Are you after a web host that is located in the UK and is contactable 24/7 via a local number?
Or what about a web host that has locally based servers in the United Kingdom for fast load times?
If so, you’re in the right place! In this post, I will be reviewing FastHosts which is one of the premier UK based web hosting companies.
I will also be covering many aspects of FastHosts including uptime, speed, support, pricing, features and heaps more. Not to mention a 50% discount. Stay tuned!
FastHosts Review: TLDR; Version
Founded in 1991 out of Gloucester Quays, FastHosts has been in business now for 20 years and has gone from strength to strength with great website speeds, reliable uptime, affordable pricin, and great customer support.
FastHosts has also cemented themselves as one of the top UK based web hosts with their cheap shared hosting plans that has now attracted over 400,000 customers.
What I also like about FastHosts is:
- 1-Click WordPress installs
- Built in website builder
- UK based servers
- Toll free number
- 99.98% uptime
- Free .co.uk domain & SSL
- Affordable pricing
- VPS, Cloud & Managed WP hosting
Overall, FastHosts is a premier UK based web hosting company that has a strong focus on its customers while also delivering an affordable and value-packed product. Highly recommended!
FastHosts Review 2024: An In-depth Look
FastHosts Has Been Around Since 1999
As I touched on briefly above, FastHosts.co.uk was founded in 1999 by founder Andrew Michael, a then university student. Shortly after, FastHosts opened its doors to its first headquarter based out of Gloucester Quays.
Fast forward 20 years and FastHosts now has over 400,000 customers, 1.4 million domains hosted and 835,000 email accounts which is growing year over year.
During this time, FastHosts has also won several awards from Microsoft and Deloitte & Touche to name a few.
They Have UK Based Servers
Being a locally based web hosting company, one of FastHosts buggiest draw cards and advantages is that they have servers based right here in the UK.
Having a UK based data centre allows FastHosts customers to get lightning-fast load times as there is less latency for local and European internet visitors.
These uber-fast load times result in a better user experience, high conversions and also benefits SEO.
As for the exact data centre location, I honestly can’t say as it seems FastHosts is very tight-lipped on the location. Which I believe is for security reasons (can see more on their security below).
FastHosts Web Hosting Plans & Prices
When it comes to FastHosts lineup of hosting options, they cater for almost any type of website regardless of size of function.
In short, they offer up shared, VPS, dedicated, cloud, managed WordPress, Linux and Windows web hosting. Not to mention their domain registration service too!
For more details on FastHosts web hosting, here are their entry-level plans for shared, cloud and VPS plans.
Shared Web Hosting
For those just starting out, shared web hosting is an awesome solution as you get to have the benefits of a dedicated server, just at a fraction of the price.
As for FastHosts beginner shared plan, it is only £2.50/mo (50% discounted) which gives users 1 website hosting, 10GB SSD storage, unlimited bandwidth, free .co.uk, .uk .london or .com domain and 24/7 customer support.
Oh yeah, they also offer a £130 ad voucher, unlimited email forwarding, unlimited subdomain and also cPanel access. FastHosts for the win! You can also see my guide on shared web hosting providers here.
So if you want to get a .co.uk website online today at a price of only £2.50/mo, then this FastHosts shared hosting plan is a sure thing!
Active 50% FastHosts Discount (£2.50/mo)
Linux VPS Web Hosting
Another popular lineup from FastHosts are their VPS web hosting plans which are great for larger traffic website or for reseller hosting.
When it comes to the features, their beginner VPS plan is £2.49/mo (50% discounted, VAT not included) which has 40GB SSD storage, 1GB RAM, 24/7 support and unlimited bandwidth.
Cloud Web Hosting
Moving onto the next offering from FastHosts is their cloud hosting option. For truly instantaneous load times, cloud hosting is the go.
As for their entry-level plan, it starts from £5/mo (not including VAT) which has 20GB SSD storage, 1vCore, 0.5GB RAM, UK servers and unlimited bandwidth.
Free .co.uk Domain & SSL Included
If users do decide to take advantage of FastHosts shared or VPS hosting packages, they can also benefit from a free .co.uk, .uk, .london or even a .me.uk domain name. They also include a free SSL certificate too!
When FastHosts say “free”, this is actually only for the first year of registration. With a renewal price of around £9.99/yr depending on the domain. But this is nonetheless a great savings straight off the bat!
As mentioned above, they also throw in a free SSL certificate which is an abustle must-have. This will ensure that your website is encrypted and has the padlock symbol. For business or online stores, this is essential as it is a trust signal for users and Google.
Active 50% FastHosts Discount (£2.50/mo)
Good Range Of Domains
While FastHosts.co.uk is better known for their web hosting plan for Brits, they also offer up a good domain registrar service. Here are some of their most notable domain extensions.
As for their .co.uk domains, users can actually pick one up for, wait for it… £0.01! As for the renewal price, it’s £9.99 which is still quite good.
For more exotic domain suffixes, FastHosts also offers those too. Here are some of the most notable ones:
- .cloud
- .space
- .website
- .tech
- .shop
If for some reason FastHosts doesn’t have the domain suffix of your choice. You can see my top UK domain registrars post for over 580 different domain extensions! I also have a handy guide on UK domain extensions.
1-Click WordPress Installs
Another benefit I really liked about FastHosts was their ability to download WordPress in just one click.
If you haven’t heard of WordPress before, it is the worlds largest website builder with a 34% market share. It’s also a completely free platform that is preferred by bloggers, small business owners, and online stores.
So if users want to take advantage of using WordPress, it’s only 1 click away with using FastHosts. If WordPress isn’t your thing, there are also 1-click installs for Joomla and Drupal also.
For more on how to get started with WordPress, you can check out my step by step website guide and WordPress web hosting guide.
Outstanding Customer Support
Next up on my FastHosts review definitely had to be customer support.
After making and hosting websites for 9 years, I have realised that things will go wrong. Not if, but when.
95% of the time, this is put down to user error whether that be installing a dodgy plugin, overloading the server or locked out of the server.
When these things to do occur, it is an absolute godsend having a local UK toll free number to call 24/7/365 (which FastHosts has). It’s also a bonus to actually speak to team members within the UK also.
If calling isn’t your thing, FastHosts also offers email, ticketing and chat support which is very responsive.
Another feature I really like is that FastHosts actually provide a live update on their server performance. This is very uncommon for web hosts as they typically don’t like to be accountable for any server outages.
Active 50% FastHosts Discount (£2.50/mo)
Users Speak Highly Of The Service
To get a better understanding of FastHosts customer service and support, I also looked elsewhere to see what others were saying.
After a bit of digging, I could see that customers were extremely happy with their service. On TrustPilot, they have an average of 4 stars with over 1,600 reviews.
99.99% Uptime Guarantee
When it comes to uptime with FastHosts servers, it is some of the best in the industry. So good in fact that they offer a 99.99% uptime guarantee which is a great peace of mind.
Having this almost perfect uptime means that users’ websites will be online throughout the year which is great for business.
They also have a live monitoring tool so users can make sure they are actually getting the uptime they were promised.
487ms Average UK Speeds
As for FastHosts speeds, they are some of the best that I have tested for UK based hosting providers. On average, I got speeds of around 487ms when pinging from London which is much faster than competing international providers.
FastHosts is able to deliver these speeds as they have data centres located right here in the UK. Having servers that are located in the United Kingdom mean there is essentially less distance for data to travel, resulting in faster load times.
While this is an obvious advantage, if you plan on targeting international traffic, the speeds may suffer. But users can easily get around this by connecting to a CDN and also installing a caching plugin which can greatly increase performance.
Active 50% FastHosts Discount (£2.50/mo)
Security & Backups
When it comes to security and privacy of their customers, FastHosts seriously doesn’t mess around. They are so focused on security that their data centre almost sounds like Fort Knox.
Some measures they have in place are a maximum security facility manned 24/7 by personal and CCTV. They also have an ISO 27001 certification which is an international standard for top-level security and redundancies.
FastHosts also has implemented server pooling technology on their Linux and Windows servers which prevents their servers being affecting by DDoS attacks.
As for backups, unfortunately, FastHosts doesn’t offer this functionality which is a bit of a bummer. However, users can easily manually back op their websites via the cPanel or installing an automatic backup plugin.
They Offer a Money Back Guarantee
To make up for the lack of backups, FastHosts does offer a 30-day money-back guarantee which is a good peace of mind for new website makers.
If for whatever reason you are not happy with their service, you can simply cancel and get a full refund of your plan (minus the domain name).
While many won’t take advantage of this, it’s a great thing to offer. Two thumbs up! For more details on their guarantee, you can see more directly from their policy.
Final Thoughts
Overall I have been extremely impressed by FastHosts customer support, speed, uptime, and price which easily makes it one of the top UK based web hosts. So do I recommend them? You bet! For those located in the UK and after an affordable local UK based host that has it all, you can’t go wrong.
If you think I have missed something from this FastHosts review, please let me know as I’ll be happy to add more information to help potential customers. Thanks for reading!