If you’ve ever done a Google search to find a website host, you’ll know there’s thousands to choose from. I’ve been working on websites for at least 6 years now, and consequently I’ve gone through a few hosts. First, I hosted through a friend and had a reseller account. It was nice and I had the ability to sell hosting to others, but at $25 per month with only a few websites hosted and no customers, it made little financial sense to remain with them. Then, I hosted through HostGator for a very long time. Overall, their service was very good and downtime was minimal. However, I wanted to cut my monthly expenses down back in November or December of last year, and this was one that was easy to cut.
I spent a lot of time looking for a new host and somehow stumbled across FatCow. I honestly hadn’t heard of them before that time and was skeptical at first. I read up on them and liked the fact that it was powered by wind energy and very inexpensive (I believe I was charged $36 for the first year of service). Not only that, but the plan came with a lot of disk space and bandwidth, unlimited email accounts and a free domain name. I signed up immediately and began the task of bringing over 20-30 websites that I owned. Below is my experience with FatCow so far.
WordPress
Nearly all of my websites are built on the WordPress platform. I love WordPress for its simplicity and customization options. FatCow has SimpleScripts which takes care of the whole WordPress installation and update process for you. So far, my experience with this tool has been very positive. It has saved me a ton of time in setting up new websites and even saves me the trouble of coming up with a secure password. By the way, this tool is completely free to use on however many domains you have.
Several of my domain names have email accounts hosted through FatCow. Again, so far my experience has been very positive. Configuring the accounts has been easy, as has syncing them with my iPhone and Android devices. This pleasantly surprised me as I always had problems with setting up my Hostgator email accounts. As mentioned earlier, FatCow gives you unlimited email accounts as part of the hosting. So far this has worked great for me, email is delivered reliably and sent reliably.
Data Transfer
I still have to upload some themes and such manually for my WordPress sites. So far, the FTP speed associated with FatCow has been pretty good. It is not, of course, as fast as using Dropbox or Google Drive, but it is on par with the more expensive hosts I’ve used.
Uptime/Website Load Time
These two categories are VERY important to me as a webmaster. I want my websites to be up for as long as possible without going down, and I want them to load fast. FatCow hasn’t really disappointed me here. Yes, my websites load slightly slower than before, but it’s really not noticeable to most of my visitors as traffic has held steady for most sites and dramatically increased for others. As far as uptime, I have a tool that tracks this and it shows my websites have a 99.4% uptime with the downtime happening around 3AM EST (which is fine with me since traffic tends to be very low then). Overall, terrific performance.
Support
Anytime I’ve had questions, FatCow’s chat support team has been fast and knowledgeable. Again, no complaints here.
Will I Stick With FatCow?
Absolutely! It’s great hosting at a great price and seems to meet my website hosting needs pretty well. Unless something dramatically changes, I don’t see myself leaving FatCow anytime soon.
Disclosure: I am a blogger who receives compensation from the companies whose products or services I review. I test each product thoroughly and give high marks to only the very best. I own this website independently and the opinions expressed here are my own. And yes, I really do host my website and many others through FatCow. I am being compensated for sharing my thoughts on FatCow here and for any resulting referrals.
