Is FastComet Really the Premium Hosting Service It Claims to Be? When I turned into asked to review FastComet, I became intrigued. You see, I used to paintings as a web developer, however FastComet turned into one of the only a few hosts I in no way sincerely were given to attempt to mess around with.
True, I could’ve probable lived a complete life without knowing how properly FastComet virtually is, however when the celebs align so properly, how will you say no? I proceeded to sign up as a fresh person and to test every and every component of FastComet’s offerings.
These offerings, by means of the way, consist of the classic trio of shared, VPS (digital personal servers), and committed website hosting. They’re hosted in records centers sprinkled all over the global, and FastComet boasts that their performance will “exceed your expectations.” It additionally says that you’re about to fall in love with the capabilities, but that possibly says greater about the contemporary state of affection than it does approximately the capabilities themselves.
Anyways, my expectancies are not effortlessly surpassed. I’m still searching out a effective carrier that’s honest, dependable, fast, and fairly priced. I can tell you right now that a few components of FastComet’s carrier did galvanize me, that is how the host landed a niche on my listing of the pleasant website hosting businesses to be had today.
FEATURES
Useful Tools and an Excellent Global Presence
I wouldn’t describe FastComet’s shared hosting plans as “jam-packed with capabilities,” but we’re sincerely searching at a few beneficiant offerings. No mission-essential function is locked in the back of a paywall, and the simple plan will fit a single website just nice.
This simple plan, FastCloud, is also the one I signed as much as. I am going to fault FastComet for making it appear like you’ll be getting cloud-based totally web hosting, due to the fact that isn’t the case. We’re speaking popular shared server infrastructure, now not the flexible cloud environments of tomorrow.
But that’s honestly alright, especially while you remember what the plans include. The simple plan comes with 15GB of SSD storage area and 30GB of bandwidth, that’s greater than what loads of other hosts presently provide.
All plans are based on the attempted-and-actual cPanel control panel, which lets you quick and efficaciously manipulate your website hosting and website. WordPress, Joomla, and loads of other CMS (content material control structures) can all be without difficulty mounted with the one-click Softaculous auto-installer device.
Free migrations from other hosts to FastComet also are protected, and so is a clever integration with Cloudflare CDN, a global transport network that assists in brief delivery of content on your visitors.
Wondering what the 2 superior plans are for? Well, if you settlement website hosting-mania, the insatiable want to host a couple of website takes over. While the simple plan is limited to at least one internet site, the 2 advanced plans are unlimited, with ok assets as well.
I turned into happy to see that the primary plan comes with extra garage than is usually provided
Fancy your self an avid emailer? I’m satisfied to document that each one three plans include unlimited electronic mail inboxes. That method that everyone, out of your widespread other to digital assistants and your mother-in-law, can get an account.
What approximately that adorable, pressure-relieving padlock that everybody desires to see in their browser’s cope with bar? That’s an SSL certificates, that you’ll additionally be getting with any FastComet plan. It’s smooth to install, and will do all kinds of wonders for you – from boosting your search engine marketing ranking over SSL-less competition, to letting you conduct ecommerce transactions.
FastComet additionally advertises that a website builder via the call of FastComet SiteBuilder is available to be used. It wasn’t certainly developed via FastComet, and you can find it on different services, but it’s far a quite beneficial tool for buying a simple website up in mere seconds.
Before leaping into the really thrilling stuff, permit me simply whinge for a bit. Everything we blanketed to this point is good, however in which FastComet lags at the back of is within the web server branch. By the usage of the traditional Apache technology as opposed to the more advanced Nginx and LiteSpeed, FastComet can’t provide the powerful caching equipment that make hosts like Hostinger such overall performance beasts.
Useful Tools and an Excellent Global Presence
Ever heard that website hosting nursery rhyme, “All the king’s bandwidth and all the king’s CDN couldn’t attain Humpty Dumpty and come lower back again”? There’s fact to that. You can play around along with your server as much as you want, however to provide powerful provider for your visitors, you want to be close to them. Trying to serve an Australian vacationer from an LA-based facts middle will most likely bring about excruciatingly slow speeds, if not in a carrier timeout.
Most web hosting offerings will let you pick between two to a few locations, normally placed within the US east coast and within the Netherlands. Some even have a presence in Singapore. Enter FastComet, which operates a whopping eleven data centers round the sector.
That’s 3 within the US and one in each of the following locations: Canada, UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, India, Singapore, and Australia. Basically, you may have a area near your target market, and they will always be capable of load your website.
The ModSecurity Firewall
Without going into too much technical element, a firewall is a software program software that maintains the awful men out while nonetheless letting your prized traffic browse your website freely. FastComet has your lower back with the ever-famous ModSecurity, and all necessary configurations have already been achieved for you.
Managed VPS Service
If you’re just starting out with a simple weblog or a simple commercial enterprise web page, a VPS is truely more than you require. These virtualized machines offer devoted assets that enable you to run superior and complicated procedures, like an e-commerce save with many simultaneous traffic.
That’s high-quality, however it usually comes with a number of duty for your element. You’ll need to control this toddler, keep it, and constantly replace and patch configurations. Oh, and it only talks command-line Linux.
FastComet’s controlled VPS definitely saves the day on this regard, being one of the maximum professional and arms-on managed services to be had available on the market. You in reality won’t ought to worry about something – simply specify what you want and you could make the transition to VPS as clean as pie.
EASE OF USE
The Designer Was Excellent, the UX Guy Got a Bit Lost
While a sleek, beautiful layout is fundamental to an clean website hosting revel in, the good judgment in the back of this layout additionally needs to be sound. Good UX (User Experience) approach that the entirety behaves in a way that enhances your intuition, rather than running towards it. FastComet evolved its very personal custom account region and website hosting portal, however UX-sensible, it doesn’t constantly supply.
Creating an Account with FastComet
Let’s start with the signup process. Plan capabilities are sincerely laid out, and it’s not going to take you more than a minute of browsing to pick out which plan is proper for you. You would possibly get harassed by way of the various to be had styles of hosting (Web, WordPress, WooCommerce, Magento, and greater), however permit me make it clean for you – it’s all the exact same plan. Just pick whichever.
After choosing my plan and completing a general signup technique, it regarded as if my website hosting became energetic. But on the other hand, not simply. I had access to the account place, but my invoice changed into unpaid.
What did I need to do to clearly activate my account? It didn’t say, so I contacted assist. An agent explained to me that my price turned into simply declined for a few reason, and proceeded to simply accept it and activate my account. He then desired to have a phone communication with me, and asked that I ship a screenshot of my credit score card rate via e mail.
This is mildly worrying, however it all goes to confirm that I’m a actual individual, so I can’t sincerely whinge. What I can whinge approximately is that this complete manner relied on me information what changed into occurring, and actively operating to remedy it. A splendid platform at least publications you in a few manner.
Connecting a Domain and Installing WordPress
After effectively getting verified and formally activated, it changed into time to attach my area, which became registered with Namecheap – a amazing good buy-priced domain registrar. To do this, I needed to recognize FastComet’s nameservers. Searching for them proved an awful lot tougher than I was expecting.
They’re typically listed for your primary account place, making it in order that copy-pasting them to the domain control panel takes approximately 4 seconds. But regrettably, not with FastComet. I clicked Products, checked the details of my hosting plan, went via all of the pages and all of the records available there, and nonetheless couldn’t discover the slightest mention of nameservers.
A ordinary individual likely could’ve contacted guide by means of now, but I become decided to figure it out myself. Almost an hour later, I discovered them, and boy become I shocked.
Get this. FastComet’s Home tab and Products tab both list your web hosting plan, and the layout is equal. The kicker is that clicking View Details within the Products tab leads to your plan page, but in the Home tab, the exact equal button opens up a top-mystery pop-up! And finally, in that pop-up, my nameservers have been listed.
You now realize a way to keep away from this trouble your self, but this lack of forethought is a habitual theme. Trying to open your cPanel from a few pages will prompt you to reenter your account password, even if you already did just a second before that. Opening it from other pages works, no questions asked. This regular having to bear in mind what takes place wherein is tiring, and on the quit of the day – fees you time.
Luckily, I additionally have a few properly things to mention approximately the experience. You won’t surely ought to open cPanel for the most common and useful capabilities, like installing WordPress or activating your SSL certificate – they can be accessed without delay out of your plan web page. There’s also a nifty useful resource usage tab that permits you to recognize precisely how you’re doing useful resource-sensible, with colourful graphs and charts besides.
All in all? The FastComet interface is pretty to take a look at, generally works o.K., and on occasion drives you crazy. Funnily sufficient, that still makes it simpler to apply than many other services, a few which take a week to prompt and others that are a actual ache to use.
PERFORMANCE
As Long as Your Visitors Are Close By, It’s Pretty Fast
Not to gloat, but the extreme overall performance exams that we run here at Website Planet are probably the most in-depth tests done nowadays. I’m going to put on my geek helmet and give an explanation for precisely what I tested, how I did it, and what were the effects, however permit me sum it up for you actual short in case you’re in a rush.
Average loading instances close to the facts center, which in my case turned into in the US, had been appropriate-to-medium – 1.85s. Not the first-class I’ve seen; now not the worst. Global loading instances farther away are considerably slower, even with a CDN energetic. Uptime tracked over a length of months is ninety nine.882%, less than the guaranteed 99.9%.
That all goes to expose that FastComet isn’t a monster-performer. Nor is it a horrific one. Given that it’s basically the simplest budget host with locations in India, Oceania, and East Asia, I’d say it’s nonetheless your high-quality guess for those places. For the USA and Europe, you’d in all likelihood be better off with Hostinger or InterServer.
Feel unfastened to head over the whole outcomes and test method, or jump immediately to the help segment and listen all about how I talked with retailers and became usually happy.
I hosted my take a look at website on FastComet’s Dallas, TX records middle. It’s a landing web page, complete with HD snap shots, text, a touch shape, and some animations, very much like what your internet site might seem like. You can go to it at the following URL and rerun any of those exams your self – please proportion any interesting effects that you discover!
Like usually, I contacted FastComet’s support earlier than starting my tests and requested for some assist with optimizations. The agent updated my PHP, optimized the database, and established some overall performance plugins.
After he completed tweaking my internet site, I examined it the usage of 3 gear: GTmetrix PRO, the Sucuri Load Time Tester, and Uptime Robot’s Pro plan. I chose the nearest GTmetrix checking out server, also positioned in Dallas, TX, to measure pace and optimization rankings in the US. I used Sucuri to attract international overall performance insights, and UptimeRobot for monitoring my internet site’s uptime.
