FastHosts lay claim to the title of ‘The UK’s number one webhost’ based on data that shows they host more sites in the UK than any other web hosting provider.

How they achieved this when they are quite frankly, Rubbish (that’s right, with a capital ‘R’) is beyond me, and so I’m sharing some of my recent FastHosts frustrations (or FastHostrations) with you in the hope that it will at least save someone from deciding to use this most appalling of web hosts.

Until now, my major gripes with FastHosts have been:

They do not offer PHPMyAdmin or any alternative database management interface as standard - you have to install it yourself.  What the point of this is, when they provide you with databases, I do not know.  It’s kind of like selling someone a house, but making them knock a hole in the wall and install a door so that they can actually get in to it!

You have to wait 10 minutes for an FTP password change to take effect!  I kind of get the impression that changing your FTP password in the Control Panel sends an email to a little FastHosts minion, who then has to walk down to the server room, log on and change the password to what you asked for…

However, today they have topped these quite heroically by proving that they are completely useless when it comes to business hosting needs.

A client of ours has a busy eCommerce site setup on a Fasthosts Windows package.  They wish to use certain functionality only available on a Linux platform, and so have ordered a Linux package. FastHosts have kindly advised them they will have to handle the site migration themselves.  Fair enough, you might think, because you can’t expect that level of support from a web hosting company.

So, I asked FastHosts for the temporary FTP and DB details so that I can access the Linux package and set the store up before we move the domain over (remember this is a busy eCommerce store, and downtime is really not a good idea for business!)  To which I received this helpful response:

There are currently no FTP details for the Linux server as the domain has not yet been added to the package. Once the domain has been removed from the current package and switched to the Linux, the FTP details will remain the same, but a password update will be required.

I would suggest applying this change during the evening or weekend, due to the limited downtime the change over may cause.

It seems that despite FastHosts being number one webhosting company in the UK, they really haven’t yet got the handle on the whole 24/7 global business side of the Internet.

So, I try again - this time specifically requesting an IP address that I can use to FTP up to the server, and explaining the importance of actually having no downtime - something that I have managed to do a million times with webhosts that are actually worth signing up to.

Cue helpful response number two:

Unfortunately not.  If you were to assign a domain already configured on our system with a hosting package, to another hosting package, it would create a conflict of domains on our servers.

Uh, that’s not actually what I asked, but never mind.  Plan B is that we use another domain name that is lying dormant on the FastHosts account, map that to the Linux package, FTP all the files up and then move across the live domain when all is ready.

What do you think of that, eh FastHosts?  Care to explain to me why you would not be able to do something as straightforwards as this?  Of course they can:

If you add a different domain to the server and upload the required files, when removing the domain from the package, the files will be wiped.

If there was a simpler method, which would cause less downtime, then we would notify you of this procedure.

Great.  So, FastHosts are capable of doing absolutely f*** all to help avoid downtime.  I love the second sentence in particular: “We really want to help you, valued customer. It’s just that our service is configured in such a way that we can’t even manage to do what some poxy $1 a month cPanel enabled webhost would be able to do in two minutes.  Oh, but we do appreciate your custom - you and suckers just like you are what makes us the UK’s number one web host”

(OK, so this is paraphrasing a little, but it’s basically what they are saying…)

So, downtime it is then - and this is not a straightforward install, so god knows how long the site will be off line for.

Once again Thank you FastHosts - and the rest of you - stay well away from them!

If, like me you’re appalled by this performance, you can actually rate FastHosts over here…

Some other random posts:

• Google Insights - the ultimate keyword search trend tool?
• Google guilty of buying paid links…
• PayPal Data Transfer - a ready to go script generator
• Happy Birthday Google!
• MySQL International Dialing Codes telephone database