FatCow has been in the business since 1998. Aimed at making the whole web hosting a little simpler and a lot easier, FatCow has been always striving to make things better for everyone with their unique hosting plans and marketing campaigns. FatCow is mainly known for its shared web hosting solutions suitable for small to medium-sized businesses and boasts over 200,000 websites under its wing. Read our FatCow review below.
OverviewFatCow is a unique hosting company which fondly refers to its team as the “moo” crew, known for their innovative planning and designing skills. Their hosting plans, website designs, and features stand apart from their counterparts.
Services
While FatCow might sound like the perfect web hosting company for you, it is always beneficial to know about the company in detail before settling on one. And what could be a better way to know, than to discuss about the services and plans that the concerned web hosting company provides.
FatCow provides an array of hosting plans under various categories:
Apart from these hosting plans, you get a bonus website builder with some exceptional customer support and added features.
FatCow gives out a free domain name registration and domain transfer options with practically all its hosting plans.
It also packs in some attractive developer features in their VPS plans such as preinstalled scripts, unlimited domains and access to cPanel features.
With so many features at your disposal, FatCow might sound like the best web hosting company with no possible drawbacks. Unveiling the curtain, let’s also have a quick peek into a few of the areas in which FatCow needs improvement
Limitations
There are certain areas where FatCow might disappoint you a bit, and thus, it’s better to know about them than to discover later on.
Moneyback Guarantee
FatCow delivers real value for every penny you invest. Speaking of money, you would be glad to know that FatCow has a decent money back guarantee. You can get your money back within 30 days of subscription if you find that the services don’t meet your standard.
The attractive money back guarantee may not seem very attractive once you get to know that other top web hosting companies like Arvixe, InMotion Hosting, and Just Host provide similar guarantees for a longer period.
Go Green!
Well, you have got another reason to stick to FatCow – it’s go green approach! FatCow wins hearts by doing its bit for the environment. If you host your website using FatCow, you are not only helping yourself, you are also helping the planet. FatCow boasts a 100% wind-powered hosting.
So, with all that answered, finally, the best part – why you should choose FatCow?
Why Should You Go For FatCow?
To sum it up, FatCow may satisfy your desire of having access to affordable hosting plans as well as the 24/7 customer support. If you are going to develop a simple one-page website or a not so complex web app, FatCow is the way to go. You can also consider using FatCow for testing purposes. But if long-term use and complex functionality are your requirements, it is better to look at other options.
Beware of the word “unlimited” as used by FatCow, they might not mean it in the same way you think they do.
Better Business Bureau has honored FatCow with an A+ rating. A+ is the highest rating a company can reach on the Better Business Bureau! Sounds great?
Key FeaturesWith so many available web hosting services available, FatCow receives excellent ratings from experts,yet still doesn’t manage to crack most top ten lists. Ultimately, it is a solid service with a sense of humor.FatCow is right at the top when it comes to uptime. Their servers offer fast and reliable service and critics claim that the hosting package is “nearly perfect.” The only drawback is that it lacks some of the flexibility that can be found in competitors. That being said, FatCow offers a wide range of great features for low price. You may have to pay a bit more to get all the bells and whistles that come with other services.
Critics are also quick to praise the support resources and overall customer service. Taking all these factors into consideration, the experts award FatCow 8 out of 10 points for performance and a perfect 10 for cow puns.
While there are some common threads worth nothing among the negative consumer reviews, FatCow receives overwhelmingly positive reviews from the majority of users. On average, consumers award FatCow 4 out of 5 stars. In fact, many of the testimonials directly contradict other customers’ complaints. Many satisfied users note the fact that they were able to speak with a US based support representative who was extremely friendly and knowledgeable.
Perhaps most importantly, users report that FatCow lives up to its 99.9% uptime guarantee. FatCow also receives high marks in other important areas including: speed, control panel features, affordable pricing and customer support. Based on user reviews alone, you can feel confident that FatCow will provide you with the tools you need to run your website.
Complaints against FatCow fall into two basic categories: billing and customer service. In all honesty, this is pretty typical for any decent size company that handles tens of thousands of customers. With that many people, there are bound to be some billing snafus and users who are unhappy with the customer service they received.
It seems that the biggest problem with billing occurred when customers tried to cancel their account. In some cases, customers were promised a refund, but then unable to actually get their money back. There were also some reports of unexpected charges that were difficult to clear up.
Those who were unhappy with customer service did not appreciate having their calls and emails outsourced to overseas help centers.
Reliability & UptimeNo, FatCow has not disclosed the figures related to the uptime guarantee. Uptime is not ensured; nonetheless, they have proven their reliability by publishing regular stats on their uptime and downtime. But, they do have their data centers up and running 24/7 with some hard working guys.
The FatCow’s data center employs a clustered architecture on all its servers, i.e. if one has to go down, another one will take over, no questions asked! The backup operation is also done on a regular basis, to minimize the risk of any loss of data.
Boston, USA, hosts the FatCow data center. The facility boasts of half a petabyte of storage space spread across an army of over 800 servers.
There are two firewalls to provide protection to the data center, and it is under professional surveillance 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
An automatic backup option is available for customers who are willing to pay to have their sites backed up daily. It consists of daily backup routines and a backup and restore tool. If you do not want to pay, it would be prudent on your part to back up your data on a regular basis.
Features & Tools Now that you have got enough insight on the plans, features, limitations, tech specs and other related areas about the company, you should further excel your knowledge on the features that the FatCow provides.
Unsurprisingly, FatCow is fat with features.
Read on to know about each one of them in detail.
| Feature | Overview |
| Control Panel | FatCow has a wonderfully designed control panel for admin site operations. No, it is not going to be tough to access. The control panel has got easy navigation, and you can easily get the hang of using it within minutes.
Worth to mention, you might find it a bit confusing to get around if you are switching from a cPanel to the new FatCow control panel. Otherwise, the control panel is complete with all necessary features. It is fully equipped and has all the necessary scripts. You can easily make websites and perform other administrative activities on the go with this easy to access control panel. That’s not it, to further aid you in handling the tasks; it lists and categorizes all the tasks with a color-coded button indicating whether or not each item is currently enabled. It is also customizable though being a proprietary tool. Further, you can also enjoy the benefits of delivery network solution (CDN) via its control panel. |
| Disk Space | Disk space is what almost every webmaster is concerned with. This is the space allocated to your website by your hosting provider. And this mostly depends upon the hosting plan that you choose.
FatCow offers an array of disk space variations by the various web hosting plans that it provides:
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| Bandwidth | Bandwidth is one of the crucial factors that might impact the speed of your website. As critical and significant as this feature is, bandwidth should be chosen to keep your requirements in mind. The bigger the bandwidth is, the more amount of data could be easily transferred.
The minimum bandwidth for VPS and dedicated plans provided by FatCow is 1 TB, and it only goes up from this number. However, there are instances where users have reported that the bandwidth usage and limit is not intimated to them in the proper way by FatCow. Talks are also prevalent that they were asked to restrict their bandwidth usage once they reach a limit even if they are under the unlimited plan. |
| Database Support | FatCow does provide database support. But its database features are usually the primary cause for customer complaints. It lets you connect to MySQL database connections, but does not specify the number of concurrent MySQL connections. |
| Free Domain | FatCow gives you free domain registration under certain plans, thus making the pricing seem even cheaper. When you want to claim your money using the money back guarantee, you will have to pay for the domain name. The cost of the domain name will be deducted from your refund money and that too only if you choose to keep the domain. The plans that provide free domain are:
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| Data Backups | If yours is a website with a lot of data, daily backup is an essential requirement to be on a safer side. Daily backup plans and routine automatic backups are provided as an add-on service with many plans by FatCow. While the daily backup is included in the ‘Original FatCow’ plan, the auto data backup is a paid service. You can easily purchase the backup package and maintain and perform version control on your site data. The daily server backups provided require no additional cost. |
| SSD (Solid State Drives) | The WP Essential plan available at Fat Cow makes use of an SSD-based infrastructure. This could be a kind of SSD caching mechanism, but there is little information provided on it. It is also claimed to impart a super speed infrastructure to the applications hosted. |
| One-click App Installer | The one-click App installer provided by FatCow is a real wizard. Along with the drag and drop website builder, it makes creating a website a child’s play. It has an array of applications like WordPress, Joomla, phpBB, GBook, SharedSSl, PayPal and many more. It lets you add interactivity to your website in a user-friendly manner. |
| Email Accounts | FatCow supports unlimited email accounts and POP hosting in all of its hosting plans. But it needs improvement. The base memory allocated is 500 MB, thus leaving room for dissatisfaction for many customers FatCow also provides a MiniMoo hosting plan that only provides a very low-cost single page, single email account solution for beginners’ use. |
| Hosting Security | FatCow provides a variety of security features for its hosting customers, based on their need. For websites selling products, they offer Shared SSL. For customers using their email services, they provide spam filtering. Along with running daily server backups, they have monitoring facility at each of their data centers. |
| Website Builder | The website builder is one of the most appreciated as well as an intuitive feature provided by FatCow. It comes with a clear documentation and is easily operable. You can try your hands on the enormous number of templates available and create great website designs. You can have your websites up and running within a few hours using the drag and drop element. |
| Malware & Spam Protection | The malware and spam protection provided by FatCow is quite confusing. While they do have a lot of security measures to make sure no infection gets to your site, the preventive measures sometimes interfere with site operations. If your site gets a malware infection, they will deactivate your account without notice. Then, it takes unreasonably long for them to review your case and activate the account once it is finished. |
| Shopping Carts | FatCow does provide support for shopping cart integration. PayPal, shared SSL, and many other shopping apps can be added quickly. ShopSite is also included as a content management system in the original FatCow plan. You can also make use of the WP eCommerce or WooCommerce along with a WordPress hosting plan to add shopping carts. Installing from platforms like Shopify or Magento to your VPS or dedicated hosting platforms will also do the job. |
| Programming Languages Support | Hosting solutions from FatCow support 13 different coding and scripting languages, including PHP and Ruby On Rails. |
| Site Statistics | Some of the site statistics like visitor stats can be viewed with the help of the control panel and other methods. But these stats are minimal and are not enough for real-time strategizing. |
Plans & Pricing The pricing scheme of Fat Cow is something unique. Though it seems dead cheap in the first year, the pricing jumps very high, starting the second year! But nevertheless, it is still one of the most affordable web hosting solutions available.
You get to have large disk space along with data transfer, and easy to get to website builder, blogs, polls, wizards, and a lot more – all these to make your site more interactive and to add a fun element that goes well along with your customers!
Some of the hosting plans are described below.
Dedicated Server plans suit well if you are looking for a solution that can deal with the high traffic volume of your site. FatCow provides dedicated servers best suitable for e-commerce sites.
The VPS Server is an excellent rescue if you are looking for increased control, cloud-based, flexible and an intelligent strategy.
The original Fat Cow plan comes with a lot of free gigs and unlimited plans. It is also the best choice for beginners as the setup and working is very easy.
For the cancelations that you may have to make, you will be paying up to $35 as an early cancelation fee. And it takes about 30 days for the cancelation to take effect.
The FatCow provides easy upgrade and downgrade service options. You are merely required to log in to your control panel and click on the upgrade or downgrade hosting icon.
Review the plans presented and chose the one that suits your purpose the best. Further, you can even want to customize (upgrade or downgrade) the individual services like bandwidth, mailboxes, and storage space. You can, therefore, choose to remain with them as your site undergoes the changes.
To add to the already provided flexibility by FatCow, due to any reason whatsoever, you can choose to transfer your domain name from FatCow to other company of your choice. A domain-transfer-authorization code is provided for this purpose.
Customer Support Customer support is provided 24/7 in all of the following channels.
While the speed and accuracy of the support services are excellent except for chat support, the customer experience with these services has been mixed. Some experienced programmers may feel a little slack in the process whereas beginners are sure to find these services amazing.
Ease of Use The service is quite easy to use and comes with a good amount of documentation and customer support. The control panel, website builders, one-click installer and several other features contribute to an interactive UI. It gives you FTP access to allow the uploading and downloading of multiple files.
Conclusion In a nutshell, FatCow is a one of a kind web hosting solution. It has an aggressive pricing scheme that is sure to attract customers.
But sadly, it falls short of many technicalities and performance standards when it comes to large scale and complex sites.
If all you want is a single page site or some testing site, you can very well take the leap into FatCow. So what did you decide?
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