I’ve had a dedicated server with them since 2005, got another last year and have now bought a virtual server. Their pricing is pretty reasonable and I have usually had acceptable response times on my support emails (and there have been numerous!).

The main issue I have with them is that you’re pretty much on your own if you have a dedicated/virtual server as they always reply with the same ‘use our PES (personal engineer service)…’ and it will be refunded if there’s a hardware fault. This is very annoying if you haven’t done anything to the server and it just stops working for no reason. I’ve used the PES a couple of times and it’s always been fixed within half an hour.

Last problem I had was an ‘internal server error’ on one of my websites; contacted support and got the usual answer of PES so I decided to try and track down the problem myself. Went through all the logs, found when it happened and tracked it down to a rogue .htaccess file which I hadn’t put on there. Thing is at around the same time the file appeared there was access from an IP address associated with Fasthosts. I sent them the log files and told them what happened; they are now investigating it. Also, there can be up to 24,000 hack attempts a day but I was told that that’s part and parcel of having a dedicated web server exposed to the net.

I’d like to finish with a note about their virtual servers. They promote the Plesk control panel (for an extra tenner per month). I chose not to take that option as I wanted to use ISPconfig. That control panel uses port 8080 (another I tried was Webmin which uses port 10,000). Both these ports are blocked as a default by iptables on the server. Whether that’s down to Fasthosts or not I can’t be sure.

1) They fail to notify domain administrative or technical contacts when a domain is about to expire, or has expired
2) They fail to accept payment from domain administrative or technical contacts for domain renewal or extension

The entire reason there exist these two types of contacts is to handle domain administration. Otherwise, what the blazes do you think a domain administrative contact is for?

When I contacted their domain tech support today, the person chose to talk over the top of me repeatedly rather than listen to my complaint. It’s obvious that their corporate culture is to ignore and avoid complaints rather than address and rectify.

Has anyone tried emailing support? I was told to email [email protected] and lodge my complaint about their processes. When I did email them, I found that the only way their email box accepts such is if you first login to your control panel, and add customer number, pin, and who knows what other information, while you stand on one leg and recite the magna carta backwards.

Fasthosts throws up so many roadblocks that account management, administration, customer service, technical support are virtually inaccessible. Personally, I have no idea how they’ve been in business this long, and see why any time I mention their name, people make clear how silly I was to choose them in the first place.

Having had glorious experiences at GoDaddy and NameCheap and have no intention of deliberately putting myself through another FastHosts horror story!

Fasthosts failed to close my account for hosting when asked to do so, they then want to charge full wack for another year because I was two weeks into another year which as far as I was concerned I had already cancelled and wasn’t using.

Why do business with an internet company who do not understand the cost of an unhappy customer in todays internet age, instead they just want to extract as much money as they can – well we will see whether ther posts I place cost them more in reputation than the extra cash they extracted – we need companies to be honest and reasonbable not quote contracts and their rights – believe me fasthosts sucks

Actually have to take issue with this. Fasthosts for the most part most definitely do not answer their emails, even from a sales perspective whereby you would expect an answer, it just doesn’t happen very often. Of course the reality is they don’t answer sales emails that often due to the recipient having evidence of a lie when the recipient discovers, after buying a service and being stuck in a contract, that they don’t offer what they claim to offer.

On a technical support viewpoint I’m still, after three months, having trouble getting a solution to an email problem whereby when more than one is sent in reasonably quick succession only the first one turns up. As a freelance web developer this has cost me new business and has created problems with existing clients that assume I am ignoring them when in fact I do not get their emails. I would add there is no end in sight to this problem as fasthosts keep ignoring my emails. I’ve tried to call but wait times are extreme, which was actually the reason I resorted to sending them emails. In any case I now want their response in writing.

Also any host that offers unlimited bandwidth and web space is deliberately misleading its customers and fasthosts knows it.

Their terms of service, although very long, is far from complete. There is lots of essential information needed but deliberately left out in the hope the customer won’t notice or will forget to ask important questions until they’ve made a purchase and are stuck in a contract.

Sorry but overall fasthosts have cost me business and haven’t tried to resolve my essential problem.

Fasthosts does indeed suck!