FastComet Review
|
Our Experts Opinions 
*Rating Based on our Experience |
Customer Experiences Reliability Pricing User Friendly Support Features |
|---|
Established in 2013 in San Francisco, California, FastComet is a comparatively new company that offers a wide range of services. The company has come a long way from starting as a provider of professional services in the field of system administration to business and private clients, and later expanding its operations to public cloud hosting.
The company claims to have a base of 45,000+ clients across 83 countries and rapidly expanding because they say they offer services that exceed their customer’s expectations and what they claim that “others are missing”. FastComet has 8 data centers spread around the world, which are in Denmark, Newark, Chicago, Dallas, London, Frankfurt, Tokyo and Singapore.
The company takes special pride in customer service, speed and security and says that it has invested quite heavily in the latest technology and hardware, which can give your website as much as 300% better performance compared with other hosting providers. By implementing both network firewall and web applications, the company assured its customers that these are optimized for open-source applications as well.
Powered by a 24/7 support team which they call “rocket fast”, they say that their SSD cloud hosting solution is one of the most affordable and accessible on the web hosting market. If you are looking at services for your hosting solutions, read our FastComet review before you make a decision.
Customer Support
You will be glad to know that the company has 24/7 email, phone and chat support, in case you have any questions about the hosting service or your account. The company proudly proclaims to have solved 93% of the issues in less than 10 minutes, based on 10,000 support requests. They claim to have served more than 142,543 chats, handled more than 47,243 mail requests and 292,543+ instant ticket updates.
The service is free regardless of the plan, and the users can either log into their control panel to raise a ticket request, talk to a support executive, or call on a toll-free number.
Live Chat/Phone/Email
The live chat button is displayed prominently throughout the website and is accessible from anywhere. All you have to do is log in your credentials (or sign in using Google or Facebook), provide a phone number, select the department (sales by default) and type in your problem.
A support executive appears quite quickly and is polite and precise with the actions required to solve the issue. There is no upselling of any kind and they get to solve your problem within minutes. If your problem is not immediate, you can always just drop them a mail from the same chat window and if various customer reviews are to be believed, they are lightning fast!
You can also call them on the toll-free number (1.855.818.9717) and a helpful agent will guide you through your solutions.
There is also a FastComet community where you can find most of the basic solutions provided by helpful community members. We found this section quite exhaustive and comprehensive.
Uptime
Surprisingly, we did not see any uptime guarantee on their homepage unlike a majority of the service providers who do so. But this is not a really worrying factor, as most of these guarantees are for show. Would you be bothered to go through a painful process just to monitor uptime just to claim a small reimbursement?
You need to be up and running at times to make your presence felt among your customers, and for this purpose, your host should be able to provide the maximum uptime. And going by any of these customers reviews, it looks like no one has brought that topic up, so you need not be too worried.
Key Features
For a small company, FastComet hosting has a lot of noteworthy features that are likely to exceed your expectations. Let us take a few of these:
Free Domain Forever
You can transfer or register an existing domain for free. Other service providers offer you free domains for a year or so when you sign up with them, following which you have to pay an annual free.
With FastComet, you can be sure of a free renewal as long as you are hosting with them.
Free Tutorials
FastComet has a ton of tutorials covering 10 topics, that include CMS, e-Commerce, CRM, video sharing and so on. Though this section is still growing and we expect to see more comprehensive material here.
Free CloudFlare CDN
FastComet redistributes your website around the world on 70+ servers. Your site will be accessible from anywhere in the world without potentially slowing it down.
SSD-Only Cloud
FastComet makes use of SSD technology, speeding up the access to your files by as much as 300% (in comparison with non-SSD providers) — your website will be blazing fast!
Daily Backups
You can be sure of your data’s safety because of the daily and weekly backups. And unlike other providers, they do not charge anything for this; it is absolutely free!
cPanel-Powered Hosting
If you are coming from a different host, you will be heartened to know that FastComet provides the familiarity of cPanel. You can easily manage your hosting account with just a few clicks to get around the backend.
45-Day Money-Back Guarantee
FastComet guarantees you 45-day money back guarantee. Most other providers promise only 30-day money back guarantee.
Fixed Prices
There are no hidden costs, you can renew your account for the same price you started your plan for.
Pricing Plans
The company offers a plethora of plans for a company of its size. It offers FastComet WordPress, Joomla, OpenCart, SocialEngine, domains and many other plans. But we will look at pricing plans of the web, cloud VPS and dedicated server prices.
Web Hosting
These plans are enough for anyone who is thinking of starting a website, and come loaded with the same features that we detailed above. These are:
- StartSmart: For a starting price of $2.95 (and as promised, the renewal price would be the same), you get all the basic important features such as free domain for life, 24/7 human support, daily backups, free CloudFlare CDN, Let’s Encrypt SSL, BitNinja Server Security, free website transfer, unlimited sub-domains, FTP accounts and databases and multiple PHP versions (including PHP 7). Also included is the website starter kit that includes 1-click app auto installer, free drag & drop website builder, free app install and upgrade, and unlimited email accounts. There is also unmetered traffic, 15GB of SSD space, free domain for life and 1 website limit.
- ScaleRight: For a starting price of $5.95, this plan supports and drives your website growth. This plan includes all the basic important features and the website starter kit as StartSmart and includes advanced features such as unlimited add-on domains, free dynamic SSL seal, 2x CPU and RAM, up to 3 website transfers, Google PageSpeed and free private DNS. You also get a free domain for life, multiple websites, 25GB SSD space and unmetered traffic.
- SpeedUP: Starting at $9.95 per month, this plan offers the flexibility, advanced power and performance and offers all the important features, website starter kit and advanced features such as ScaleRight, and includes RocketBooster which has Memcached, LightSpeed LSAPI, 3x less clients per server, Varnish cache and WAF, 3x more CPU and RAM, APC and OPCode cache and 30 daily backups. The plan also includes multiple websites, 35GB SSD space, unmetered traffic and free domain for life.
Cloud VPS
This section has 4 plans on offer. Cloud VPS has been recently introduced to the FastComet bouquet.
- VPS Cloud 1: The plan starts at $59.95 per month (down from $79), and includes a single 2.50GHz CPU, 2GB ECC RAM, 50GB SSD space, 2TB bandwidth, Softaculous/cPanel/WHM and 2,000 Mbps network out.
- VPS Cloud 2: The plan starts at $69.95 per month (down from $99), and includes 2x 2.50GHz CPU, 4GB ECC RAM, 80GB SSD space, 4TB bandwidth, Softaculous/cPanel/WHM and 4,000 Mbps network out.
- VPS Cloud 3: The plan starts at $89.95 per month (down from $109), and includes 4x 2.50GHz CPU, 8GB ECC RAM, 160GB SSD space, 5TB bandwidth, Softaculous/cPanel/WHM and 5,000 Mbps network out.
- VPS Cloud 4: The plan starts at $139.95 per month (down from $159), and includes 6x 2.50GHz CPU, 16GB ECC RAM, 320GB SSD space, 8TB bandwidth, Softaculous/cPanel/WHM and 6,000 Mbps network out.
All plans in the FastComet VPS are fully managed, can be deployed within minutes, are pre-setup and are completely scalable which means you can upgrade or downgrade your server as required.
Dedicated Servers
These fully-managed dedicated servers are for those who do not want to share resources. There are 4 plans:
- DS1: Powered by a quad-core Intel Xeon E5-2680 V3 2.50GHz CPU, the plan costs $139 (down from $159) per month, offers 4x 2.50GHz CPU, 8GB RAM, 160GB SSD space, 5TB bandwidth, Softaculous/cPanel/WHM, and 5,000 Mbps network out.
- DS2: Powered by a hexa-core Intel Xeon E5-2680 V3 2.50GHz CPU, the plan costs $179 (down from $199) per month, offers 6x 2.50GHz CPU, 16GB RAM, 320GB SSD space, 8TB bandwidth, Softaculous/cPanel/WHM, and 6,000 Mbps network out.
- DS3: Powered by an octa-core Intel Xeon E5-2680 V3 2.50GHz CPU, the plan costs $259 (down from $299) per month, offers 8x 2.50GHz CPU, 32GB RAM, 640GB SSD space, 16TB bandwidth, Softaculous/cPanel/WHM, and 7,000 Mbps network out.
- DS4: Powered by a hexadeca-core Intel Xeon E5-2680 V3 2.50GHz CPU, the plan costs $419 (down from $459) per month, offers 16x 2.50GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, 1280GB SSD space, 20TB bandwidth, Softaculous/cPanel/WHM, and 9,000 Mbps network out.
With this, you also get free templates to create beautiful websites, free application installation to get you started in less than 15 minutes, free module installation, free application upgrade, full root access for those who like to be on top of things, scalability, fully managed and easy scalability.
Security Features
FastComet seems serious about the security they provide and have a page dedicated to it where they maintain post about updates, security patches and any new software. Some of these features are:
BitNinja
Called one of the most advanced security systems available, BitNinja is a new addition to FastComet’s defenses. BitNinja counters botnet attacks and positively blocks malicious traffic with a machine learning algorithm. It also protects servers from several malicious attacks on multiple protocols at the same time. The attacks are also detected and prevented as soon as possible. It has the following modules:
- DDos Protection: Prevents the most malicious attacks by suppressing excessive malicious traffic.
- Web Application Firewall: Protects from data thefts, buffer overflowing or cross-site scripting and also monitors, filters or blocks malicious traffic in real time.
- Malware Detection: Protection against hostile programs that have not been reported before.
- IP Filtering: Limits risk and protects infected systems to connect back to servers that are under botnet control.
- Log Analyzing: Analyzes logs in real time and takes necessary actions if malicious activity is detected.
- Captcha Module: Prevents false positive blocks.
The users experience a stable and uninterrupted environment while concentrating on their websites.
SSL Certificates
These certificates are required when the end user wants to submit sensitive information such as passwords or credit card details over the internet. FastComet provides three types:
- Free GlobalSign SSL: Absolutely free of cost, the GlobalSign SSL provides fast installation and strongest encryption.
- Personal GlobalSign SSL: Starting at $69 per year, the Personal GlobalSign SSL provides the best security and easy setup.
- WildCard SSL Protection: Starting at $169 per year, the WildCard offers advanced SSL protection and covers all sub-domains across your domain.
Pros and Cons
Let's see what are the best things about FastComet:
Pros
- They protect your website with solid security all around, with the addition of firewall protection, SSL certificates and malware and DDoS protection.
- While most hosting providers offer you a free domain for a single year, FastComet offers you a free domain for life which is commendable.
- With no hidden costs and fixed prices, you pay the same price when you are renewing, unlike some other hosts who can jack up their prices by as much as 3 times.
- 8 data centers across the world ensure that you have a global reach.
- Unparalleled customer experience.
- Even with the cheapest package, you can transfer 1 website from any provider to FastComet.
Cons
- No uptime guarantee might have some users looking elsewhere for hosting.
- No Ruby on Rails support.
- No FastComet promo code available as of now.
Conclusion
Even though it is a comparatively new player, FastComet is great for the starting price and the fact that the renewal prices remain the same, year after year with no hidden costs. Add to that the ton of features, freebies and awesome technical support which come bundled with their lowest of plans are right on point. In short, this hosting company is a good alternative for lots of others but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it as it still lacks in terms of uptime and speed.
