FatCow reviews – Page 4

FatCow is for FAT COWS

On the surface FatCow does provide ok service, a nice UI/Admin Console and a seemingly friendly support staff. But if you have a problem, forget about it. In the two years I was with them I had two problems - the first one I was able to get around, the second made me leave.

1. First problem I had with them was when a pretty standard PHP library was missing from their servers, making my site useless. I had a fully functional site running on Host Monster and decided to port to my FatCow account to find that it would not work. When I contacted the support team about this issue they told me to use an out-dated PEAR library from like 2001. Obviously that wouldn't work so I simply ported my site back to HM.

2. Second issue is beyond me... I attempted to create my 50th or so FTP account to receive an error indicating that an FTP user home directory cannot contain a period ("."). Now that may not be a problem to some, but for me that was a deal breaker - ALL my directories have a period (".") and ALL my 50+ FTP accounts had been happily assigned to directories with periods until then. Apparently they made a change to their back-end system preventing the use and assignment of FTP home directories with special characters, including a period ("."). After numerous calls/chats with customer service it all came down to their inability to change how FTP home directories were assigned - but they seemingly forgot that they DID manage to make a change when they screwed it up.

Unless you're a run-of-the-mill FAT COW, these guys are useless.

Bad for MediaWiki!

I purchased a subscription because Fat Cow is supposed to be awesome for MediaWiki BUT
1. They run version 1.6.5 -- all of the other web hosts that I spoke to run version 1.16!
2. They will not let you upgrade. They don't give you command line or shell access and you can't manually upgrade through a re-install as it requires too many MySQL queries.

Yuck!

Biggest Con: Do NOT use them for MediaWiki!

Nothing but trouble

Joined three days ago. Their mysql servers were down due to high demand intermittently the first and second days, the third day they were down for most of the day. Cancelled my account.
Support told me to refresh my browser cache and told me the problem was resolved. I got the problem on different computers with different OS and browsers. I wasnt the only one with this problem either, other blogs have had similar problems lately.

Biggest Con: mysql server often down

Fatcow review - PHP/MySQL

I run a PHP/MySQL website, and while at first it was fine, as soon as I got more than two users everything went haywire. I started getting massive lag from the database, the phpMyAdmin would work sometimes and not others, the SFTP would randomly fail... If you just need a cheap host for a basic personal page, and maybe you want to put a little PHP in, they're good and cheap. If you actually need any server power at all(website with users, etc...) they really aren't a good choice.

FatCow is not a good company

Never had a problem with FatCow until our domain address expired. This occurred with other web hosting companies for ther clients and all were quickly resolved.

With FatCow, we have been run around for the last 2 weeks with our website being down the whole time.

The customer support was horrible.

I would advise anyone not to use this company.

Absolutely AWEFUL

I join them in April thinking I had a good deal. My website is basic and I rarely go into my control panel. So two months ago I got calls from customers and friends letting me know that my email was bouncing. I went into my control panel and my email quota was cut down by 90% without my permission. The put it back to "defalut" quota when I called tech support (which were rude). Yesterday was the last straw when once again I tried to log into my control panel and they tell me that I must change my password every other week and it MUST have letters, numbers and punchaution characters. THIS IS INSANE!!!

When I called tech support a rep name "Charles" hung up on me. Then I talked to "Steve" the supervisor who was also rude but was happy to remove my credit card from the renewal form and then hung up without asking if I needed anything else. I called back and canceled my account immediately. This company started off as a nice dream but ended in a nightmare.

Biggest Pro: price
Biggest Con: tech support

MySQL = Lot's of downtime

I am running 5 sites on their system. Actual page serving time is ok. Not great. You get plenty of bandwidth, disk space, and unlimited email addresses.

BUT, you get what you pay for I suppose. It's a 1 in 2 chance that my MySQL database connections will fail. I have a script set up to test the DB connections every 5 minutes. I get at least 5 emails a day about it failing.

And, if you open a support ticket with them, you'll get someone who has no idea what they are talking about. My primary site which is a wiki, just got converted over to PmWiki, which uses no database. Now, I get decent performance.

Two other sites have forums (PHPBB3 and SMF), and I am always getting at least one email a day from each telling me they have database connection issues. Tech support says to check my passwords and user names, even after telling them I changed nothing.

So, if you are technically savvy, and don't need a Database? Fatcow should be fine. Do you need a database for your site, and need a bit of technical hand-holding? Find someone else.

Biggest Pro: Lot's of bandwidth
Biggest Con: MySQL is completely unreliable

Stay away...

This site was praised by alot of affiliated webhost review sites, I think because it pays their affiliates $80/customer or something like that.

The features are just what they promise, but the connectivity is UNRELIABLE!! I get random 500 Internet Errors at times, there seem to be speed lag at times when my site wouldn't load, and their FTP server is horrible, sometimes unusable!!!

I've only used this service for 2 days thought, I'm cancelling now and looking for a new host.

Fatcow is lousy for Joomla website

I use Fatcow for about a month. I have a simple website using Joomla. The website has been down for more than 5 times in 3 weeks and I can't get into the Joomla administrator panel. I got error message

Database Error: Unable to connect to the database:Could not connect to MySQL.

Even when it is up the connection is very slow. I did a lot research online on webhosting reviews. It was list as top 3 for hosting Joomla site. I guess most web hosting reviews are paid to advertise.

Do not sign up with Fatcow if you have Joomla website.

FatCow's great support

I would like to take this opportunity to commend the staff at FatCow for their exceptional technical assistance and service in handling questions and problems associated with the Web sites you host. In particular, I would like to thank Josh for his courtesy, knowledge and concern as he helped me resolve a difficulty I was having changing shipping option settings in ShopSite. Josh quickly understood my problem and worked promptly to find the answer. Within a very short period of time, he helped me to make the necessary changes, and clearly explained the details so that I would have no difficulty making similar changes in the future. I find this type of service is very typical of FatCow technical representatives, which is why I am very happy to have chosen FatCow for my own Web site and have recommended FatCow service to others for whom I work. Most of them, I am happy to say, are also FatCow customers. Thanks again to Josh and all of the wonderful staff at FatCow. Keep up the good work!!

Biggest Pro: Great service all around
Biggest Con: No cons