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FatCow Web Hosting Review |
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| Low cost with good reliability; easy shopping cart creator; green host; 50% exclusive discount | |
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[Editor's note: Next Advisor visitors save 50% off of the regular price of $7.33 per month when they visit FatCow from a link on the NextAdvisor.com site. There is no coupon code necessary, just click "Visit Website" or "Go to Site".] At $3.67 per month with free domain registration, FatCow is among the cheapest web hosts we reviewed. However, if you want domain privacy (which we highly recommend), it will cost you an additional $8.99 for the year. It's one of many companies that offers "unlimited" storage and data transfer, which is a pretty safe offering given how small most websites are. We were able to build a simple site with the included CM4all site creator. It offers a fair number of templates to chose from, and editing them is rather easy. They're not the best-looking templates, and anyone who's spent a lot of time online will recognize many of them from other sites. Still, it will suit the needs of individuals and small businesses looking to have a site up and running quickly. FatCow offers an easy shopping cart solution with Shopsite, one of the more intuitive shopping cart creation programs we used. Wordpress is nearly standard with all web hosts, and the "one-click" installation was easy to get through. Unfortunately, the first installations of our CM4all site and Wordpress blog were not installed in the right place. It took a call to their support line to fix it. While not the most professional support that we've encountered, they were able to solve the problem quickly. They offer support through live-chat and email as well. Premium support with a unique toll-free number and a customized console is available for an additional charge. In common with many other web hosts, there's not a consistent feel among the various components we used, as they use a number of 3rd party applications to provide functionality. This may be a bit of an obstacle to beginners, as there's a clunky feel to the overall experience. But again, this is not out-of-the-ordinary for a low-cost web host. FTP and email both worked fine in our tests, an 83MB site uploaded in 10:15, and we saw our upload immediately. Our 77MB movie played with fits and starts, showing a somewhat disappointing data transfer speed at times, though the movie was not optimized for streaming over the web. FatCow offers a 30-Day full refund and prorated refund after that. If you cancel within 30 days, FatCow says you can choose whether or not to keep the domain (if you do, you will be charged $20 for the domain registration). It should be noted that refunds after 30-days will be charged a $35 cancelation fee which includes the cost of the domain registration. FatCow is a great bargain and doesn't leave users tied into a multi-year contract to get a good price, something we really respect. That, and their green hosting, make FatCow a stand-out in the field. |
Service Details:
| Cheapest Plan: | $3.67/mo 1 year (after 50% discount) |
| 1 Year Plan: | $44.00/yr; $3.67/mo (after 50% discount) |
| $ Back Guarantee: | 30-day full refund, prorated after; $35 termination charge (includes domain) |
| Domain: | Free for life |
| Support: | Email, Phone, Chat |
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