Do you know what makes a great company?
In my experience, the answer is Web Hosting! If you run an online business, it is essential to invest in a reliable hosting service that guarantees maximum online presence and excellent performance. The success of your online business depends majorly on the type of hosting you use.
Today, I am reviewing another popular web hosting service – FastComet. I have been using this hosting for the past 1 year. So, after proper testing and research, I am finally here with my honest opinions about it.
In this FastComet Review, we will begin by conducting various tests- speed test, load test, uptime test, SRT test, etc and evaluate the performance of FastComet.
Further, we will touch up on its features, including its UI, Security, Backups, Migrations, Refund Policy, Software Support, and more. FastComet also has a very tempting Affiliate Program. Don’t forget to check it out below.
Finally, we will discuss some important pros and cons of Fastcomet, consider some alternatives, and find out if FastComet is worth buying. Taking no more of your time, let us begin!
About FastComet
FastComet is an independently owned private company established in the year 2013. They have their headquarters in San Francisco, California.
With an aim of maintaining integrity, respect, and sharing knowledge, they dedicate themselves to their customers and hold high standards for their projects.
As of now, they are providing web hosting to over 50 thousand websites and small businesses, and constantly working on improving their services!
If you are a quick skimmer, find an overview of all the major features and test results of FastComet Hosting in the table below!
FastComet Overview
| Speed | 879.04 ms (Bangalore) |
| Uptime | 99.96% (last 340 days) |
| Data Centers | USA, India, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Germany, UK, Japan, and Netherland |
| Backups and Restoration | Automated daily backups stored for 7-30 days1-click Restore ServiceNo easy process for manual backup and restore |
| Migration | 1 free migration (FastCloud)3 free migrations (FastCloud Plus, FastCloud Extra) |
| Customer Support | Email Tickets, 24/7/365 Live chat, Phone Support, Knowledge Base, In-depth Tutorials |
| Features | cPanel, free Let’sEncrypt SSL, free Cloudflare CDN, Website Staging, Unlimited Emails, Apache servers, 300+ apps, Website Builder, Sub-Account control |
| Developer Tools | PHP 8.0, Bash, Perl, Python, NodeJS, Laravel, and more. |
| Security | ModSecurity, 2FA, SSL, BitNinja Security, Imunify360, Virus Scanner, IP Blocker, Hotlink protection, SSH Access. |
| Hosting Plans | Shared Hosting, Cloud VPS Hosting, Dedicated CPU Servers |
| Payment Methods | Credit and Debit Cards (Visa, MasterCard, American Express), and PayPal |
| Refund Policy | 45-days refund policy |
| Pricing | Starting from $2.95/month |
FastComet Hosting Testing Parameters
For testing FastComet hosting, I have purchased the FastCloud Extra shared hosting plan for my website.
I’ve been using it for the last 340 days with Mumbai-based servers and the following configurations:
- Ocean WP Theme (Elementor based)
- Gym Template (Elementor based)
- No cache plugins
FastComet Server Response Time
Talking about the Server Response Time, I found it to be 3 ms in Mumbai and 67 ms in Singapore, which is indeed impressive! This is so much better as compared to web hosts like StableHost or Bluehost.
However, moving farther away towards the US regions, the SRT keeps on increasing considerably.
As of now, they are using the Apache servers. However, their sales team confirmed that they will provide Litespeed servers on a few of their plans soon, which is splendid news. This will improve their performance multifold, and I am looking forward to it!
As of now, you can get Litespeed servers on A2 Hosting, ChemiCloud, Rocket.net, and StableHost.
FastComet Speed Test
FastComet uses exclusive SSD storage on all plans for storing your files and databases. It promises swift speeds and as stated on their page, your website loads up to 300% faster!
When I selected the Bangalore location, I received exceptional page load speeds of 879.04 ms! These speeds compete with prominent hosting providers like ChemiCloud and Cloudways!
Why I was more impressed with these results is also because I have used no cache plugin here.
These are the results with their default cache system running in the background. I’d have received even faster speeds if I had installed and configured a cache plugin by myself.
FastComet Uptime
FastComet provides an uptime guarantee of 99%. This is quite low as compared to other web hosts like Bluehost, A2 Hosting, or Cloudways, offering a 99.9% guarantee.
I have been checking the uptime of my website hosted on FastComet for the last 340 days using the Better Uptime tool, which monitors my site every 30 seconds.
Last 12 months average uptime of Fastcomet Hosting:
- June 2022 : 99.98%
- May 2022. : 99.93%
- April 2022 : 99.99%
- March 2022. : 99.99%
- February 2022 : 99.52%
- January 2022. : 100%
- December 2021. : 100%
- November 2021 : 99.99%
- October 2021 : 100%
- September 2021 :100%
- August 2021 :99.99%
- July 2021 :99.99%
The overall uptime of my site was 99.99% which is good but I think it can be improved further. There has been a considerable improvement in their uptime in the last 6 months.
My website has seen no downtime since the last 1 month and 12 days, which is absolutely great!
However, they don’t offer any refund if the uptime is below the standards that they mentioned.
FastComet Load Test
FastComet claims to offer unmetered traffic on all plans. This means there should be no limit on the bandwidth consumption, even on their shared hosting plans.
However, when I contacted their support representative, they told me that the bandwidth limit for FastCloud Extra plan is 92 GB, which is anyway quite good.
For the load test, I sent 50 virtual users from Mumbai based data centers to analyse how effectively my website handles traffic. They made a total of 9450 requests out of which no requests failed, which is superb! The average response time came out to be just 22ms!
In the image above, you can see there is a slight spike in the response time. But this is because I did not use any cache plugin. If I had used it, there wouldn’t have been any spikes here.
So, looking at the number of requests made, overall FastComet has handled the load well! You can also try out Cloudways, ChemiCloud, and Rocket.net is your priority is good load handling!
FastComet Cache
They have three shared hosting plans and the maximum cache plugins are offered on the FastCloud Extra plan where you get Varnish, OPCache, MemCache, and more cache systems.
Cache management can be done from the Cachewall app in cPanel. However, you can just turn caching on/off or purge cache. There are no additional configuration settings.
They also don’t offer any cache plugins for WordPress so you can install any one of your choice on your WordPress website.
Another thing to note is that MemCache service is disabled by default on Fastcomet as it leads to breakdown of some apps. So, in order to enable it, you need to contact their support team.
FastComet Data Centres
FastComet has its data centers in 11 locations across the globe. This ensures that your website loads fast, no matter where your audience is situated.
| Asia | Mumbai (India), Tokyo (Japan), Singapore (Asia-Pacific) |
| Europe | Frankfurt, Amsterdam, London |
| USA | Chicago, Newark, Dallas |
| Australia | Sydney |
| Canada | Toronto |
If you want a hosting solution with more data centers, you can consider Cloudways. It has data centers in 65+ locations around the globe!
FastComet User Interface
The user interface of FastComet looks decent. It’s not very attractive or modern in design. You can find all the functions neatly organized on the left panel.
Basically, the FastComet interface lets you do the following.
- Manage your account.
- Manage your purchased services.
- manage your domains or add a new one.
- Login to your cPanel or Webmail service.
- Contact customer support.
- Monitor resource usage
FastComet provides cPanel on its hosting plans, which is one of the most powerful and intuitive control panels out there.
It is easy to use, mobile friendly, and loaded with helpful tools and software to offer a smooth experience to its users. Overall, I found its interface to be good, but it can be improved in terms of design.
FastComet Domain Name
Do you know that FastComet used to offer free lifetime domain registration in the past? However, they have discontinued it now, so you don’t get free domains with any plan of FastComet.
New Domains
FastComet is also a popular domain registrar offering domains at decent prices. Following are the annual prices for some popular TLDs.
| TLD | Annual Price |
| .com | $9.95 |
| .net | $11.95 |
| .org | $12.95 |
| .in | $9.95 |
| .xyz | $9.99 |
If you’re still in the process of deciding a name for your website, you can check out this domain name generator for some help!
Domain Transfer
FastComet offers 1 free domain transfer and free renewal for a year. So, if you have your domain registered on some other web host currently, you can get it transferred to FastComet and renewed for a year at absolutely zero cost!
Their domain renewal fee is also quite low as they only charge a registry fee and nothing else on top of it. So, it’s a pretty good deal! However, you can also check out ChemiCloud if you need a free domain for lifetime.
Preview URL
Fastcomet lets you create a temporary URL for accessing your website in case you have not connected your domain name with your hosting account.
It can be found under the Active Products tab in your Fastcomet console.
This helps you to make sure how your website looks and feels online before actually launching it in your audience.
FastComet Security
Talking about security, FastComet implements a variety of security services to safeguard their users from online threats. The most important ones are mentioned below.
- Master Password – Unlike other hosting providers, FastComet lets you set a master password for your account.
Services like cPanel, website setup, backup, restoration, staging, etc, work only after verifying your master password. However, this extra security might also slow down your workflow at times!
- ModSecurity – It’s a Web application firewall (WAF) that actively blocks unauthorized login attempts. It is optimized for CMS platforms like WordPress, Magento, etc.
- 2FA – For Two-Factor Authentication, you can use authenticator apps like Google Authenticator or Authy to generate OTP codes for your logins.
- SSL Certificate – You get free Let’sEncrypt Domain Validated SSL Certificates applied to all domains by default.
- BitNinja Security – It’s a 7-layered network firewall that stops DDoS attacks, script injections, etc, and is enabled on all FastComet plans.
- Imunify360 – It’s a malware scanner and firewall service that protects your servers from brute force attacks, DDoS attacks, etc.
- Virus Scanner – It scans your entire home directory, or mail, public FTP space, and public web space separately for viruses.
- IP Blocker – It blocks certain IP addresses from accessing your website.
- Hotlink Protection – It restricts other users from directly linking to files on your website so they cannot steal your bandwidth.
- Isolated Hosting Environment – FastComet provides an isolated environment to each shared hosting account. Thus, even if a website that shares the server with you is infected, your website won’t be harmed!
- SSH Access – It lets you directly make changes to your server using the Terminal app under cPanel.
FastComet Backups and Restoration
FastComet offers automated daily backups on all its hosting plans for free. These are off-site backups, meaning they are stored on a different server than where your website is.
So, in case something happens to your site, the backup will remain protected!
Your files and databases are backed up separately. So you can create separate backups for your databases, emails, cronjobs, files, DNS zones, etc.
FastComet creates incremental backups, which means it only copies the changes made since the previous backup!
The FastCloud and FastCloud Plus Shared hosting plans store automatic backups for 7 days. Whereas, the FastCloud Extra plan stores your backups for a duration of 30 days.
The restoration process can be easily implemented through their 1-click Restore Manager.
However, there is no option to restore both databases and files together. I hope they provide an easy option for taking manual backups and restorations.
FastComet Website Staging
Staging refers to creating a copy of your website for testing any feature updates or modifications.
FastComet allows an easy and smooth website staging using their Softaculous auto installer.
All you need to do is go to the Softaculous installer and, under WordPress, select the website you want to clone.
Now, click on the Staging option. It will display the URL for your cloned site and the WordPress admin credentials to edit it. You can make as many edits to the site as you want and preview it through the URL. All of them will remain local.
When you are satisfied with the modifications, you can go back to the WordPress manager and click on the ‘Push changes to Live’ button.
That’s it! Your modifications have been overwritten on your original site. I found the staging process to be very simple and friendly with FastComet!
FastComet Support
The customer support of FastComet is really appreciable. They offer support through email tickets, 24/7 live chat, and phone. Along with that, they have a substantial knowledge base with a good number of articles.
For beginners, they also have 60+ in-depth tutorials on topics like CMS, eCommerce, Blogging, Programming Languages, CRM, Hosting, Website optimization, and more.
Overall, I loved their live chat support. Their tech staff was knowledgeable, quick, and polite in their replies. I received intelligent replies to all my doubts in 2-3 minutes. The email ticket system was also quite good in my experience. However, the customer support of ChemiCloud is my personal favourite!
FastComet Inode Count
Inode count refers to the total number of files that can be stored on your hosting account.
The inode count on FastComet varies as per the plan chosen. Following are the inode count limits for shared hosting plans.
- FastCloud: 2.5 lakh inodes
- FastCloud Plus: 3.5 lakh inodes
- FastCloud Extra: 5 lakh inodes
FastComet Pricing Plans
Here’s a brief comparison of the pricing and features of different Shared Hosting plans available on FastComet.
| FastCloud | FastCloud Plus | FastCloud Extra | |
| Price/month | $3.48 | $5.28 | $6.98 |
| SSD Storage | 15 GB | 25 GB | 35 GB |
| Bandwidth (Fair Usage) | 30 GB | 61 GB | 92 GB |
| RAM | 2 GB | 3 GB | 6 GB |
| Unique Visitors/month | 25k | 50k | 100k |
| Inode Count | 250k | 350k | 500k |
| Add-on Domains | N.A. | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Free Site Transfer | 1 | 3 | 3 |
| Backup Storage Duration | 7 days | 7 days | 30 days |
Best Plan
The discounts running on FastComet usually fall between 55% to 70%. But as of now, you will find a 65% off on all their hosting plans, which is an impressive offer!
According to me, the best value for money plan for Shared Hosting is their FastCloud Plus plan or the FastCloud Extra plan. Both these plans offer good discounts.
FastCloud Extra plan is completely worth the extra money in two cases:
- If your website handles high traffic, over 1 lakh visitors per month
- If you need a hosting solution for a shorter time duration (e.g. 1 year). Because the discount percentage is the same on all durations, you will get a profitable deal for a shorter time as well!
If you are looking for a hosting solution at more affordable prices, you can go with Hostinger!
Payment Methods
FastComet accepts payments through Credit Cards (Visa, Maestro, MasterCard, American Express) and PayPal.
Purchase Process
Purchasing a hosting from FastComet is simple! All you have to do is enter your personal details and select the:
- Hosting Plan
- Server Location (Mumbai, if your audience is Indian)
- Time Period
The best part about FastComet is that you get to see the same discount percentage whether you purchase a plan for 1 year or 3 years. So, it might be a brilliant choice for shorter durations!
FastComet shines because of its generous refund policy. Unlike Bluehost or GreenGeeks offering a 30-day money-back guarantee, FastComet implements a 45-day money-back guarantee on all its Shared hosting plans.
FastComet Refund Policy
So, you can easily test it out for a long duration and decide if FastComet hosting is worth your requirements. Otherwise, you can cancel and get your entire money back!
However, you only get a 7-day refund policy if you opt for the VPS Hosting or Dedicated Hosting plans.
FastComet Affiliate Program
Yes, you also get to see an interesting Affiliate Program on FastComet.
Signing up for an affiliate account is free and would earn you a $10 welcome bonus along with an advanced dashboard for managing your campaigns and earnings.
The commission you receive depends on two factors:
- Types of Hosting promoted
- Number of users referred
FastComet Referral Program
Do you want to enjoy free hosting forever? Well, then you should check out the insane Referral program of FastComet!
All you need to do is share referral links with your friends and family. If 5 or more people purchase hosting plans using your links, you will get free hosting forever.
As shown in the image, even if just one person purchases a shared hosting service through your link, you still get free hosting for 3 months!
As you keep on referring more friends, your free hosting duration keeps on increasing. Looks tempting, right?
FastComet SEO and Marketing
SEO is an essential part of your website’s success.
Surprisingly, with FastComet, you get lots of SEO and Marketing tools to help you grow your website like:
- SEO Optimized WordPress themes.
- WordPress Social Media Optimization tool.
- Drag and Drop Visual Page Builder.
- Free Email Marketing Tools.
- SE Ranking, the all-in-one SEO platform for business websites.
FastComet CDN
A CDN (Content Delivery Network) is a network of interconnected servers distributed around the globe that cache your web content.
They basically reduce the distance between your web server and the user, so your website loads faster in the viewer’s browser!
FastComet provides a free CDN access through Cloudflare CDN that has over 100+ data centers around the world. Thus, it ensures that your website loads swiftly, irrespective of where your audience is situated.
FastComet Migrations
Website Migration refers to switching from one hosting provider to another.
Talking about FastComet shared hosting plans, the FastCloud plan allows one free site migration, whereas the FastCloud Plus and FastCloud Extra plans let you migrate upto 3 websites for free!
If you want more migrations, check out ChemiCloud that offers over 50 migrations!
FastComet Website Builder
The FastComet Website Builder is an easy-to-use builder that supports drag and drop editing.
You can add and edit a variety of widgets on your page, including text, buttons, grids, images, media, archives, and exclusive widgets of FastComet as well!
Additionally, you can download from an extensive collection of 760+ free themes to suit your type of website!
FastComet Sub-Account Control
If you need to share access to your account with others, FastComet has options for that too!
Under Privacy Settings, you can enable specific permissions for viewing and managing:
- Emails
- Invoices
- Products
- Customer support
- Domains
- Affiliate accounts
This is helpful when you need to provide your account’s access to your clients, support staff, your team members, etc.
FastComet Software Support and Applications
If you are a developer, this feature would surely interest you.With FastComet, you get support for a variety of software including PHP 8.0, Bash, Perl, Python, NodeJS, Laravel, and more.
This can help you exercise an even better control over your hosting services. Thus, FastComet might be a good option for developers as well!
It also offers 300+ applications that you can install using the Softaculous auto installer tool. You get apps for CMS platforms, blogs, social networking, eCommerce, file management, mails, gaming, and a lot more!
FastComet Pros
1. Affordable Pricing
The Shared Hosting plans of FastComet start from $2.95/month, which is quite affordable considering the features they offer with even the Starter plan.
2. Excellent Speeds
Because FastComet uses the SSD only storage, uses the Cloudflare CDN, and has data centers all around the globe, you will get to experience super swift speeds!
3. Lots of Data Centers
FastComet has its data centers in 11 locations around the globe. Availability of a data center in Mumbai (India) is especially beneficial for the Indian audiences.
4. Exceptional Customer Support
I personally loved the Live Chat support of FastComet. Their replies were super quick, knowledgeable, and quite polite. They solved all my queries within minutes!
5. 45-day Refund Policy
FastComet offers a generous refund policy of 45-days on all its hosting plans. So, you can test out their services for this time and get all your money back if you don’t like it!
6. Good Load Handling
Even with many requests, FastComet maintained a stable response time with very few spikes. So, overall, it handles load efficiently.
7. Fixed Discount Percentage
Unlike most web hosts that offer the best discounts on plans purchased for longer durations, FastComet offers a fixed discount percentage on plans irrespective of the time duration.
FastComet Cons
1. Limited Disk Space
For Shared Hosting plans, you get a limited 15-25 GB storage space, which might be enough for WordPress websites. However, an eCommerce website owner would want more storage space!
2. Average UI
The interface of Fastcomet can be more user friendly and enhanced in terms of design.
3. No Free Domain
Most web hosts provide a free domain for the first year, whereas Fastcomet does not offer any such service with its hosting package.
Should you buy FastComet?
Yes. In my opinion, FastComet would be a complete value for money option for your hosting requirements. It wins in terms of speeds, data centers, and load handling.
Additionally, you get exclusive SSD storage on all FastComet hosting plans along with free Cloudflare CDN support, which offers smooth and swift performance!
FastComet has undergone no major changes since last year with its features or pricing. So, if you want a hosting plan with high discounts even on the 1 year plan, Fastcomet is the one you should go with.
And if you are not impressed with its services, you can always get a full refund within 45 days!
FastComet Alternatives
Hostinger
Hostinger is a popular web host with excellent speeds, advanced security, and an attractive interface. It is the best hosting solution on budget with its plans starting from just ₹79/month.
If you are a beginner just starting out with your online journey, you can look at Hostinger!
A2 Hosting
A2 Hosting is a renowned web hosting provider based in the US. It is a developer friendly hosting with fast speeds, exception load handling, generous refund policy, and good features for security.
However, it does not provide a free domain and its uptime needs improvement as well. Its pricing plans start from $2.99/month.
ChemiCloud
ChemiCloud is an American web hosting company that offers swift speeds, reliable uptime, a drag-and-drop website builder, an unbelievable 50 free cPanel migrations, and outstanding security features!
Their Shared hosting plans start from a slightly expensive price of $3.95/month.
Conclusion
FastComet offers attractive features at quite affordable rates. Even with its Starter Shared Hosting plan, you get access to SSD storage, lots of data centers, free CDN, migrations, SSL, and backups.
Along with that, you also get excellent customer support, superior performance, and a 45-days refund policy as well!
However, they can definitely work on improving their user interface and providing some additional features like expanded storage space, free domains, Litespeed servers, etc.
Overall, FastComet is a good hosting solution on a budget.
I hope you found this FastComet review helpful. I’ll be glad if my experience helps you purchase the right web hosting for your needs. So, do try out Fastcomet and let me know your views about it.
And if you are looking for alternatives, you can also check out the other hosting reviews on my blog.
If you found my content informative, do subscribe to my weekly newsletter and I will keep on bringing more exciting content for you! This is Kripesh signing off! Take care and keep learning. 🙂
FAQs
What FastComet hosting plan is best for WordPress?
All the plans of FastComet support managed WordPress hosting. So, you can go with any plan you want. I would personally suggest going with the FastCloud Plus and FastCloud Extra plans.
Does FastComet Hosting Offer Extra Services?
Yes, FastComet offers several add-on services like Domain Privacy, SEO Audit, Google Sitemap, SSL Certificates, Personal DNS Servers, WP Rocket Cache Plugin, and more!
Does FastComet use cPanel hosting?
Yes, FastComet offers a powerful and intuitive cPanel control panel that is an extremely user-friendly interface, especially for newbies.
Is FastComet Hosting Fast?
Yes, FastComet uses SSD storage on all plans which makes your site load 300% faster! And because they also have a data center in Mumbai, India, you will experience excellent page load speeds of under 1 sec in Indian regions.
What features does FastComet provide for its clients?
FastComet offers loads of features to its customers including free SSL, CDN, website migration and staging facility, excellent live chat support and security features, impressive speeds and load handling, 1 click backup and restoration, and extensive software for developers.
How to install FastComet web hosting for your website?
After creating your account and logging in, you will find the Orders tab under Products section. Here, you can opt for any hosting plan of your choice, add a domain or register one, and after the payment is done, the hosting can be accessed through the cPanel.
Are there any discount codes for FastComet?
You can find limited time deals running on the FastComet website often. As of now, they are offering a 70% discount on their hosting plans using the coupon code ‘FALL70’.
How does FastComet match up to the competition?
FastComet offers lightning fast speeds of under 1 sec, even with no external cache plugins. It offers 9 data center locations, which is much better than most web hosts like StableHost, A2 Hosting, etc.
It also provides powerful tools for developers and a generous 45-day refund policy similar to HostArmada and StableHost.
However, it uses the slow Apache servers, and offers far less payment options to their customers. Fastcomet is not the cheapest web hosting service provider, but it comes at an affordable pricing.
Does FastComet offer free website migrations?
Yes, you get 1 free website migration on the FastCloud plan and 3 free migrations on the FastCloud Plus and FastCloud Extra plans.