Fasthosts - a complete joke

[jd77]

We had the Fasthosts security scandal a few weeks back.

Earlier today the FTP went down - couldn't upload to any of my sites - not a huge problem as most of the stuff is database driven.

Then about 7pm the email went down. Not good.

Now all the databases are down. The websites are effectively all down - I can't even upload an HTML redirect page, and after visiting their support site they say they are in the process of emailing all affected users.

Great - apart from the fact that the email doesn't work.

I've had relatively trouble free times with Fasthosts but over the last 2 months a number of problems have cropped up and it is seriously damaging the reputation of my websites which I host with them.

I've always been big on loyalty but there comes a time when a company fails to live up to its promise.

I will be leaving Fasthosts within the next few days. I probably give them around £1K a year in total fees.

I would advise wholeheartedly against anybody considering joining up with them. Don't come crying to me when they fail to provide what they promise.

[tbp]

This doesn't suprise me in the slightest. I`ve had links with fasthosts hosting for years through working on other people sites, and its always been rubbish.

Large number of sites are packed on to servers (which is the only way they can achieve their low prices), and this obviously leads to poor performance and problems. Systems aren't patched regularly leading to more problems.

Its fine if you need cheap and cheerful non critical hosting, but if you want your site up 24/7 its best to look elsewhere.

The only thing I will say though is that in the last couple of months their tech support has become much better. Had a couple of problems with UK Reg, and was able to speak to a tech support person at 10.30pm on a sunday night, who actually went out of his way to help, and he did fix the problem. Compare that to pipex where you don't have a hope of ever talking to anyone from tech support, and nothing is done over the weekend, its all left til monday morning.

Again, its the problem with big companies. They get to stage where they grow TOO big, and become unmanageable, and things start falling apart.

[axod]

Originally Posted by tbp Large number of sites are packed on to servers (which is the only way they can achieve their low prices), and this obviously leads to poor performance and problems. Systems aren't patched regularly leading to more problems. Its fine if you need cheap and cheerful non critical hosting, but if you want your site up 24/7 its best to look elsewhere.

It does depend what you're after though. If you want to share a server, share a db, use their email systems, use their ftp systems, then obviously those are all points of failure, and will go down from time to time and it'll take them a while to fix.

On the other hand they do dedicated servers from £49 a month. I got a dedicated server a while back now, not had a single problem with it so far.

Get a dedicated server

[km8]

Originally Posted by tbp Again, its the problem with big companies. They get to stage where they grow TOO big, and become unmanageable, and things start falling apart.

Are you listening Sergey, Larry and Bill?

[tbp]

Are you listening Sergey, Larry and Bill?

Lol!

But then I am having problems with Google Adwords Billing at the moment, they sent me an email saying that I had made a chargeback in October, and demanded to know why. Didn't even have an adwords account in October, and they told me they had suspended my account which I had already shut down weeks before.

They took around 14 days to respond to my original query (how to change from prepay to postpay billing) with the above rubbish, and now its been 3 days and still no reply to my email asking them to explain themselves.

Again like Amazon its very difficult to actually contact a real person, and even harder to get a reply. Seems the bigger the company gets, the worse their customer service gets, and the more mistakes are made. I can understand them ignoring google search contact emails, as thats free, but when Im paying money to a company I expect to be able to talk to someone in a reasonable amount of time to sort out problems.

Also big problems with Apple at the moment (and not just because of the dodgy net connections at the moment), and again you can't speak to anyone and they are ignoring problems.

Seems these companies grow huge and then think they are above talking to, and helping, their customers.

[km8]

Originally Posted by tbp Seems these companies grow huge and then think they are above talking to, and helping, their customers.

It's not really like that - it's just that when you get big you can employ more and better qualified people to ignore complaints much more efficiently than you ever could before.

So it seems to you like you're not getting the service you did before but actually the company is delivering that service much more efficiently than ever before - that's how they get to be more profitable and hence bigger and more profitable and ...

(Logic courtesy of the Monty Python school of management)

[ian-d]

Thats why its always best to use the smaller companies

I use ukreg only for my domains, no fasthosts hosting but it still has a knock on effect from time to time, not to mention them leaking my credit card details, but we'll not go into that one again!

Its hard to find a decent domain registrant, especially if you are only requiring to register and nothing else, as they place your forward requests etc on the worst servers and go down often!

[T.J.]

Apparently, they have done a forced password change and changed a lot of peoples
passwords (including control panel, FTP and SQL passwords)
They will not email new passwords out and will not give them over the phone.
The only thing you can do is wait for your post Monday/Tuesday.
Going to cost a lot of people a lot of money.

Makes you see wonder if Fasthosts are faking reviews and recommendations

[citiesdirect]

We have a dedicated server and also use the shared service on Fasthosts. Had problems with both over the last 7 days and support seem unable to help or reply to emails. This is costing us money every day - so we'll be moving hosts. Any suggestions on other companies would be great - particularly interested in zero downtime and excellent support - lowest price not the highest priority.

[3ox]

This is impressive even by Fasthosts standards. You can almost hear money being wasted - people with ppc still running oblivious to it. Host move time!

This may even make national news!

[taff]

They have become a disaster, we have just over 40 sites with them, the majority of which are database driven. Our main income is dependent on one site.

Can't access ftp, can't access database, no email until this f*****g letter arrives some time next week.