and required a call to Fasthosts every time to have their 3rd line restart it. An unreliable site is bad enough, but when you have to spend 30 minutes (yes!) in a phone queue every time it happens, it becomes extremely frustrating. Not only this, but it is very hit and miss as to whether you get somebody who knows what they are doing answering the phones. The knowledgeable ones are good, but the bad ones are appalling and have to have everything explained slowly and in very basic terms as they have no idea what you're talking about.I'm currently looking for another host to transfer my sites over ASAP.
Fasthosts, offer one of the cheapest UK based hosting plans on offer, available on Unix or Windows all plans of which there are 3 basic types, Home, Developer and Business are at the time of writing being offered at half price and with a £50 MSN adCenter voucher thrown in for good measure. Our testers found their service to be very satisfactory all round, with short download times (0.55s for a page size of 250kb) based on a connectivity of 3064 kbps and no down time or customer service problems to note.
Control Panel, the Fasthosts Control Panel proved to be simple to use, and featured a well equipped site builder designed to get you started with only a very rudimentary knowledge of web design.
Support, comes in the form of 24/7 phone and Email support with qualified personnel on hand to deal with whatever problems arise. It should be noted that this is one of the areas which Fasthosts have in the past been criticised, but for the time being at least that problem seems to have been ironed out.
Bandwidth, each of Fasthosts packages comes with unlimited bandwidth, so you can be sure to never exceed your allowances an incur additional costs.
Up Time, Fasthosts provide no uptime guarantee an area that has plagued them in other reviews especially customer feedback, although during our month of testing we encountered no problems with website unavailability.
E-Commerce, Fasthost provide SSL at an additional cost, but an alternative great feature they offer is their merchant account, a package which stops you having to apply for a visa merchant number whilst still allowing you to take credit card payments on line.
In conclusion Fasthosts offer good basic packages which are easily upgradeable with feature such as MySQL, SSL, SEO and more advanced Email functionality such as MS Exchange.
Home Package 1.5 GB Storage, Unlimited Bandwidth Was £3.99 Now £1.99
Developer Package 4 GB Storage, Unlimited Bandwidth Was £7.99 Now £3.99
Business Package 10 GB Storage, Unlimited Bandwidth Was £15.99 Now £7.99
As the name suggests, they are fast hosts. No problems with server or bandwidth when it comes to performance. UK based servers, which is good if your target audience are in the UK.
 
Security lock downs are not ecommerce friendly. I've currently lost nearly all visitors due to one of their rules.Customer service is around 30 minute call queue and can be shockingly bad depending on who you speak to.They have a history of taking my sites offline with little or no notice.
Great when it works, but just cross your fingers and hope nothing goes wrong because it'll knock years off your life trying to deal with it. 
 
I've had 3 sites with Fasthosts since the beginning of 2006. 
Everything was great until recently and now I can't wait to leave them.Last year they changed passwords (due to a security breach!) to absolutely everything, i.e. database, FTP, email, etc. with just one email to advise two weeks prior.
 
Because I'd failed to read the email properly, my site was taken offline for hours as it couldn't login to the database. Since then, they've gone a bit mental with security lock downs and no longer support a various functions required by ecommerce sites. I, of course, didn't find this out until they managed to take my site offline again. 
 
Not only this, but now I can't rewrite my URLs properly using the .htaccess file which means I have to wait to have my site completely reindexed by the search engines. I've lost virtually all sales from one site since this occurred.Another of my sites was on a problematic server. The PHP engine died constantly (several times every day) and required a call to Fasthosts every time to have their 3rd line restart it. An unreliable site is bad enough, but when you have to spend 30 minutes (yes!) in a phone queue every time it happens, it becomes extremely frustrating. Not only this, but it is very hit and miss as to whether you get somebody who knows what they are doing answering the phones. The knowledgeable ones are good, but the bad ones are appalling and have to have everything explained slowly and in very basic terms as they have no idea what you're talking about.I'm currently looking for another host to transfer my sites over ASAP.
 
Great value Web Hosting! Domains, email, web hosting & broadband. Check out our latest special offers! www.Fasthosts.co.uk/domains
Fasthosts, offer one of the cheapest UK based hosting plans on offer, available on Unix or Windows all plans of which there are 3 basic types, Home, Developer and Business are at the time of writing being offered at half price and with a £50 MSN adCenter voucher thrown in for good measure. Our testers found their service to be very satisfactory all round, with short download times (0.55s for a page size of 250kb) based on a connectivity of 3064 kbps and no down time or customer service problems to note.
Control Panel, the Fasthosts Control Panel proved to be simple to use, and featured a well equipped site builder designed to get you started with only a very rudimentary knowledge of web design.
Support, comes in the form of 24/7 phone and Email support with qualified personnel on hand to deal with whatever problems arise. It should be noted that this is one of the areas which Fasthosts have in the past been criticised, but for the time being at least that problem seems to have been ironed out.
Bandwidth, each of Fasthosts packages comes with unlimited bandwidth, so you can be sure to never exceed your allowances an incur additional costs.
Up Time, Fasthosts provide no uptime guarantee an area that has plagued them in other reviews especially customer feedback, although during our month of testing we encountered no problems with website unavailability.
E-Commerce, Fasthost provide SSL at an additional cost, but an alternative great feature they offer is their merchant account, a package which stops you having to apply for a visa merchant number whilst still allowing you to take credit card payments on line.
In conclusion Fasthosts offer good basic packages which are easily upgradeable with feature such as MySQL, SSL, SEO and more advanced Email functionality such as MS Exchange.
Home Package 1.5 GB Storage, Unlimited Bandwidth Was £3.99 Now £1.99
Developer Package 4 GB Storage, Unlimited Bandwidth Was £7.99 Now £3.99
Business Package 10 GB Storage, Unlimited Bandwidth Was £15.99 Now £7.99
