FastComet Hosting Review- Is it Worth Your Money?

Introduction

TL;DR:

FastComet offers great shared hosting plans and impressive VPS plans that are akin to beefed up shared hosting packages. Overall, FastComet is well-received by users and here at GuruShop we’re in agreement with that, the only thing we don’t like are the steep renewal rates.

Go to FastComet


A small private start up based out of San Francisco, FastComet hosting is a relatively unknown name in the hosting sphere. But just because they’re small doesn’t mean they don’t pack a punch! We think that FastComet is a top choice host for almost any hosting need!

They offer a lot of great features such as; free managed migrations, 24/7 customer support, SSD-cloud server arictechure for awesome speeds, and much more!

FastComet offers server locations in North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and are currently hosting over 50,000 clients.

Hosting Plans on offer: Shared Hosting, WordPress/eCommerce Hosting, Cloud VPS, and dedicated servers.

Let’s get into it.


Shared Hosting

FastComet offers reasonably priced shared hosting that should accommodate most small business or bloggers more than adequately. Their shared hosting is cloud based and offers the use of cPanel.

Prices as of Jan 20, 2021- future price may change
PlanPromo PriceRenewal Rate
Basic$3.95/mo$9.95/mo
Plus$5.95/mo$14.95/mo
Extra$7.95/mo$19.95/mo

What’s Included

FeatureBasicPlusExtra
Number of websites1UnlimtedUnlimited
SSD Storage15GB25GB35GB
TrafficFair UsageFair UsageFair Usage
Unique visitors per month~25k~50k~100k
CPU cores available2 cores4 cores6 cores
RAM2GB3GB6GB
Inodes250k350k500k
Daily Back up (off site)7 days7 days30 Days

The table above isn’t a comprehensive table of all features, it’s just for your convenices to compare all the key features of each plan.

Beyond what’s listed in the table FastComet also offers:

  • Free website transfer(s)
  • Daily Website Backups (on and off site)
  • Free Cloudflare CDN
  • Free Let’s Encrypt SSL
  • 45-day money-back guarantee
  • Unlimited Databases
  • Unlimited FTP accounts
  • BitNinja server security
    • Protection against DDoS, script injection, malware and other common threats to websites
  • cPanel
  • Speed optimization tools
    • Gzip compression
    • Minify CSS and HTML
    • Browser optimization
    • Five layer speed optimization and caching (only available on highest tier plan)
  • A host of security tools
    • Firewall
    • Malware scan and reports
    • 2FA
    • Brute force protection
    • Server monitoring

Opinion and Breakdown

Overall, what’s on offer from FastComet is pretty impressive. We really like all the amazing security features like Malware scan and BitNinja security.

Keeping your website safe and secure from hackers and malicious code is super important these days, and we feel all hosts should include services like this, but generally you have to pay extra for malware protection.

Furthermore, the generous amount of resources, SSD storage, and cloud-based architecture are really enticing as well.

But…

We’re not a fan of their pricing structure. Their renewal pricing is very off-putting. For the plus plan, you’re looking at about $71 per year during the promo period. Once the renewal rates kick in that price goes to an eye watering $179/yr dollars, which is more than double your promotional price, yikes!

Even though the renewal rates are steep, the prices after renewal aren’t exorbitant if you take into consideration all the great features and specs that are included (security tools, speed optimization, great customer service, and generous specs).

On a side note- this type of pricing scheme is also very common among web hosting companies, so it’s no surprise to see it.

Lastly, you’ll only get access to the fastest speeds and best server caching abilities if you opt for their highest tier plan, which is somewhat of a letdown.

Bottom Line: We think that FastComet offers some of the most competitive shared hosting packages in the business. With excellent uptime, customer support, great speeds, and loads of features, it’s easy to like what’s on offer at FastComet.

WordPress and eCommerce Hosting

It’s becoming the industry standard to offer bespoke hosting packages for WordPress and eCommerce, as most bloggers are using WordPress. These hosting packages are optimized to run WordPress and offer hosting environments that boast improved speed, reliability, and security for WordPress users.

The offerings for WordPress and eCommerce from FastComet are identical in nature, and only differ by name.

In fact, their shared hosting packages are the same packages for WordPress and eCommerce, just re-labeled. The prices are identical, as all shared hosting packages are WordPress/eCommerce hosting and vice versa.

In essence, ALL shared hosting packages from FastComet are optimized for WordPress.

Further Details

The WordPress plans offer a few specific features such as:

  • FastGuard WordPress Security
    • Complete Account Isolation
    • Bruteforce protection
    • Up to 30 free daily backups
    • WordPress Web Application Firewall
    • Malware Scan & Reports
    • DDoS detection and mitigation
    • IP Reputation botnet attacks filter
  • RocketBooster
    • Dynamic caching
    • Optimized content processing
  • WordPres specific support
  • Resource usage reports
    • see how/where your website is using resource and improve it’s performance
  • 1 click app installs

Opinion

Our opinion is the same as the shared hosting as there is virtually no difference between shared hosting and WordPress hosting from FastComet, and they merely differ in name.

Cloud VPS

One great thing about FastComet is their VPS offering. They are “essentially” shared hosting type plans with beefed up resources. Their VPS plans are fully managed and include cPanel, so should be very easy to use and mange.

Plans and Pricing

PlanPromo PriceRenewal Rate
1$47.95/mo$59.95/mo
2$55.95/mo$69.95/mo
3$71.95/mo$89.95/mo
4$111.95/mo$139.95/mo

Breakdown and What’s Included:

FeatureCloud 1Cloud 2Cloud 3Cloud 4
CPUSingle 2.5ghz2x 2.5ghz cores4x 2.5ghz cores6x 2.5ghz cores
RAM2GB ECC4GB8GB16GB
Storage50GB SSD80GB SSD160GB SSD320GB SSD
Bandwith2TB4TB5TB8TB

All plans also include:

  • Fully managed servers
  • cPanel
  • SSD cloud storage
  • Scalable
    • Change to a higher tier plan at any time
  • 24/7 support
  • Automatic daily and weekly backups, on demand back-ups
  • 7-day money-back guarantee
  • Choice of datacenter location
  • Fastguard
    • Tools to improve performance and speed.
  • RocketBooster
    • Tools for malware, spam, DDos, and general security threat protection.

Opinion

The VPS plans by HostComet are really awesome! They’re loaded with features and great specs, and we like that the servers are fully managed.

This will be appealing to a wide range of people who need robust hosting but aren’t familiar with the ins-and-outs of maintaining a server. Nevertheless, full managed servers may be a point of contention for some users, as they may want or require root access.

Our main issue with the VPS plans is the pricing. They aren’t cheap to say the least. While they do deliver a great overall package, we’re a bit off put by how expensive things start getting. On the upside though, the renewal rates are not far from the promotional offerings, which means you won’t be surprised come time to renew your plan.

Bottom Line

FastComet offers some of the best fully managed VPS plans around. They’ll basically operate like a shared hosting plan, but you won’t have to deal with any of the hassle of managing a server yourself!

We recommend these plans for bloggers, or online entrepreneurs who need beefy hosting specs but might not be so tech-savvy with the server side stuff.

Dedicated Hosting

Want a whole server to yourself? FastComet has got you covered with fully managed dedicated server hosting.

Plans and Pricing

PlanPromo PriceRenewal Rate
DS 1$111.19/mo$139/mo
DS 2$135.19/mo$169/mo
DS 3$183.19/mo$229/mo
DS 4$279.19/mo$349/mo
Renewal Rates Table

Breakdown and Whats Included:

  • Fully managed servers
  • cPanel
  • SSD cloud storage
  • Scalable
    • Change to a higher tier plan at any time, you can even scale down if necessary.
  • 24/7 support
  • Automatic daily and weekly backups, on demand back-ups
  • 7-day money-back guarantee
  • Choice of datacenter location
  • Fastguard
    • Tools to improve performance and speed.
  • RocketBooster
    • Tools for malware, spam, DDos, and general security threat protection.

Evaluation and Wrap up

What People are saying?

Overall, most customers are very satisfied with FastComet hosting. They’ve managed to get a 4.7/5 star rating on TrustPilot, which is pretty impressive.

Almost all customers report being satisfied with the quick and friendly support staff, and are very satisfied with the product.

Nevertheless, there are some customers who complain about the support being lackluster. We think this is because some of their agents are simply better than others.

Pros

  • Cloud based architecture
  • SSD storage
  • Spam and malware protection with great security applications
  • Choice of data center
  • cPanel
  • Managed servers
  • Mostly good review

Cons

  • Daft customer service
    • asking simple and straightforward questions seems to garner responses which have little to do with what you asked about
      • To be fair we will check back in on this periodically and see if it was just a one off incident
  • Expensive renewal rates
    • more than twice the price of the promo prices which really hurts the value for money appeal
  • Not so “fast” FastComet
    • The speeds could be better.

Speed and Reliability

Speed: Above Average

Average load times for a standard WordPress site on their base plan were clocking in under 600m. Although this isn’t the best we’ve seen, the base packages don’t have all the speed enhancements like multilevel caching.

Reliability: Excellent

Over a 12-month period our tests show an average uptime of 99.6% which is excellent.

Conclusion

At first glance, FastComet seems like a great place to host some of your domains. They offer great features like SSD storage, 24/7 customer support, daily backups, cloud based server architecture, and make use of cPanel for the backend management.

Whats the issue you ask then? Well, FastComet isn’t perfect. The renewal rates are absurd in our opinion, the number of inodes are a bit skimpy, and our experience with their customer support was less than appetizing.

Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of customers are very happy with their service from FastComet. People say the technical support is very helpful and fast to respond, and feel satisfied with their hosting packages.