FastComet Reviews and Expert Opinion

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Renew your plans at the exact same price you purchased them.
• Keep your website safe with FastComet’s potent security suite.
• Get help from experts via phone, live chat, or ticketing, 24/7/365.
• Choose from multiple data centers to keep your server local and speed up load times.
• Empower employees to connect with customers thanks to unlimited email accounts, email calendar, and generous email quotas.
• Run your website from your phone thanks to FastComet’s mobile-friendly cPanel.
• Fully customize your backend with FastComet’s vast catalogue of developer tools.
• Boost customer satisfaction and engagement with industry-leading load times.

Cons:

• Monthly plans are more expensive than some competitors because of their $19.95 setup fee.
• Basic plans come with limited SSD storage space.
• Although live chat response time is prompt, resolution times can be lengthy.

Pricing and Payment Methods

In recent years, FastComet has drastically cut prices to stay competitive as the industry has become more affordable. As a result, the company’s hosting services are now well within the industry average, though not the cheapest available. Shared hosting plans start with StartSmart at $2.95 a month, and come with a single website, free domain registration for life and 15GB SSD storage.

This plan also lets you choose from several datacenters to minimize the distance between your servers and your audience to boost load times. You can also find StartSmart basic plans customized for WordPress, Joomla, OpenCart and SocialEngine Hosting plans, all starting at $2.95 monthly as well.

For users with heavier traffic and more specialized needs, FastComet offers Cloud VPS hosting and dedicated servers. FastComet’s cloud and dedicated solutions are on the more expensive end of the affordable. Cloud VPS hosting starts at $59.95 and includes ample disk space and bandwidth as well as Free Web & CSF Firewall. Dedicated servers start at $139 monthly and provide 160GB of SSD storage and unlimited websites hosted.

One thing that we especially appreciated about FastComet was its transparency: there are no underhanded fees. Renewals remain the same price as when you purchased the plan, you receive a free domain forever, and there’s a generous 45-day money-back guarantee.

Ease of Use

We found that Interacting with FastComet’s interface is as simple as the company’s marketing team implies. We particularly enjoyed the ability to manage our hosting plans directly on mobile thanks to cPanel. We were also happy to see the ability to implement multiple coding languages, as well as the ease of creating new MySQL instances. If your web development or apps are managed by teams, you can optimize their work with free Git version control.

While the hosting company’s versatile developer toolkit is particularly appealing, FastComet is also extremely welcoming to newcomers. In addition to the drag-and-drop website builder and Softaculous 1-click app installation, FastComet manages backend features like daily backups, free website setups and even hacked website recovery. All of the abovementioned features are buoyed by a knowledgeable support team and rich tutorial library that help smooth any bumps you may encounter along the way.

Load Times and Reliability

FastComet promises solid 99.8 uptimes%, slightly lower than the standard industry guarantee of 99.9%. However, after months of testing we discovered that FastComet surpasses its guarantee, averaging 99.98% uptimes with very few service disruptions.

FastComet’s website boasts average speeds of 395ms, allegedly besting leading competitors such as Hostgator and GoDaddy. We were happy to see that our tests showed similar results to FastComet’s own speed assessment, with average load times averaging 405ms. As the company notes on their website, Google recently began to include site speed in their search ranking algorithms, and Fastcomet’s near-instantaneous load times set your website up for search engine success.

Features

The sheer number of features offered with FastComet is impressive. The company’s wide array of open-source and proprietary features can empower users no matter what their level of familiarity with websites and hosting. Beginners have access to a free drag-and-drop web builder, 1-click Softaculous app installer for over 150 apps, unlimited email accounts and a free domain transfer to help their website take off. Daily and weekly backups make it easy to restore previous website versions in case of user cPanel adventures gone wrong.

We were equally pleased with the variety of features for developers to play around with. In addition to the fairly standard multiple versions of PHP to choose from, unlimited FTP accounts and Cron Jobs, advanced users can activate automatic app updates and utilize preinstalled GIT for optimal collaboration. Finally, all users benefit from one of the richest security packages we’ve encountered in our reviews. All plans come with a network and web application firewall, BitNinja server security, Malware removal and many more tools to keep your account safe.

One area we found where FastComet can improve is that basic plans are somewhat limited when it comes to SSD storage. Even so, FastComet’s feature-rich plans can be the catalyst for creative websites of outstanding caliber.

Customer Support

We found that FastComet’s customer support team delivers when it comes to response and resolution times. Although the service offers free phone, ticketing, and live chat support, the latter is staffed by friendly but not always tech-proficient team members, making live chat less of an effective support option. FastComet’s website claims that according to an internal survey of 10,000 customers they are able to resolve 93% of all reported issues in under 10 minutes. Barring several more complex issues, that was largely the amount of time it took to fix the problems we presented with.

In addition to their knowledgeable support team, FastComet’s virtual treasure trove of online videos provides clear instructions to help beginners and experts resolve issues on their own or prevent them from arising in the first place.

User Reviews

Our expert reviews leverage our experience and advanced site testing to give you a considered assessment of hosting services. Supplement this expert review with our users’ reviews of FastComet to see how the services stacks up against the competition.

Conclusion

It’s one thing to throw features at users, it’s another thing to offer plentiful features within a highly maintained, intuitive framework. FastComet belongs firmly in the latter category, providing really outstanding products to users of all proficiency levels. Features like the drag-and-drop site builder and Softaculous 1-click app installments make it easy for even the most clueless users to set up their site, while FastComet takes care of website transfer, daily and weekly backups, and provides heavy duty network security for a soft landing.

At the same time, advanced users like us are also given the royal treatment with a wide range of developer tools and functionalities to test and explore. The freedom to choose between different PHP versions, preinstalled GIT and unlimited MySQL databases are just some of the highlights from FastComet’s featureful lineup. Overall, we enjoyed how simple it was to get things done with FastComet within budget and would definitely recommend the service.