An Affordable Web Hosting Alternative

When launching a new website, you have a number of pressing concerns. Beyond choosing a template, filling out the content, picking out images, and optimizing for search/conversion, there’s still a major concern left in the air.

You’ve got to find a web hosting service that meets you needs. Everyone has their own criteria, but in most cases you need a host that provides stellar support, at least 99% up time, and a price you can live with.

Major hosts like Hostgator, InMotion Hosting and GoDaddy are popular solutions because of their name recognition, record of service, and overall performance. They’ve all been in business 10+ years and have been purchased as corporate subsidiaries of EIG. These services are dependable and basically identical in terms of service and pricing.

Yet these are not the only webhosting options. Many independent companies are working hard to offer similar levels of service as the big wigs - often at lower prices. Privately owned FastWebHost.com is such a company. This medium sized business hosts more than 120,000 different domains and is one of the fastest growing independently owned hosts in the world.

But how does it stack up against itscompetitors?

FastWebHost Services Survey

Focusing mostly on shared hosting, Fastwebhost is priced affordably and maintains 24/7 customer support. Their support portals also include access via social media outlets which is a nice feature. Moreover, they usually score well in 3^rd party reviews.

Critiques andCriticisms

A quick google search of the business’ name will give you quotes from review services like Dailyhosting.net,which claim, “Fastwebhost is an ideal solution if you develop multiple websites on a single server.” SiteGeek is similarly flattering with their review, noting that user sentiment is overwhelmingly positive.

There have been reports of less than stellar uptime by several reviewers. The negative reviews are troubling since a few go so far as to mention that prices have been changed during the middle of a service term. The word “extortion” is even thrown around. To be fair, however, none of the negative reviews occurred within the last year.

But if you're still more conventional about WordPress hosting, here are 5 best WordPress hostings detailed by DesignBombs.com

Uptime

It seems the statistics on uptime for the website differ depending on which source you read. The general consensus seems to be near the 99.7% mark, however, anecdotal reports are far more scattered. It’salso notable that FastWebHost’s own site boasts 99.9% uptime on its home page. Additionally, they offer an uptime guarantee, which we’ll cover in more depth below.

Support

As noted above, the most highly touted feature of FastWebHost’s service is their 24 hour live support. Their system works on an email ticket basis, and has an average response time of 15-20 minutes. That’s not ideal when you’re having an issue, especially in comparison to major hosts who offer live chat and instantaneous support.

Perhaps as a counter balance, they offer tutorials for the DIY crowd as well as the access to their support team through multiple social media outlets.

Money Back Guarantees

FastWebHost offers a money back guarantee within the first thirty days of service, and you still have the Uptime guarantee mentioned briefly above. This promise of 99.9% uptime or better allows customers to demand a paid credit for downtime if it falls below 99.9%.

This offer is available only for shared/reseller hosting plans, and it’s good for up to a month’s worth of credit. To redeem the credit, it must be requested via email to [email protected].

FastWebHost Pricing

Arguably the biggest advantage to using a smaller service is the pricing. Customers get the service and value of a major hosting service, but aren’t required to makelong term commitments. To get a 5 dollar monthly service from Hostgator, for example,a customerwould have be asked to sign up for a 3 year contract.

Obviously, that’s a fairly long time to get to know your hosting service. Meanwhile, FastWebHost meets many of the same standards at a more reasonable price point:

• The Value Plan at $4.99/month, is the least expensive option in the webhosting section. This plan includes 50 GB of web space, and unlimited bandwidth for a single domain. You also get a CPanelhosting panel and a free web builder.
• The Business Plan: $7.99/month is the “premium” option which comes with 80 GB of web space, unlimited bandwidth and domains, as well as the same hosting panel and web builder.
• The Enterprise Plan is $10.99/month and includes over 100 GB of web space, unlimited bandwidth/domains but also comes with a free IP address.

Alternatively, you could look into the reseller web hosting options which costs a bit more, but you have the option to host third party sites for a profit and the aforementioned uptime guarantee.

This is, of course, FastWebHost’s specialty, and at the time of this writing, there is a sale on in which all three packages are available for one dollar a month.

The reseller’s packages also come with an upgraded cPanel designed for resellers. Other reseller plan features include:

• Unlimited usage of MySQL databases;
• Unlimited number of associated email accounts;
• Website builder;
• Raid 10 equipped servers;
• Unlimited number of subdomains;
• The option to domain park;
• Web based email applications;
• Email forwarding;
• Auto-responders;
• spam blockers;
• SMTP server;
• Email Alias;
• and POP3 accounts.

The major differences between packages come in terms of space and bandwidth which increase incrementally as you go up in price. These services also include site management features such as unlimited FTP accounts, Dreamweaver support, and backup/restore functionality.

Finally, customers can configure their own SSD Cloud VPS plan.

• $10 a month buys 20 GB of SSD storage, 200 GB of bandwidth, single core CPU, and 512 Megs of Ram.
• An additional $5 a month boosts those stats to 30 GB, 500 GB, and a gig of ram, respectively. Users still have a single core CPU at the second level.
• For $30 a month users get 40 GB of storage a terabyte of bandwidth a double core CPU and 2 GB of ram.
• $60 puts you at 60 GB of storage 2 terabytes of bandwidth and 4 GB of ram.
• The fifth level costs $100 a month for which you receive 80 GB storage, 3 terabytes of bandwidth, 4core CPU and 8 GB of ram.
• The 6^th and final level of service costs 190 per month. This nets you 150 GB of storage, 4 terabytes of bandwidth an 8core CPU and 16 GB of ram.

FastWebHost offers an affordable mid-tier solution to most users. If you’re looking to resell hosting services, host multiple domains on a single server, or you just need an affordable host for a smaller site, then FastWebHost is a serviceable option for your needs.

If you have especially high levels of traffic, however, this service might have trouble accommodating the volume.

What other small to medium sized hosting services have you tried? What’s worked best? Let us know in the comments section.