FatCow Company Intro

The length of experience that they have in the business, reliability, price value, the type of control panel used and the level of customer service provided. When looking for a web hosting company, these are the factors that you need to take into consideration. Here, we will have a review of what FatCow is all about as a web hosting services provider. How do they measure up against their direct competitors, and what’s with the name FatCow? First, let’s take a look at the background that the company has. FatCow started out as a small web hosting services provider in 1998, when they were still based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. They’re classified as a provider of shared web hosting solutions for small to medium-sized businesses, as well as individuals who are looking for an affordable web hosting package. As far as the name of the company is concerned, FatCow was borne out of the concept of offering ‘beefed up’ web hosting packages which, at the time that they started, was a great alternative for web hosting. Their services were focused on eliminating all the techno babble, complicated pricing schemes and not-so-friendly customer support.

Reliability

Second, just how reliable is FatCow as a web hosting company? When looking for a web host, this is one of the most important things that you need to take into consideration. If you want to know whether FatCow is reliable as a web hosting company, all you have to do is check out the online reviews. FatCow is always included among the top ten list of the best web hosting companies on the Internet today. This just goes to show how reliable they are as a web hosting company. FatCow offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee. This means that the websites hosted by FatCow will be up 99.9% of the time, with hardly any downtime. This is an especially crucial factor to consider if you have a sales-oriented website, for example. You can’t afford for your website to be down because this equates to lost customers and lost profit. FatCow can afford to offer such a reliable uptime guarantee because they have multi-gigabit connections on a load-balanced platform. This ensures that data loss is eliminated, and server backups are performed daily. You also don’t have to worry about backup because they have a reliable generator system whose hardware and software is monitored round-the-clock.

Price Value

Next, let’s take a look at the web hosting packages offered by FatCow. Currently, they are running a promo where the typically $88/year web hosting package has been slashed off to $66/year. What sets FatCow apart from all the other web hosting companies is the fact that they offer 100% wind-powered web hosting. All their offices and data centres are fully powered by wind energy. This means that you not only get to have reliable web hosting services, but you can help save the environment, too! The $66 per year package is called the Original FatCow Plan which includes unlimited domains, disk space, bandwidth, POP mailboxes and FTP users. It also icnludes shopping carts, secure SSL server connections and bonuses for Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search. There’s also the MiniMoo package for only $5 per year. This mini-web hosting package that they have includes one e-mail account and WebMail, forwarders and auto responders, newsletter management and spam filtering.

Control Panel

Typically, the control panel used by web hosting companies is the cPanel control panel. FatCow steps things up a bit further by using a proprietary control panel called the H-sphere. The good thing about using the H-sphere control panel is that it is a pretty straightforward tool which you can use to monitor website statistics such as disk space, bandwidth and the available mailboxes. There’s a color-coded button which indicates whether a particular item is enabled or not. Even if you’re not particularly tech-savvy, you will be able to manage, modify and update the website easily because the tasks are categorized. The H-sphere control panel breaks down the administrative tasks that you need to perform and separates them from website creation and website management tasks. As indicated in FatCow’s website, the H-sphere control panel is a ‘no bulls’ website management tool which is a delight to use even if you don’t have prior website management training.

Customer Support

With their “HeiferCratic Oath” as guide, FatCow promises to offer customers the best level of support that they can get from a web hosting services provider. The oath ‘promises’ to answer your call in less than two minutes, provide you with the best customer support that you can get, and offer you a greener pasture when it comes to the level of technical support that you need. In addition to the HeiferCratic Oath, you can also get in touch with FatCow through every medium available. There’s the comprehensive knowledge base on the website which you can use as reference for your basic questions. A Frequently Asked Questions section is also included on the site, as well as a Help Desk where you can open trouble tickets. Round-the-clock support via e-mail, live chat and over the phone are all available. Unlike other companies which let you wait endlessly on the other line because their staff cannot support the number of callers that they are getting, you will get an under two minutes wait when contacting FatCow’s customer support department.

Summary

To sum it all up, FatCow offers a 100% wind-powered, reliable and affordable web hosting services. Not only will you be able to enjoy the reliability and high-tech servers that they are using, but you can also do your share in helping save the environment by going for a ‘green’ web host. When you add to this the fact that FatCow has sufficient experience in the web hosting industry and they offer affordable packages with a no-fuss pricing scheme, what more can you really ask for? Finally, FatCow has consistently been dubbed as one of the top ten web hosting companies on the Internet today, so you’ll never go wrong when choosing them as your web host for your personal or business website.