DON"T USE THIS WEB HOSTING SERVICE!!!!

DON"T USE THIS WEB HOSTING SERVICE!!!! The worst I ever dealt with. They do not give you unlimited space like they claim. They actually cap you at 25GB which is nothing these days. If you don't renew your web hosting plan for another year, they'll take down your entire site and databbses 2 weeks prior to when your current plan is expired. And worst customer service ever!!! And I've used GoDaddy, BlueHost, inMotion and they are light years ahead in customer service and support! DO NOT BE FOOLED BY A FATCOW!!!

Biggest Pro: N/A
Biggest Con: Everything

Pushy sales person

Called Fatcow today to signup our company for Webhosting. Talked to Chris in Sales and he had to call me back b/c his computer crashed. I should have taken that as a sign. Then, he called me back & as we were sealing the deal he kept trying to add features to the base price and I told him NO several times. Finally, I said if you are going to be pushy then I want to cancel my business with this company.He did not apologize and said that he would transfer me to billing dept to cancel. WOW, i guess they don't want the business.

You get what you pay for.

Used FatCow for a little over one year now. My biggest problem with Fat Cow is their technical support. When you place a request for support whether its via phone, chat or whatever you will be placed in touch with a 1st level support rep. Generally you are put in touch with someone quite fast ....usually. After that, good luck. The lack of technical knowledge and general feeling you get that the person on the other end does not care one bit for you ( a paying customer ) is quite frustrating. I had a couple instances where an issue arose and required more troubleshooting and knowledge than what the 1st level tech could provide. I was moved over to a tier two technician. On both occasions I was told that the issue was not their ( FatCow's ) problem and I was on my own. One of the two mentioned issues was a result of FatCow updating my website to address a security vulnerability. This update broke a significant portion of one of my two sites. Again, on my own. I rated up-time and reliability a 9 as my site was always available. Server connection and speed was given a 5 ...both of my sites (both WordPress) were generally slow. Using a shared server that is to be somewhat expected. I gave technical support and knowledge a 2 for the reasons mentioned above (pathetic). Customer service and billing was given a 5 because once they have your money they don't seem to care as much about you as they did before the sale. Finally, price value for money I gave a 7. The reasons are for the price of the service, which is very competitive and the tools you are given are extensive. Averaging the scores (dropping the highest and lowest score to prevent skewing) I came up with a 5.6 which I think is VERY nice considering their pathetic support and slow connection speeds. I would highly recommend seeking other hosting services.

Biggest Pro: Up Time and price
Biggest Con: Technical Support

Worst experience with FatCow website hosting

I signed up with FatCow and pre-paid for hosting services for 36 months. At the same time I purchased other products offered for new customers only. I paid a total of $198.79. Immediately after paying, I went ahead trying to open and install some of the applications from SimpleScript, wanting to go ahead and start building my website. The SimpleScript would not open, kept getting a "server FTP connection failure" message. I contacted their Tech Support and made them aware of the issue and I was promised that they would solve the problem within 24-48 hours. So I had to wait and I was OK with that for now. I then tried to set-up my homepage and add pages to the site. I was prompted to upgrade to "Premium" Plan ( for an additional $9.95/month) in order to access templates, media, or even to add pages to my website (I was only allowed to have 6 pages published, all other that I would create would be un-published). FatCow did not disclose this "minor" info regarding the number of allowed pages at the time of signing for the plan! I would probably choose the Premium Plan from the beginning instead of paying for the Basic Plan first and then for the Premium Plan on top of that! After 48 hours of waiting, I tried again to access the SimpleScript but again I couldn't, I kept getting the same error massage. For the second time, Tech Support promised to fix the issue in another 24-48 hours. So I waited again. Because of their lack of knowledge, my Simple Script was NEVER fixed, and therefore I could not build my website, so I had no choice but to close the account. I had to argue with their billing department that it was not my fault that I could not build my website and I finally got them to refund me only $117.00 out of $198.79 FatCow is NOT a reliable serious company to do business within; I found them to be laking of technical knowledge and literarily lying to their customers. I DO NOT RECOMMEND putting your trust, time and money into this company (unless you have money to throw out the window), all you'll get is lots of frustration and less money in your pocket!

Biggest Pro: none
Biggest Con: dishonest business etiquette

Bait n' Switch

I read some reviews and thought I'd try FatCow. What a mistake! What I thought I had ordered was "switched" to other products I had no interest in. I bought the three year plan, (sold on the best deal) only to argue with support staff for a week to try and straighten things out. It was no consolation that "this normally does not happen to new customers" response by FatCow reps. Had to request refunds to later find out I'd be charged $15.00 for domain registration and have to wait 60 days to transfer to new company. If, I cancel and don't pay, they keep domain name for 1 year, so your "stuck" because of their poor initial service, and they don't care!

Biggest Pro: intial price
Biggest Con: don't care attitude

not the best

I was excited to host with fatcow.com at first. You really can't beat the price for what they offer. However my experience has not been the best with them. They may offer unlimited disk usage and bandwidth but, they don't offer everything some people need for their site. It is a good service for basic users. Do you research (I wish I had) be sure they offer everything you need.

Biggest Pro: great if running something simple
Biggest Con: no crons

Don't do it!

I had never heard of FatCow before some non-techy decided that this is the plan for my company. And oh my god! Sooo many issues. Almost every day there has been issues with the database connection. The email has dropped out as well several times. We have a member login section on the front page and every time you login it says your session is expired and you have to login again - even if you logged out the last time you used it! It sucks so don't do it! You do get what you pay for!

Biggest Pro: cheap
Biggest Con: Always getting issues with database connections and site being down

MORE THAN 1 MONTH, NO DOWNTIMES

I've signed up with Fatcow around the end of November; since then, my site has yet to suffer a minute of downtime.
I had to contact the support only once, during website's setup, because an external script that I wanted to install - not available via their InstallCentral - had problems with their MySQL; despite the issue being caused by my script (not their fault, I mean), they tried to solve it as good and as fast as they could. In the end, the script could not be installed, but support spent 3 days on it before giving up.

Some will think that 1 month is not enough to have a real view of a hosting service but, when a service is crap, you don't even need a month.

Biggest Pro: Uptime
Biggest Con: None I could see, for now

Sneaky price increases / policy changes

Beware of constant changes to their terms/policy and pricing (with no notice to customer whatsoever). I have been with fatcow for 3 years. They have increased the annual fee by $30 each year. Also, they have discontinued the "free for life domain" even though it is still being advertised. Along with several other hidden increases. Set up auto renew and you'll be setting yourself up to get ripped off. However, if you call to complain they magically search their computers and "find you a better deal". Basically, you snooze, you loose. Keep a very close, constant watch on the billing.

To make matters worse the customer has very little control over changes within his/her own website. You are forced to ask the techs to make changes for you. The customer service and tech support appears to be a third party sub-contracted firm who have little knowledge and limited access to your account.

If I had to guess, I believe all the positive Fatcow reviews on the net have been written by Fatcow themselves..

Biggest Pro: Many flashy extras
Biggest Con: No notice given to customer regarding policy/price changes.

Fat Cow is a trap for novice web builders

Fat Cow has a nice initial pricing advertized and a fairly easy web builder. BUT if you want to host more than 6 pages, including linked pages that show more detailed information, there is a requirement to purchase an expensive option for around $9-$10 PER MONTH. What a TRAP! If you only want 6 basic and easy pages Fat Cow might be okay, but for me that was too limited for the site builder option. I set up a mail account and had the emails forwarded to my personal account. I never had a problem with that, though my use was quite limited. I don't have any contact with customer servivce to report. I don't think I'll renew simply because I'd like to use a site builder with greater capacity and I don't like their business practice of basing their advertized specs on a VERY LIMITED CAPABILITY for the site builder application for the basic advertized price.

Biggest Pro: Easy site builder for novice and small web site
Biggest Con: Site builder is limited in capability and size of site for basic pricing