FatCow reviews – Page 3

FatCow Is A Great Hosting Service!

I used to use 1&1 and I found Fatcow to have better and easier to use website tools. The support staff is LIVE every single time with a REAL human being! FatCow is extremely inexpensive and affordable.. the speeds for download are FAST off your domain. I highly recommend FatCow these days. The only downside is that I registered for FatCow in China and I was able to test if the domain is blocked in China. It is in fact blocked. This isn't FatCow's problem, but rather the DNS they register the domain with doesn't get through the list that the China firewall uses. If doing business in China is a big deal for you, I would register my domain elsewhere and use FatCow strictly for hosting (I bought both domain name and hosting at the same time from FatCow)

Biggest Pro: Inexpensive
Biggest Con: DNS Listing Blocked In China

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

inhouse communication problems

Fat Cow is a problematic web hosting service, especially with their inhouse communication problems and accounting practices. I canceled my Fat Cow reseller account months before its expiration and yet Fat Cow went ahead and charged me the reseller account fees anyway. This type of shoddy business practices and ethics is not in the best interest of the consummer.

The other glaring problem with Fat Cow is their UN-user friendly console panels...BLOODY nightmare! TWO STARS ONLY!

TERRIBLE & UNRELIABLE

I signed up with FatCow at the advice of my website designed - BIG MISTAKE! I've been with them for 3 months and have had nothing but problems. I constantly get complaints from visitors about the site being down at night, have had too many 500 internal errors to count, etc. All in all, I would say I've had over 50 issues in 3 months, which is unacceptable.

They do respond to calls pretty quickly and have Live Chat available, but their tech support knows absolutely nothing. The girl I talked to recently just kept saying "umm" and kept repeating "I'm sorry for the inconvenience". No concrete information, no estimate of when the problem will be fixed, nothing.

I'm switching to Host Gator. Although FatCow does prorated refunds, they also charge a $35 cancellation fee, so you basically get nothing back.