Fatcow Review: Top notch web hosting service for the money

Summary of Post
Fatcow may not be the cheapest web hosting service provider out there but their customer service is excellent, and their 'punny' take on bovines is 'udderly' hilarious. I 'joined the herd' in March 2010 and set up my own website Fun with Bugs! in less than a day. The Fatcow help person (a real person!) helped me with questions that I had and was very patient and courteous to a novice like myself. Free domain name, a 30 day free trial (money back guarantee), and a user-friendly Site Builder were what I liked best about Fatcow for my small business.

My experience with Fatcow
I was intimidated by the prospect of setting up my own website and had put it off for way too long. I needed a simple website that would showcase my small business: bugs and the fun bug educational programs that I offered. I didn't have much to spend since
I was just starting out on this not-for-profit venture. A quick search for 'web hosting review' and scanning through several pages of reviews showed a range of web hosting providers: Inmotion consistently ranked top but I couldn't afford it at $5.95/mo, FatCow was mid-ranked at $3.67/mo, and also in the top 10 was GoDaddy at $9.74/mo for somewhat comparable 'Unlimited Space' plans. I checked each one out, and was immediately won over by the FatCow site. It made me smile :). I had my Fun with Bugs website up and running in a day - it was a snap.



Step by Step Website Building with Fatcow
1. Domain search and registration: First you would need to type in your desired domain name (e.g. www.funwithbugs.com) in their domain name search box, which checks to see if someone else has already registered (taken/grabbed) that name or not.
2. Select subscription term/package (36 month package is cheapest): If your domain name is good to go, you're taken to the next page to choose from a choice of $5.50, $4.58 and $3.67/mo for the 12, 24 and 36 month packages, respectively. I unchecked all the other optional services, except for the Privacy Guard one ($8.99), which keeps your name and address from public domain. Pay, and you're ready to start building your website!
3. Log into the Control Panel, click on 'Website' and 'Website creator by CM4All'. This is a neat site builder that will allow you to pick a template for your site and customize it with your photos and content. You could have a 'Welcome' homepage, 'About me' page, 'Products/Services' page, 'Latest News' page 'FAQ' page and so forth. And that's it!

Moo-ving along
Since I set up my simple website, I learnt how to easily jazz it up and that is by using the File Manager feature in Fatcow's Website building toolbox. Each webpage in my site is displayed as an html file and I can click to edit the webpages individually. The editing console is simple to figure out and allows me to do the usual like update photos, insert tables, insert links (to other webpages and also within the page itself), adjust fonts and sizes, and more. For more advanced techno-geek-type users there's also the option to 'Toggle HTML editor' where everything is displayed in html, which is like a different language to yours truly. All said and done I'm still very happy with Fatcow and will probably stick with them for a little longer. It has been just what I needed for my small business.

Other Cheaper Options
There's actually a cheaper option offered by Fatcow that might suit you better: the 'MiniMoo' ($5/year) where you get a free one-page site. However, domain registration isn't free and to register a .com domain is $22 for two years so you'd be set back $27. (Domain registration is often offered free with web hosting plans, but you'd normally have to pay upwards of $2 to register your domain name. Domains ending with .com are at least $7 the first year, increasing to $10 the subsequent years.) Check out Minimoo here.Similarly, GoDaddy offers a free one-page site with domain registration. Their terms are pretty much the same as Fatcow's.

Fatcow Slow?
The past two days I've experienced slow speeds on their control panel (pages take a long time to load) - their 'service status' box says they're experiencing webmail issues. Hopefully it will get fixed soon.

You might also want to check out www.GoDaddy.com just for the privilege of ogling Danica Patrick for a bit :)



By the way, I've also compiled in one handy location, links with discounts and coupons to all the places where I shop online. Check out Where Gracie Shops!

Peace...

(Note: I signed up for $42 for 1 year, but was informed that I would be charged $88 to renew for my 2nd year. I talked (online chat) with the Fatcow support and they kept me at the $42/yr old rate. Never hurts to ask! Grace, 2010. Additional Note: Once again, this year I was informed of the $88 charge for year 3, and again I contacted the Fatcow support and was given the $42/yr old rate. So it seems like it may be a yearly request thingy. Grace, 2011)


xo Gracie

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