FastComet was established in 2013 and is headquartered in San Francisco. They have more than 50,000 active clients worldwide, 20,000+ cloud nodes and a team of 70 employees.
That diverse customer base is supported by their ten server locations in major cities like Chicago, London, Amsterdam, Singapore, Mumbai, and Tokyo.
(The closer the server to people trying to reach it, the better-expected is the performance – so the theory goes.)
FastComet is also one of the few private companies in the hosting business.Being private means there are only a few dozen people in the organization, whose actual names and faces appear on their site. (We’ll get into why that matters in a second.)
So how did they fare? Can a small, scrappy upstart try to support a worldwide customer base keep up with billion-dollar hosting brands?
We signed up for an account to find out. We purchased the cheapest plan in November 2017 and set up a test WordPress site and been tracking uptime figures and site speed in Pingdom.
Let’s get into our early findings by starting with what FastComet does well.
Pros of Using FastComet Hosting
FastComet makes some pretty bold claims for a relatively young, small firm.
The good news is that they were able to back up a lot of them, posting strong uptime in the several months we’ve monitored with them.
They also go above and beyond typical hosts with transparent pricing and free additional services.
Here’s a full look:
1. Strong Uptime out of the Gate
When you visit FastComet homepage, one of the first things you’ll see is this awesome graphic:
It quickly positions its services against many of the best-known brands in the industry. And it assures you that they’re the best overall.
Fortunately, their uptime performance started off strong. The first few months were a flawless 100%, with later months only dipping slightly.
The average comes out to an excellent 99.97%!
Here are the monthly figures to back that up:
Last 12-month average uptime:
- January 2020 average uptime: 99.67%
- December 2019 average uptime: 100%
- November 2019 average uptime: 100%
- October 2019 average uptime: 100%
- September 2019 average uptime: 99.96%
- August 2019 average uptime: 99.96%
- July 2019 average uptime: 99.97%
- June 2019 average uptime: 100%
- May 2019 average uptime: 99.99%
- April 2019 average uptime: 100%
- March 2019 average uptime: 100%
- February 2019 average uptime: 100%
2. Fast, Personal Support
FastComet might be small in comparison to other hosting companies, but that can also work as an advantage.
For starters – the team has been around the block a time or two.
The public cloud hosting side of the business has officially been around since only 2013. Before that, the founding team had been in the hosting business for over nine years.
They worked almost exclusively on System Admin for business clients (read: big, complex, expensive). Hence – if they were able to take care of that kind of business, scaling down shouldn’t be a problem.
True to form, they’ve run over 400,000 live chat sessions and 875,000 support tickets.
The second major benefit of a small team is that they’re able to offer fast, friendly service that most other companies can’t match.
Here’s how this support section usually reads on every other hosting company.
The company’s live chat pops up. In most cases, you have no idea who you’re dealing with. There’s usually a small chance there is a picture of the person helping you, it’s obviously a fake, stock image.
(Or worse – they don’t offer live chat and force you to send an impersonal, slow email.)
But not FastComet
Shortly after visiting their site for the first time, Frank G. reached out for help. To our surprise, he started engaging seconds after we threw a question his way.
Frank was super-friendly, answering our queries within seconds. It shows he’s a real person who’s friendly and wants to help.
So this isn’t some unprofessional call center that barely pays minimum wage. FastComet invests heavily in customer support and it shows.
3. Longer-Than-Usual Money-Back Guarantee
Let’s be honest with each other for a second:
Moving to a new hosting company sucks. Seriously – it’s super disruptive, forcing you to take down a seemingly-good site. It’s also time-consuming and technically problematic.
So the last thing you want to do is be forced to move your host again because you’re unhappy with the one you chose (but are now locked into a long-term, prepaid deal).
Fortunately, FastComet will give you a full 45 days to get your money back. That means you can try out their service, or even spin up a test site like we did, and have over a month to vet them.
This 45-day period is among the longest we’ve seen. It means that FastComet is confident in the service they provide.
4. Free Daily Backups
Like it or not, you’re bound to run into site problems that threaten to derail all the hard work you’ve put in. Stay in the game long enough and it’s bound to happen to everyone.
No problem if you’re on FastComet, though.
- First, they offer free daily backups. That’s almost unheard of on cheap, ‘value’ plans.
- Second, they’ll store these backups for you, safely off-site for up to 30 full days.
- And third – they’ll help you restore older versions of your site within just a single click if needed.
All of this is done standard, on all of their plans. Almost too good to be true.
5. Free Cloudflare CDN
FastComet will also throw in a free Cloudflare content delivery network (CDN) on their basic plans, too.
Content Delivery Networks will host your data across worldwide servers, so that it loads almost instantly for anyone, anywhere.
Most basic cloud hosting companies don’t even offer this service on their plans. And if they do, you’ll have to fork over a few extra bucks as an expensive upsell.
But not at FastComet. They’ll throw one in gratis.
This, in addition to being open-source friendly with over 150 applications, makes FastComet one of the best options for new businesses to get up-and-running ASAP.
6. Free Migrations
But wait, there’s more!
If you already have a site on the interwebs, FastComet will help you move it over to their service for free.
Here’s how it typically works:
- The hosting company will say they do free migrations. When you actually need it, they’ll send you a support doc that you’ll have to figure out all by yourself.
- Or, they’ll use some janky ‘wizard’ tool to automatically move the info so they don’t have to lift a finger.
FastComet, on the other hand, will have their own team of experts moves the entire site for you. So you won’t have to lift a finger. It’ll be all wrapped up in less than an hour, with zero additional fees or higher plans needed.
7. Free Domain for Life!
Yes, you read that right.
Sign up for a domain name through FastComet and you’ll get it for-ev-er.
We’ve reviewed over thirty other hosts, and this is the only time we remember seeing this benefit.
Sure, most other hosting companies will happily sell you a domain name. They might even throw the first year in for free or knock off a few bucks to sweeten the deal.
But then what happens?
After that first year expires, they get you on the renewal rate. You’re obviously not going to get a new domain name after, right?
So they take advantage. The first year might have only been a few bucks, but subsequent years might cost you 4-5x the initial price.
This is just one example of FastComet’s honest, transparent pricing. Here’s another…
Cons of Using FastComet Hosting
FastComet uptime was excellent, support was friendly, and they offer a ton of free goodies.
Of course, no company is perfect. Neither is FastComet.
Here are a few of the issues we’ve encountered so far.
1. Concerning Speed
We have to admit, we had high hopes for FastComet – their uptime was showing great results and we hoped the same stats for speed.
We’ve signed up, paid for, and tested all of those other sites listed. So we’ve got the cold-hard data to do the actual comparisons.
We just recently reviewed GoDaddy’s hosting option, for example, and were honestly blown away by the speed results of a super-low 554ms over the last 24 months.
While our favorite, the HostGator Cloud option, is a similarly-quick 399ms.
So far, these are all pretty good speeds. They’re going to be tough to blow away.
The regular shared HostGator, however, came in at a sluggish 1191ms. So yeah – that one shouldn’t be too difficult to outperform.
But guess what?
Our FastComet site came in almost the same!
These past 24 months, we’ve enjoyed a slow average loading speed of 807ms.
You can see it for yourself. Here’s the data of the last 12 months to back it up:
Last 12-month average speed:
FastComet Pricing, Hosting Plans & Quick Facts
Here’s a quick overview of the hosting plans offered by FastComet:
FastCloud: You get a free domain transfer, space for a single site, 15GB of SSD space with unmetered traffic, for only $3.45/month.
FastCloud Plus: The middle tier offers the same free domain transfer. They also throw in multiple websites and almost double your SSD space. All for only $5.20/month.
FastCloud Extra: FastComet’s premier plan looks pretty similar to the last option, but with a little more space and the ‘RocketBooster’ option to speed things up. (Which according to our tests, might be worth the upgrade.) Keep in mind that it’s going to cost you a little extra at $6.90/month.
More information about FastComet:
- Free domain? Yes.
- Ease of Signup: Easy signup process.
- Payment Methods: All standard credit cards and PayPal.
- Hidden Fees and Clauses: According to their terms of service, “We cannot and do not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of any information, including prices, product images, specifications, availability, and services. We reserve the right to change or update information and to correct errors, inaccuracies, or omissions at any time without prior notice.”
- Upsells: A few upsells, but not too many.
- Account Activation: Fast account activation.
- Control Panel and Dashboard Experience: cPanel.
- Installation of Apps and CMSs (WordPress, Joomla, etc.): Access to over 150 popular open-source apps.
Do We Recommend FastComet?
Yes!
FastComet is a relatively small company that has invested heavily in massive, modern infrastructure, and it is telling.
Impeccable uptime, very good speed, excellent support, and a huge number of technologies available for novice and experienced webmasters alike make FastComet
a very strong host.
The pricing is fair and simple, while the value provided in return is simply stunning. What is more, the company provides the full array of hosting products so taht businesses can grow easily there. At first glance, the FastComet VPS and dedicated solutions look promising.
This is definitely one of the best website hosting companies I’ve checked, but if you disagree with my FastComet review, drop a line below or check the other hosts we have reviewed here, at the Hosting Tribunal..
