Fatcow Website Hosting Service Review

Fatcow are one of the leading Website Host Providers on the Internet, they are usually found in the top ten of any good list of top 'Hosts' online. But are they truly worthy of their high status?

I suppose it all comes down to the trial and error experience of the customer, and individual needs of a particular business or hobbyist. But in my experience as a small business user I have found the Fatcow Host provider to be a little thin on a lot of what matters when in need of quality server up time and facilities.

Okay to be fair to Fatcow they do offer several options with their host plans, but from speaking and networking with a few businesses and hobbyists that use the service,

I have found many of the issues to be similar or the same. And if Fatcow could actually fix some of these issues then they could quite easily become the very best at what they do.

Server Down Time

It is not just me that has experienced a lot of server down time, meaning that I have simply not been able to log in to my account on many occasions, or if I have managed to log in the Fatcow Server has been painfully slow, or I even simply not able to save files and work into my templates and File Manager.

This kind of server error when you are producing time sensitive work, and offering ad space to advertisers is simply not good enough.

This happened on many occasions, and was not accountable to any particular given time, although I did find that the server issues did mainly fall between 1pm and 6:30pm North American Pacific Time.

This when work hours are scheduled at the busiest during these times in the day is quite frustrating and angering.

Files Not Saving & Issues with Scripts

One very important part of any business or hobby is actually being able to place your files, images and text on your Web pages. I found that often glitches and freezes on the server meant that I would have to either come back during the evening to finish work off, serve them to the web pages or not even use particular scripts at all. I have even been so frustrated thatI have given up on a certain time sensitive story all together thus losing revenue and the satisfaction of getting an article out to the world before anyone else. Not funny Fatcow!

The cPanel and the Fatcow Host provided Web pages (Site Builder) are not great if you need to build a complex website, in fact I found them to be more than basic even for just a news format Website in which just text and images where to be used. It goes without saying there is the very high chance that this would probably be much better if you spent money on a Fatcow partner Site Builder

The amount of times I had contacted live support to figure out why I couldn't even actually serve text through the Fatcow text editor is well... I have lost count.

The fact is Fatcow offer many paid for premium services, so knowing that you will probably need to shell out a little extra money to be offered a better level of service is probably going to be to your advantage.

Live Support

Sometimes I have wondered where the heck Fatcow get there live support staff from. Obviously some of these guys and girls are working from outside of the Fatcow establishment, but for the amount of times I contacted Fatcow regarding the same issue, you would have thought the issue would have been addressed over a three month period.

No, instead I found myself sounding like a scratched record.

In fact I knew the beginning of the Live Support Team advice plan more than some of the support staff. I would always clear the cache and empty my temporary Internet files before contacting support eventually, as I knew too well I had to do this.

On three occasions I had been left on hold for longer than an hour, one time I thought I would see just how long I would be placed on hold for... um all night lol, the lady had obviously gone to sleep!

For the main though most of the support staff did address many of the issues I had with the server, albeit with a bit of time or having to wait up to 48 hours to have a more technical person deal with the issue... not good with time sensitive work!

Account Cancellation

Okay this became a little bit of a nightmare, I had over run the cancellation period for my money back guarantee, but I did get in touch with the Fatcow Billing Department, and told them I would definitely, certainly not be renewing my contract with them once the year subscription was up.

This was back in November 2009, yes Fatcow offered to protect my chosen Domain Name for a 1 year period as an apology, which der me I thought I had done when I purchased the Domain name, which was beside the point.

My view was still the same, I did not want to carry on with the service at all. No instead after the year Fatcow plan was up, I was going over to Host Monster... which gets rave reviews by the way!

So in my book that conversation with the Billing Team was the end of the subject, account canceled come June 2010!

So why the heck Fatcow did my ex-wife's VISA Account get billed with a further One Year Subscription?

I mean this is a very serious issue and one that can be very destructive in a persons personal life, put simply a fatcow representative dealt with the matter and the complaint, then it should have been followed through at the first time of asking. It should not take multiple requests and emails to do so... Um (sarcasm) isn't that what the Billing Department's job is to do, bill, deal with billing queries and cancellations?

Further to that, why was there no telephone call or contact with my ex-wife to tell her that you would be taking the money from her account?

I mean come on guys common sense says look at an account status before taking money, and also a telephone call to the bill payer is almost certainly a must do!

No none of this... and Fatcow you would not even believe the issue you have caused there, after all it was my ex-wife's bank account that was used to pay the initial service fee's.

Having said that, Fatcow have been told on more than one occasion that there was not going to be a continuation of service with them.

Conclusion

Never again!

Not even going to think about using the Fatcow Host Service again, it has been too much hassle and time consuming more or less from the start. I don't doubt that my case is not the case of many happy and satisfied customers.

And I also do not think that I have been singled out for special treatment, as I know of others that this has happened to. This example being one of many http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/fatcowcom-c233249.html

Rating

A very average 2.5/5 Stars