Fasthosts Internet Ltd.

URL: http://www.fasthosts.co.uk/
Description: Reseller hosting, shared hosting, Windows 2003, and Linux web hosting. Supports ASP.NET, ASP, PHP, Perl and CGI. Also provides ADSL broadband with free migration

Reviews (26):


 Don't choose FastHosts, you will regret it
Reviewer: Anonymous   2008-06-26
Fasthosts are a disaster, so care little about their customers and wouldn't be worth it, even if they were free. As a reseller like us, trapped with many sites, or someone wanting one, the stress and downtime caused by their stupid sudden changes and poor performance, will drive you crazy. Their support find it hard to understand even the most simple of tickets and will drive you mad. Just don't do it.... ever!

 Fasthosts are EVIL
Reviewer: Anonymous   2008-04-08
They started out good some 5 years ago. great speedy support and competitive prices. Now they arent competitive anymore and they screw you over with £20 charges!! Avoid like the plague itself. I paid my hosting late believeing I wouldnt be charged £20 as i have domain names renewing with them. Same day email saying they gonna charge me £20 for paying late!!! I take my card off the account quick sharp so they cant get it - now they gonna stop my hosting and charge me £20 for not paying the £20 !!!!! This company are either evil or in real financial trouble and are using this scam as business model to get themselves out of it!! Im taking them to court. AVOID THEM!!!!!!!!

 Fasthosts customer service is appauling and expensive.
Reviewer: Anonymous   2007-12-18
I would like to add my feelings of frustration and disgust to the thousands of messages currently doing the rounds on web forums re: Fasthosts customer care service. I understand that the company is currently going through a difficult time and as a result, demand for customer care is running high, but no company in 2007 can expect customers to wait for literally hours on phone lines, being charged premium rate 0870 fees simply to speek to an operator. The automated email service that they offer as an alternative is simularly unsatisfactory. To advertise a \\\'24/7\\\' Customer Care service as they do is false advertising. In my own case, I waited for over an hour at 3am on hold for service, only to move from 41 to 20 in the queue. I had to call from abroad on a mobile. I waited for so long that my phone eventually ran out of batteries. Luckily I found a standard rate phone number to call them on, otherwise it would have cost hundreds of pounds for nothing. If Fasthosts really were caring for customers, they would allocate the extra revenue currently generated via the 0870 helpline to human resources and staff the phones properly. If you do need to call Fasthosts, call their standard rate phone lines on 01452 541499 or 01452 541250 and save yourself a packet. Better still, do like so many others and leave for a better service.

 Fasthosts or Hotel California?
Reviewer: catherine c.   2007-08-20
You can check out any time you like but you can never leave. Fasthosts have just taken an unauthorised £206.67 from my credit card as an advance payment for a service which I do not want, and in fact have never used. I paid the same last year, signed up for a years hosting, and then received terrible service from their helpdesk. My website never got off the ground. I kissed that lump of cash goodbye and resolved never to renew my subscription. This year, instead of informing me in advance that the payment for the following year was due, they simply took it instantly from my credit card, without asking. Now they say that because I didn\\\'t cancel in advance, they won\\\'t give me a refund of the unauthorised payment for the coming year. I am contacting my credit card company, trading standards, and the press. I will also be blogging about them. Be warned. Sign up at your peril. They may be fast, but this is sharp practice at its worst.

 Do not g near them!!!
Reviewer: mulverine76   2007-08-15
I have been with fasthosts for many years but recently, their billing practices and customer services have taken a definite turn for the worse. After having my wallet stolen, my card details on the fasthosts website were not up to date. Not realising my hosting account was due, fasthosts tried to bill my card, then when it failed, charged me £23 \\\'debt recovery fee\\\'. After many emails trying to cancel my account or get a refund for this fee, fasthosts were simply not interested and refused to give me a refund. This was for a product that I was paying 12 months in advance for, hadn\\\'t yet received and no longer wanted. They didn\\\'t care - I had to pay with no refund. They gave me 3 months free to keep me happy. They also claim they sent emails reminding me about my card - none of which I received, but they didn\\\'t believe me. Then again, a few months later I saw that 2 of my domains had been automatically renewed - payment taken straight from my card. I didn\\\'t want these renewed without prior notification and again they said emails had been sent - they hadn\\\'t. They also won\\\'t refund the payments even though it was taken 30 days before the domain expires. Be careful with your domains and account renewals. Fasthosts automatically take payment UNLESS you opt out. AND they charge you a fee if your cards are out of date. AND they don\\\'t send reminder emails! AND they don\\\'t give refunds once paid! Needless to say I won\\\'t EVER, EVER go near fasthosts again and will advise everyone not to go near them with a barge pole.

 The trouble with Fasthosts
Reviewer: 121 Net Design   2007-08-03
We have been a Fasthosts reseller, for over 5 years and have over 100 domains, both windows and linux based. We originally went with them in 2002 as there wasn\\\'t that many hosts around and they were advertising themselves as \\\'UK\\\'s No 1 Host\\\' in .Net mag (I belive they still do!). However, as the internet has progressed, I believe Fasthosts have gone downhill and charge for any possible extra they possibly can. As many of you proably are aware, many web applications now are open source, based on Linux and require a MySQL database. As a reseller, already paying almost £0 a month with the vodka and tonic, each Linux domain is an extra £10 a year and the database and extra £30 a year!!!! Looking around the net at other hosts, these seem to be included in a much cheaper monthly fee. Also, things like controls panels, branding etc etc are all extra with Fasthosts and included with many other hosts. We are looking for another host and dreading the changeover, but it has to happen. You would have thought that FastHosts would have recognided the change in the internet, looked at the competitors and reviewed their prices, but no. We have broadband connections with them for some of our customers, but that is a whole topic in itself!!!!! Anyone in the similiar situation we are and have any recommendations for a replacement host?

 DO NOT USE THEM UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!
Reviewer: Anonymous   2007-07-24
They have absolutely no support whatsoever, and are ridiculously expensive, especially considering how cheap and good US hosting services are. Anything you ask (even if it\\\'s their fault) and they will charge £70 on your credit card immediately. Without doing any work. Yes. That\\\'s right. It\\\'s called \\

 The full low down on Fasthosts
Reviewer: Fasthosts Reseller   2007-04-24
Ok, we have been a fasthosts reseller for nearly three years, we have 60+ domains hosted on their platform and have experience of pretty much every product they sell as well as customer service and business practises over a long period. We initally went with them because of the sheer range and flexiblity of services that are easy to bolt-on to websites as and when needed, plus a reliability which was excellent. Over the last few months in particular there has been a marked decline across the board (although down time is still very low indeed): penalties charges for missed payments that far outweigh the value of the missed payment; difficulty getting a refund or cancelling services; tech support and customer service staff that hang up and wont put you on to a manager; sites that are inexplicably slow; problems that they deny exist; blogs that dont work at all; a spam filter (that you pay for) that misses most spam; terms and conditions that materialise from nowhere. We are now sick of them...but guess what? Its extremely hard to leave when you have 60 domains, all configured differently. Fasthosts have us over a barrel and there is very little we can do about it. If we miss a handful of payments on just one domain (as we did recently when our credit card was defrauded), they can shut the whole lot down. 60 companies websites and email just stops working. Needless to say, I now wish we had never heard of them.

 Is there actually anybody there?? They are AWFUL!!!
Reviewer: Christine Hurst   2007-03-15
I have a small business which has a website hosted by Fasthosts. I have been having a problem and have e-mailed through their

 Don\\\'t use them if you have a website with a database
Reviewer: Anonymous   2007-01-03
I have a website with Fasthosts that accesses a mysql database and too often the you cant access the database at all (\\

 FASTHOSTS: Illegal Charging
Reviewer: Anonymous   2006-11-27
Well I\\\'m sure you are all of just how poor Fasthosts has been lately, their terrible customer service team and their rude technical support team. Now they are making illegal charges to customer\\\'s credit cards. £23.50 for debt recovery / late payment or what ever you prefer to call it. Well this charge is illegal. If you ask Fasthosts for a refund they will of course refuse. But if your pursue if through court action you will get a refund. Alternatively report them to your credit card. I am not 100% dedicated to posting and informing as many people as I can of how this charge is illegal and how to get a refund. If your pursuse if through the court Fasthosts have to pay costs. Stay clear of FH, they are appalling. The more people that leave, the better. There are other much better hosting companies out there.

 Good, fast and reliable webhosting ... BUT NO LEAVING!
Reviewer: James Styles   2006-11-26
I found that the setup was very smooth, and within a matter of minutes my account was ready for use. Their control panel is very extensive and useful, providing everything that you would possibly need to administer your website. However, for one reason or another, I soon came to the conclusion that they were not the right webhosting company for me, and so i decided to close my account. I must have navigated around every page I could find in their control panel at least a dozen times trying to find an \\

 The initial set-up was easy via their control panel.
Reviewer: DebugDave   2006-02-15
The initial set-up was easy via their control panel. They have always responded to queries quickly and accurately. The site contains useful FAQs and techie documents to help you. I recently moved from MS Access to Mysql and they had an article on how to get your data uploaded (restore/backup)..made it easy. My site is under construction, but I'm in there a lot via ftp and there's only been a couple of times when connections were refused. Not Bad! They have an issues board with current system problems.

 Fasthosts do offer a fairly reliable service, with good uptime.
Reviewer: Iain   2006-02-15
Fasthosts do offer a fairly reliable service, with good uptime. BUT, they don't appear to respond very well or quickly to enquiries. The various packages are fairly competitively priced, but features which are standard with most other hosts come at a premium. Additionally, it would appear that individual customers do, on occasion, get a better deal that those on a reseller package. It sometimes feels as if Fasthosts are trying to price their own resellers out of the market. I would definitely recommend Fasthosts if you just want to set up the occasional site, but I'd advise potential resellers to shop around. I certainly intend to.

 Good, Good Good!
Reviewer:    2006-02-13
I was really pleased when i used this, it has so much included in the package and such good support!

 Fasthosts Review
Reviewer: Anonymous   2006-01-29
As above, extra charges for ASP.NET etc etc, benefit is that it's all windows based, and linux is extra, which is unusual. You can gain read access to the C: drive of the windows servers via perl, which I am no expert but to me this seems wrong and a security issue, fasthosts don't seem bothered. If your looking for something basic then sure, fasthosts are good, better than other major UK hosting companies. Good control Panel. Support is fast and always avaliable most of the time, though they can be long winded and usually tell you nothing new (and like all corporations don't read the history and repeat themselves). So Long as everything is simple and problem free then they seem quite good.

 OK!
Reviewer: neovoman   2006-01-29
For small businesses, setting up a reliable and dependable email system is often a headache. For large organisations, running extensive email systems based around Microsoft Exchange or other business email programs can be time consuming and expensive. Virtually all internet service providers include basic email with their business and consumer services, but these email accounts have limitations, such as small mailbox sizes or restrictions on the number of users. Another disadvantage is that they do not support the collaboration tools that business email systems offer. Web hosting company Fasthosts has now launched an alternative, which sits between the two established options of using an internet provider's email accounts, and running mail servers in-house. The company is offering Microsoft Exchange email, but with the software hosted on its servers. Companies can manage the set-up and administration of their email through the internet, and browse messages either using Microsoft Outlook - which is included in the cost - or through web mail. Microsoft Exchange web mail is an incredibly powerful tool, making it especially useful for businesses whose staff have to travel frequently. All you need to view your emails is a web browser (Livemail Pro works best with Explorer but runs well enough with alternatives such as Apple's Safari) and an internet connection. Users can log on and access their mailboxes, and also share calendars and address books. Alternatively, Livemail Pro supports access across the web for users running Outlook on their PCs. This gives them the flexibility to work on messages offline - valuable for laptop users, in particular - combined with the security and reliability of keeping messages on a central server. In contrast to running an Exchange server locally, though, the Fasthosts system runs well on almost any internet connection. Not all internet providers allow their customers to run servers, and not every small business would want the expense, and security risks, of doing so anyway. One of the greatest benefits of Livemail Pro is that it works in an almost identical fashion to a standard Exchange account. Fasthosts also provides an automatic script that IT managers can use to configure their computers, which makes setting up the system very simple indeed. Admittedly, we encountered some problems when setting up a test account but these were down to the way an ISP had set up an internet domain, rather than to Livemail Pro itself. It is very hard to fault the way Livemail Pro works on a day-to-day basis. The standard mailbox is 100MB, which should be enough for most people, and users can buy more space if they need it. Perhaps the only real flaw in the system is that running a hosted, rather than a local, Exchange system makes backup a little more difficult. In effect, users have to back up their own mailboxes - which they should be doing, anyway - but Microsoft Windows Server 2003 offers extensive support for automatic backups. Although Fasthosts has its own backup systems in place to make sure that customers do not lose data, businesses using Livemail Pro will find it necessary to set up policies for archiving mailbox data. Unless they can rely on their users to do this, they may need to install server and backup software locally. But at current pricing, Livemail Pro would seem a very attractive alternative to buying and running Exchange in house.

 Poor
Reviewer: Anonymous   2006-01-29
Total waste of money. Very attractive website, seemingly very good deals, but beware! 1) The description of the Home Users account makes untrue and unwarranted claims, such as "Many advanced services included at no extra cost", "No hidden charges", and "Flat Monthly fee +VAT". Once you've paid your money, you'll find out that the services which attracted you to FastHosts will cost you extra money on top of your flat rate fee. 2) The tech support people are unreliable and untrustworthy. I e-mailed them about the above issue, and also about the "Advanced Password Protection" facility, which was listed among the features when I purchased my account, but then disappeared within a week. When I questioned them about this, they lied "As for the URL security this is not even offered on the personal account and never has been, this is only available on Business and reseller account." The only way I could confirm that they'd advertised this previously was by checking Google's cached copy of the page! I'm reporting these guys to the Office of Fair Trading. You'll not get what was promised nor will you get straight or truthful answers. Cheating companies like these shouldn't be allowed to trade. Take your custom elsewhere!

 Very Poor!
Reviewer: Anonymous   2006-01-29
Right, where do I start. Their reseller interface is excellent, simple and easy to use but beware of all the hidden charges. For £60 a month for unlimited everything your proberly thinking you have a steal. But if only that were true. First of all, they have loads of hidden charges like for each individual control panel you have for a clients domain it costs you £5. And for one SQL database you are charged £25 a month, I mean come on. Then lets start with the unlimited space and bandwidth, I had a lot of high traffic personal sites so I decided I thought I would try fasthosts out. A few days after my sites are running they start shutting them down indivudually, one by one and sending an email to me that these sites have abused their terms and conditions and that the matter is only up for discussing via abuse@fasthosts.co.uk (which they never check, let alone reply). So I phone them up as my 2 most popular web sites are offline and my customers want to know why, they explain that I can not talk to anyone over the phone as the matter can only be disputed via the abuse email address. They would not even tell me what part of the terms and conditions those sites had broken. In other words they only like to host sites that get around 1000-2000 visitors a month and as seen as they cant legaly tell you this because they advertise unlimited banwidth and space they just shut down your sites for no reason and tell you that that they have broken their terms and conditions of which they wont even tell you what part you have broken. Fasthosts are a con, keep well clear. They should be featured on watchdog! Stay clear!

 good!
Reviewer: rozbeh   2006-01-29
Despite the endless abuse I read in forums, vhats and newsgroups regarding Fasthosts.co.uk I have been using the reseller account for around 3 months now with no major problems. Although the uptime is not the best and I have suffered from a few hours downtime, for the price I could not expect much more. The telephone technical support is excellent, the e-mail support is average and the options available are very very useful. The personal control panels are excellent and the download speeds and PINGS are average. I have looked at other alternatives like DonHost but I still believe fasthosts is one of the best around.

 Very Bad!
Reviewer: farcehosts   2006-01-29
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.

 3 Rating
Reviewer: Anonymous   2006-01-29
Fasthosts technical support..arrrg... Quick Glossary First: ASP - In this instance it stands for Active Sever Pages - a technology introduced by Microsoft to allow websites to make pages dynamic (i.e. they can change to show different information depending on the User, time of day, a quote of the week). The alternative meaning for ASP is Application Server Provider - this is not relevant in this opinion. Patch - This is a piece of software released by the software vendor to overwrite an existing problem in there software. Security Flaw - This allows people to access/modify parts of the website/webserver which they should not normally be allowed to view. This opinion is aimed ASP Developers using, or thinking of using fasthosts.co.uk The Story: Called them about 3 weeks ago informing them that many of their machines had not had all the relevant ASP (Active Server Pages) patches applied. The technical support lady replied "What's an ASP Patch", I replied "An Active Server Page Patch", she replies "What's a patch?"... At this point I sent an e-mail to them and listed 15 security faults (for a list of security issues with Microsoft's ASP go to www.4guysfromrolla.com). A week a go I called to find out why it takes so long to apply a patch on machine, and the response was "Why are you trying to find faults in our system?" Current Situation: Still 3 weeks on and the patches haven't been applied, although I've now got a techie contact there who is guiding my support request! I'd advice anyone who uses fasthosts for ASP purposes to check there site for security holes. To check your site.. http://www.mysite.com/apage.asp::$DATA - This will display your source code to the browser http://www.mysite.com/global.asa+.htr - View the source (Right Click - select view Source) if you can see your Co de you're in trouble. For further ASP security flaws visit http://www.4guysfromrolla.com/webtech/LearnMore/Security.asp

 good
Reviewer: Anonymous   2006-01-29
I've been using FastHosts for a while now to host several websites, including one which is database-driven and has a subscriber base of over 3,000...so it needs to be reliable and easily accessible! FastHosts have impressed me with the speed with which they have responded to problems - every host has them, so in my opinion the important thing is how quickly they're fixed! - and with their courteous approach. There's no attempt to make the problem sound like my fault, and the telephone operators on the helpline genuinely sound willing to help. Add to this the fact that their helpline is an (0845) number, making calls cheap, and the fact that every time I've called them (including several times before buying to test the service) they've answered the phone within 15 seconds, and you have a recipe for customer satisfaction. Their prices are competitive, so it's not as if you're paying over the odds for such a good service. I would recommend them anytime, and if you have several sites (or have a group of friends with sites), the opportunity to host unlimited numbers of sites through the reseller option at £500 per year looks better and better. [An update]...a slight hiccup in our relationship, although not (yet) enough to warrant changing the rating... We have been trying to run CGI scripts on Fasthosts, and have come up with a problem. Not surprising, since I am not a CGI expert. The problem is that otherwise reliable scripts seem to encounter slight problems when run with Fasthosts, and they only offer to help at their consultancy rate of £90/hour. This would not be so bad if we could ask around to see if other users have had similar problems. But Fasthosts have disabled their bulletin boards where users could swap messages because "some users abused the facility". Possibly because people were exchanging information about how to fix the problem, and doing Fasthosts out of consultancy fees ? That may be a conspiracy theorist at work, but the fact remains that we can only sort out our scripts for a minimum of £90... I'll continue to this op as and when I need to contact these guys again, so stay tuned...

 Very Poor!
Reviewer: Anonymous   2006-01-29
I bought my domain name and web space from Creative Technologies (London), which is a small company owned by Stuart Clark. Stu has a reseller account with Fasthosts, and in spite of a few initial problems (they tend to work on their servers at the most stupid times WITHOUT notifying the customers) I was quite happy with the service at first. But then last December they decided to migrate their servers to Win2000 - with fatal consequeces! Many clients of their resellers, including me, lost access to their mail server, their domain's DNS settings got messed up (i.e. when you type in the URL you get an error message because the files aren't where the DNS points to) and lost access to FTP. I contacted Creative Technologies who, at the time, were suffering from Fasthosts-induced downtimes as well. Stu reassured me that he was talking to Fasthosts but with no result. Instead, he was fobbed off with lame excuses even though they knew very well that he was a RESELLER and that all of HIS customers (among which there are organistations like The Kew Bridge Steam Engine Museum) would be hassling HIM with questions and complaints. If that's not lousy then I don't know what is! Oh yes and my site is still not up :( Terms: DNS means 'Domain Name System' and it's the way your Domain name (For example DooYou.co.uk) is connected to the address of the server where the site files are actually stored. Without this, you'd have to type in a number like 123.42.23.14 every time you go to a website (That's hard to remember, right?) FTP means 'File Transfer Protocol' and it is a fast and easy way to upload the files for your website through specific software like WS_FTP. If your website address is www.mysite.com then the FTP address is ftp.mysite.com. You need a password and user name to access the files on 'your' server and the FTP program usually lets you view the files in an environment similar to the Windows Explorer interface. You can create folders on the server, rename or delete files, set priorities (like 'read only' or 'read and write') for these folders and you can copy files from your own computer to the folders on the server and vice versa. [ UPDATE ] After all these problems, Stu has now moved his own site as well as his clients' to his own servers, which he maintains himself. So, after 3 months' downtime, I finally got my domain http://www.tofuphish.com back and I can use my E-Mail address again. All these troubles were getting too much, so it's bye-bye to Fasthosts :) By the way Stu is offering his clients compensation for the downtime (in the way of extended hosting), and is waiting for respective compensation payment from Fasthosts....

 Average!
Reviewer: Anonymous   2006-01-29
From my own experience, I have never had any major problems with Fasthosts. The service seems reliable, and at the prices they are doing them at, they are very good. I have however heard LOTS of bad reports about the service, and that they are always down - but I haven't noticed this myself. They are currently offering Unlimited Disk Space, and unlimited bandwidth, which is VERY different from the other hosting companies currently available. They also offer an 0845 ISP service, although I haven't used this myself, I have heard very good reports about it.

 Very Good!
Reviewer: Anonymous   2006-01-29
fasthosts.co.uk are an isp that focuses on hosting websites more than providing dialup internet access (although they do have 0845 dialup access). The company has a variety of different options for hosting you website. The one that I am enthusing about is their reseller account and is quite expensive but well worth the money when you see what you get. You are allowed to host as many sites as you want, at no extra charge. There is unlimited disk space and bandwidth, full cgi access with perl, mySQL and PHP. Each domain that you host with them can have as many email addresses as you want, and thats forwarded or pop. For a small extra fee you can also get SSL and frontpage extensions. There is also absolutely no advertising on your site for their services. As you would expect from the account name you can also charge other to use some of your space, so band up with some friends and share out the cost. There is a vague limit on disk space and bandwidth having to be within reasonable limits, but I have never had a problem, and I think it is only if your site should really be hosted on a dedicated server. The server up time has been quite good and any problem are fixed rapidly. Overall, if you find a couple of people to share the cost with then this is the best hosting site that I have found.