Not just Another Ordinary Fatcow Review
- Author: admin
- Filed under: Cheap Web Hosting, eCommerce Hosting
Aug 16,2011
Are you considering 
Fatcow for your website, but have heard mixed reviews about Fatcow? We do not blame you for being more confused after reading and listening to any Fatcow review. We will be upfront and straight to the point from the beginning – if you want a website provider with absolutely zero negative feedback, and tech support that solves all your hosting problem within 5 minutes, then you should not proceed with Fatcow. Read our alternative hosting options below for recommendation. If you want a web hosting that doesn’t care if you upload 55,681 MP3 songs or images to your web hosting space; then DO NOT get the hosting plan from Fatcow because you will quickly get your account suspended.
However, if you mostly want an affordable PHP/MySQL hosting, with free domain name and beginner-friendly website Builder, you will like Fatcow just fine.
Some say Fatcow Hosting scams or Fatcow sucks? Saw some Fatcow.com issues, Fatcow complaints and bad customer experiences? Can these negative reviews be trusted? Heard some horror stories about their limitations?
Here is the truth. According to a study conducted by America’s premier customer services research firm, TARP, customers are more likely to speak about a company when things go wrong rather than when they go right. On average, customers are twice as likely to talk about a bad experience as they are to share a positive one. So we can safely say that for every negative comment about Fatcow, there are two more good Fatcow reviews we did not hear about.
Despite the fact that Fatcow’s parent company is accredited at Better Business Bureau (BBB) with the highest rating possible (A+), some bad Fatcow experiences and stories on the web may make you think twice to signup at Fatcow.com
Only you can decide if Fatcow is right for you, based on your own requirements. You should never trust any Fatcow review or recommendation your read on a “best hosting” or “top 10″ site. No web host is perfect. Not even those where you pay 5 times the cost at Fatcow. But so many are satisfied with Fatcow and your probably will too. You should also look at the limitations and reasons not to use Fatcow below.
How Good is Fatcow Web Hosting
From our findings, only about 8 out of every 100,000 search engine result pages about Fatcow says anything bad about Fatcow. This is still extremely good considering other business web host we have looked at have much worst ratio.
Another strong point of Fatcow is their novice-friendly and simple-to-use Site Builder. If you are new to website building and want to have a web presence immediately, then you will need a Sitebuilder. You can build your website quickly within minutes without any knowledge of HTML, CSS or scripting by using their Weebly-like Site Builder.
Drag & Drop Site Builder by FatCow
Affordable hosting is the other rationale on why so many people are using Fatcow. “It is cheaper than a meal at McDonald’s”, is what some are saying about the amazingly low hosting price at Fatcow. You can also get an extra discount by using the secret link below. The price can be as low as $3.67/month if you are paying for 2-3 years or $4.67 if you are paying for a year.
Exclusive Fatcow Discount: Click here to get 47% discount
You also get free domain name for life with a Fatcow hosting plan. This not only will save you on the cost of the web domain registration, but will also give you the peace of mind because you do not have to worry about DNS settings, A records, domain forwarding, email forwarding, domain renewal or any other domain related configurations. If you are new to developing and building websites, this tasks can be quite daunting, especially if you bought your domain at a different company like Godaddy. Many people did report that they gave up after failing to get the domain name to work with the web hosting account.
Pros: Summary of Reasons Why You Should Choose Fatcow
- You want a free domain and do not want the hassle of configuring your domain to work with the hosting plan.
- You want to build a website quickly with a good Site Builder.
- You want to install WordPress, Joomla, phpBB and other open source scripts quickly using one-click installer.
- You want a cheap hosting package that includes a lot of features.
- You need unlimited diskspace and bandwidth.
- You plan to host multiple domain names under one account for simplicity and cost-saving reasons.
Cons: Some Reasons to Avoid Fatcow
Here are some reasons why you should not use Fatcow:
- You want to host an adult website. Most cheap web hosts do not allow adult websites and you are better off getting a dedicated server.
- You need to use cPanel. If you do not know what cPanel is, you probably will not miss it.
- You want to use the “unlimited” hosting space to store files or backup of your PC. This is against the “fair usage policy” of most hosting companies, not just Fatcow.
- You want an upgrade option to VPS or dedicated hosting at the same hosting company. Fatcow only offers shared hosting.
- You require SSH access. Advanced webmasters and web developers might need a secure shell to install things via command line. But 99.99% of users or websites really don’t even require SSH.
- Other add-on services such as SEO service, SSL, domain privacy and various other add-on services were reported not to receive proper support or they are not worth the price paid. Use a hosting company such as Fatcow for what they are good at – web hosting. This is true with any other cheap web hosting companies too. If you want a SEO service, go with a professional company. If you want better domain management and privacy protection, go with one of the best domain registrars.
So our verdict: Hostingsthatsuck.com Recommends Fatcow for beginners and small businesses looking to set up a website quickly and easily.
We know, finding a good web hosting can be tiring and time consuming, when you should be building your website, writing on your WordPress blog or selling your product. You have read the other positive Fatcow reviews elsewhere. Fatcow does what a hosting company should do. That is, Fatcow actually answers their phones, replies to their emails, responds to live chat requests, and provides quality Site Builder. So among the millions of satisfied clients, surely a few may disagree with us.
You have seen the figures, BBB rating and chart above. Numbers don’t lie. You should look no further. Need a Fatcow coupon code? We found something special to share with you. Follow the Fatcow discount link below and get extra discount for your order ( or go to https://go.hostingsthatsuck.com/fatcow.php ). You will miss 100% of the business you did not start. If you sign up today, you can use the link below to get exclusive 47% discount from their normal price. They used to give 50% discount (see the screen shot below) but not any more. This 47% offer will also end any time soon. So hurry before the promotion is gone:
Discount Link: Exclusive 47%-Less FatCow Offer coupon for hostingsthatsuck.com visitors.
* You must follow the above link to get 47% discount. No coupon code required at checkout. No need to remember any voucher code.
Fatcow used to give 50% discount. Signup now because the 47% discount may not be here tomorrow if you procrastinate
Loading ...Fatcow Alternative
If you think Fatcow cannot meet your requirements, then we recommend you look at inMotion hosting. They have cPanel, SSH access, and options to upgrade to their VPS and dedicated hosting. We are recommending an alternative hosting plan by InMotion Hosting because of their custom-fit packages are priced from only $3 monthly! You pay for what you need and all packages come with cPanel (which Fatcow does not offer) and eCommerce-ready support. Our InMotion hosting review is as good, if not better than about Fatcow. If you have any doubt at all about Fatcow, get inMotion hosting instead.
Discount Link for InMotion Hosting
PROMO / COUPON CODE: Don’t worry about remembering the InMotion coupon code. Just use the button below and it automatically apply coupon code (if available) when you checkout.
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My account is down and they don’t seem to care. My website was supposed to transfer many weeks ago without interruption. still hasn’t, and now it’s completely down. I’m told it has been put under priority status, which means a tech will look at it within 48 hours. Run Run Run from these people. God are they shockingly incompetent and cavelier about your problems!
and weren’t you suppose to do the transfer yourself? I will never trust any hosting company to do a transfer for me, no matter what they say they can do…
most companies will agree to help you transfer but I believe you are the only person who know better about your files, scripts, images, databases etc to move from one hosting server to another.
Tried their seo linking service, they promised 100+ links and 3 articles every month, but after a few weeks, they delivered none of those things. I contacted them multiple times, but they dont seem to care. I ended up having to do a chargeback thru my credit card because not only did fatcow lie about everything and delivered zero service, they told me they would keep billing me for a year, even though I only wanted to try it for a month. STAY AWAY FROM FATCOW!
Where did you get the idea that Fatcow a SEO company? Do what is suggested in this review – use Fatcow for what they do best, a web hosting service
Fatcow has been up and down for me.
While their chat has resolved all of my problems, in a decent timeframe, the reps you get are sometimes completely incompetent, and sometimes they resolve it immediately. Just offering a chat option is good enough for me though, lol.
The service, I don’t really care about as long as I can get things resolved. The problems with Fatcow come with how often my site goes down. I run a forum, which needs to connect to the DB, which oftentimes goes down for no particular reason. It’s random, and sometimes it’s for just a second, sometimes it’s for minutes at a time.
(funny enough, fatcow is down right now, HTTP 500 Internal Server Error, my site being down as well)
I may be an isolated case, but I’ve just noticed way too many problems / downtime for my liking.
In terms of updating my site, I haven’t had too many problems (except a file disappearing once) with Fatcow. I don’t care for FTP, and I don’t use a builder, so I update all of my code through the File Manager. SOmetimes just uploading a new version of the page, sometimes editing the code directly in the document.
Before I learned CSS and HTML I tried the drag and drop site builder. While it may be easy to use, when I used it, it was so ridiculously slow, and hardly customizable at all – making a simple contact table took forever to do because the builder was so slow. I have, however, heard great things about some of the other site builders they offer, so don’t discount it altogether, as it’s just a nice showpiece because it looks pretty and is user interactive.
I do like the ease of integrating certain things into the website, although the updates aren’t always current. I use SMF for my forum, and while I installed it fine through the control panel, I had to do a big update manually, as it wasn’t available to do through SMF. Not too difficult, but I can’t speak for how that could affect other applications. They offer other big name things like WordPress blogs, Joomla, etc. And a vast array of different ecommerce and other things that most everyone would be able to find what you’re looking for.
All in all, I’m paying 10.00 a year for a domain name, since my friend already has a hosting plan with them. To people who already are registered, they’ll offer a separate hosting plan for 2.95 per month, which is really good. By the time I have to re-register my domain name, if I still have a lot of issues with the Site / DB going down I’ll try another service, but if things shape up and I don’t have continuous issues, I’ll stick with them (and probably go on my own hosting plan).
Hope this helps give people a good idea of one person’s experience, and good luck!
I tried FatCow for webhosting a local political campaign site based on reviews like these. The price was decent – $44 for a year.
The campaign was successful, and I took the site down afterward. Unfortunately, I did not cancel the account, and it autorenewed at _$107_ for a year. When I went to cancel it, they told me there would be a $35 cancellation fee. When I said I didn’t remember seeing that when I signed up, they said it’s in “Terms and Conditions” – buried with a ton of legalese.
Anyway, fool me once and all that. I told them I thought their policy was misleading and abusive, and I won’t be back.
(PS- They also take _forever_ to answer their phone – it took three tries to get this cancelled since one time I had to leave after ~20 minutes on hold and the other time I was cut off after a similar wait time.)
Avoid.
Sorry to hear about the problem you had with them.
However, I think you will face the same problem regardless of the web host you use. If you forgot to CANCEL, they will RENEW. Fatcow, Hostgator, Godaddy, ICDsoft… they are all the same – they cannot read your mind
We do not think that all companies have the same policies and attitude towards customers. At ICDSoft, there are no automatic renewals – the customer must explicitly follow a link and confirm the renewal of a service. Also, our 100-day money-back guarantee covers renewals also. If a customer renews an account and changes mind later, they have 100-days to cancel the service and get all their money back. We consider that a service provider should be open and frank to customers. Matters such as hidden fees are way out of this picture.
FATCOW DOES SUCK at some things. Sure, they are “ok” for little businesses and their customer service is good (thank goodness!) though, as mentioned before, MAKE SURE YOU ARE ON MANUAL RENEWAL FOR EVERYTHING, NOT JUST THE DOMAIN NAME.
I decided to not use the url I bought with them and knew I had set the renewal on manual. I got an email about a month ago saying they were going to renew my name “IF it was on autorenew” I knew it wasn’t, so didn’t respond.
I got NO FURTHER COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMPANY.
When I checked my credit card statement, however, I found a charge for 21.98 from FatCow. HUH???
When I called in just now, they said it was for “privacy” at 10.99 and OOPS, they had “double charged” me… again… HUH???
Soooo… I no longer have a domain name with you, but you’re going to charge me a privacy fee on something that doesn’t exist??? AND you’re going to do it TWICE??? AND you’re NOT GOING TO TELL ME ABOUT IT?
Thank goodness they were nice just now on the phone and took the charge(s) off… Though it irritated me at how deceptive their business practices were in the first place
1 – AUTO charging for something I did NOT authorize
2 – DOUBLE charging
3 – NOT TELLING ME about the charges
My advice – if you go with them, MAKE SURE TO CHECK YOUR BILL EVERY YEAR, EVEN AFTER YOU’VE STOPPED SERVICE.
Fatcow no special character supported at url.
Only english can be used at url. that is not good.
Asian language can not be part of the url that is very bad for holding blog internationally.
Everything is good, except I violated the user agreement and they cancelled my account. It turns out that you cannot use your site to store your backups, for example. Email from their legal department: “Hosting space … is limited to Web files, e-mail and content of the hosted Web sites, not for storage of media and other data.” I used it to store my backups. My account is cancelled and now I’m using a different backup solution. So keep that in mind. You are allowed to store only the content of your website and your emails.
Email for the Mac has been terrible for me lately! I’ve used them for a pop account for several years but when the SMTP stopped working recently I’ve found that they provide SEVERAL DIFFERENT guides in their knowlegebase on setting up an email account in different places they suggest mail.domain, pop.domain, imap.domain … Chat tech has given me 3 different setup schemes also including pop.fatcow, username.fatcow and pop.domain, all of which work for a day then fail the next. extremely frustrating.
“On average, customers are twice as likely to talk about a bad experience as they are to share a positive one. So we can safely say that for every negative comment about Fatcow, there are two more good Fatcow reviews we did not hear about.”
Why can you “safely” say this? Being twice as likely to talk about a bad experience does not mean that one person being upset means that two people are happy. It just means that if your service is bad you’re going to get more complaints than praises if your service were good. That is really the only relationship you can draw.
I have had a bad experience with FatCow myself: terrible wait times in the live chat (30 minutes for them to decide they weren’t sure what they were doing and escalate a ticket), misleading advertising (the site sales page mentions Ruby, but their hosting does not process Ruby scripts), and terrible archival services (you can’t manually zip and download your entire website all at once; you have to either download everything uncompressed or compress each directory as you go [as far as I have so far been able to figure out]).
On the other hand, the site is INCREDIBLY cheap—and if you’re just running a simple script or page here or there, I DO recommend them. But if you’re anything of a techie, or need anything more advanced whatsoever or expect much for the support staff, I would go with someone like Bluehost.com.
Let me redact that. Their hosting DOES provide parsing for Ruby scripts. I apologize for the misinformation.