Author:
Marry Rose
Last updated: 07 February 2025
Review FatCow 2025
FatCow
FatCow, founded in 1998, is a web hosting company known for its simplicity and affordability. They cater to individuals and small businesses.
Visit Site
Pros and Cons
Here are the pros and cons of using FatCow as your hosting platform.
Positives
- Affordable pricing
- User-friendly interface
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Good customer support
- Free domain name
Negatives
- Limited server resources
- Slow loading speeds
- Upselling tactics
- Lack of advanced features
- Inconsistent uptime
Interesting facts
Established in 1998
Focus on shared hosting
Part of Endurance International Group
Suitable for beginners
Offers a single hosting plan
Overall, FatCow offers average performance for a below-average price. While they provide refreshing simplicity and transparency in some ways, their plans are riddled with deceptive and redundant upsells, poor speed and uptime, and high renewal rates5. If your budget is your chief concern, FatCow might be ideal for your needs.
FatCow's FAQs
Latest user reviews
Their auto renewal is a scam! They charged me 726 Dollar for their most basic hosting for three years, althought I had cancelled the auto renewal, never share with them your visas, never authorise them to use your Paypal, they are not honest at all.
12 years a customer with auto renewal. There are no human voices only chat boxes. I needed an issue resolved (four days past the refund period and I mistakenly allowed my subscription to be renewed). Find the chat feature was very difficult and once there 10 to 15 minutes was the average between exchanges. And finally on came one and asked how they could help after I had already explained it twice. It was clearly a stall tactic and they finally won. I cancelled my auto-renewal and will eat the $554.00. A terrible way to treat customers but a great way to avoid refunds or finding a way to resolve the issue. A NO WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER THAN WHAT HAPPENED...NOTHING.
I've been a customer over 15 years and have referred many colleagues to FatCow. They used to be great. Then, web.com bought them, and now they're TERRIBLE. Over the weekend, I was charged double what I paid a year ago for web hosting. My invoice for the almost $300 charge simply read "fat cow plan". When I spoke with the chat rep, it took over an HOUR, and I had to request a supervisor multiple times. Original chat cust. service 1. Didn't know what fat cow plan was. 2. Told me they couldn't find the bill on my account (even with screen shot), 3. Told me I hadn't actually been charged (lie) and 4. then an HOUR later when I finally got a supervisor, I was told it was the hosting plan and a cost of doing business increase. When I said doubling the price was not CODB they offered me a $29 refund. I wasted over an hour and a half, trying to get this resolved (or at least an explanation of what they were charging me $300 for.) I'll be looking for a new web host asap. It's a shame, I loved FatCow.
Very poor support. Couldn't update domain contact information for a customer through a) their current web portal, b) an older portal they provided a link by, c) support chat, and d) no phone option.Instead the customer had to apply to prove ownership of their own domain in said portal! A huge waste of about 3 hours of our time!
FatCow didn't notify me of extreme rate increase and I didn't notice the charge. $272.22 for a year of hosting that I don't even use. I mostly ended up using it to manage my business email. This is the second time I have experienced sneaky high rate increases. The first time I complained and they refunded most of the increase.
This is the worst of the worst. I was Fatcow for many years. They turned on auto renewal and I was expecting to pay for just my domain name which is what I originally purchased. No extras and next thing I know at auto renewal they charged me $400 for extras that I didn't ask for or approve. When I went to call them a few weeks after my renewal there was not phone number so on the online chat they said it was too late and they could not refund me. It wasn't even a month into my new year renewal. They no longer have a phone number just a very frustrating online chat. Terrible will find a new hosting company.
I've been with FatCow for 24 years. They were reasonable and had great support (live person). The prices were reasonable and they always appreciated loyal customers. BUT NOW, they have raised their prices to an unaffordable level, they have no live person support, and they don't care about loyal customers. It's a shame, but I now have to move all of my business to another host. I understand that they are being acquired by Blue Host. Maybe that will be a good thing. I've recommended so many people to FatCow and I know they will be leaving too. A classic example of pricing yourself out of business.
This is more or less unusable unless you have the most vanilla kind of site. It is especially bad if you have a problem. There is no direct support. There is a chat button on their page but is doesn't work. When you seek support you will be thrown at a zillion FAQs which, after doing a monumantal search, might give some clue - Isay might.
Watch out putting auto payment on this company. They have this advertisement on their panel and if you accidentally click or press that advertisement it will straight away goes to your chart and auto pay it straight to your card with OUT CONFIRMING. !!!! They are not the cheapest on the market. If you call the number on their site it is not available. Maybe available may be works in US only but it says international call.
Absolutely horrible. DO NOT USE! For a non-profit site I was originally charged $119.99 / year (called the $99 plan lol) and then, with absolutely NO warning, charged me $296.46. Saw it on my credit card but it was too late to refund. I stayed on chat with them for 1.5 hours trying to get them to bring the price down. Finally, they agreed (but only by $88.94). However, at the last minute I was told it would not be refunded but be a credit for next year's hosting. Well, there won't be a next year because I'm getting out of this hosting company. And, of course, they know that.
Payment method
Show all (11)
Show all (11)
FatCow's Features
Money Back Guarantee
Hourly Payments
Monthly Payments
Yearly Payments
Domain Purchase
API
DDOS Protection
Accepts Bitcoin
Affiliate Program
Load Balancers
WordPress Hosting
VPS Hosting
Cloud Hosting
Shared Hosting
Site Builder
Email Service
Free SSL
Backup Services
CDN Services
SEO Hosting
Unlimited Hosting
Object Storage
Streaming Services
