Most of my client sites run on Fasthosts servers (not by my choice) and let me just say – their email servers are the most awful things known to man – they make the Tasmanian Devil look stable.
Case in point – earlier this week they went down at about lunch time on Tuesday (25th August) – I know this as I was working a half day and as I went to go out I got a call letting me know a client had been on the dog and bone asking what was going on.
This outage effected several other email users and I spent Wednesday trying to keep them informed about what was going on – but here’s the problem – Fasthosts don’t tell you anything. Their engineers are always working on the problem as “a first priority” and if asked what the problem is the question is either tiptoed around or you are told that it is being investigated. This is pretty unhelpful when I have people phoning me asking what is going on.
It took until 18:00 on the Wednesday (a downtime of at least 36 hours) before the problem was fixed after which I received an email from Fasthosts which I post here for you to enjoy:
I am writing to update you on an issue that occurred intermittently for some of our POP Mail customers this week. Whilst this issue only affected a small percentage of our customers I note that your email account was on the infrastructure concerned and therefore wish to update you.
Upfront I would also wish to apologise unreservedly if you or your business was in anyway affected by this incident.
We are at an advanced stage in the process of implementing an improved and more resilient email platform, and unfortunately we encountered some unusual issues with balancing user access to the service which caused a temporary disruption. This led to a proportion of our email clients only having intermittent access, and a small number of customers having problems over a more prolonged period. Our operations team restored the service for affected customers as quickly as possible, and all mailboxes were fully restored by 6:00pm yesterday.
Please note, no emails were lost through this service disruption as all emails sent during the issues were queued and subsequently delivered when the issue was resolved.
We are fully committed to ensuring an effective service for our customers and are making significant investments to ensure our services are market leading and regret on this occasion a small number of our customers were impacted during our infrastructure upgrade.
Apologies again if you were impacted and thanks for your continued business.
OK, let’s examine this shall we?
“…this issue affected a small percentage of our customers” – it affected all of mine.
“…a small number of our customers having problems over a prolonged period” – again, all of mine had problems over a prolonged period.
“…no emails were lost” – no, but some were delayed by 36 hours. That could lose as much business as not receiving them at all.
This isn’t an isolated event – a month or 2 again the same thing happened, and it’s happened before that as well. For no apparent reason every now and then the email servers just stop functioning and I am given no information to then relay to my customers.
I’ve always been upfront with the people who’s sites I host – they know that I am reselling them space on a Fasthosts server and it’s gotten to the stage that even they are asking to be moved to a new host.
What this means is I will be migrating every site we have with Fasthosts onto a nice shiny dedicated with 1&1 – a company I have used personally for sometime and have had no problems with. This isn’t going to be a small job but it’s got to be done.
I’ve used many hosting providers in my time and every single one is miles ahead of Fasthosts. Even their name is a joke.
RT @Wuup: New blog post: Fasthosts Sucks http://www.wuup.co.uk/fasthosts-sucks/ – Me criticising Fasthosts! | Action-Webmasters.com on 29 August, 2009
[...] About Use your widget sidebars in the admin Design tab to change this little blurb here. Add the text widget to the Blurb Sidebar! Posted: August 29th, 2009 | Author: admin | Filed under: Web hosts | No Comments » [...]
JB on 3 September, 2009
1 and 1 own Fasthosts
Alan Hamlyn on 3 September, 2009
That I did not know, looks like 1 and 1 get more funding then
i have no issues with them, but so many with fasthosts.
Dan on 3 September, 2009
I did not know that either (http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2006/05/10/parent_of_11_internet_buys_uks_fasthosts.html).
All the same – dramatic difference in quality.
Dan Spenser on 10 September, 2009
Uhm…that’s funny about migrating from Fasthosts to 1 & 1 – as 1 & 1 OWNS Fasthosts.
See here: http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/051006_United_Internet_Acquires_FastHosts
Alan Hamlyn on 10 September, 2009
Yeah having learnt that Fasthosts own 1and1 I’m a bit confused. HOWEVER, just because they own fasthosts, they still have different management im sure, and 1and1 had a far better service / uptime. I use 1and1, and they are great for me. When I have dealt with fasthosts I had numerous issues, one time there was a site which had intermittent down time. I even sent them a JING video of it happening, and they still wouldn’t move it to another server. That client ended up leaving them and going with another provider. Same company, yes, different standards for sure.
Fasthosts Sucks | Dan Gates: Web Design and Development on 25 September, 2009
[...] I recently wrote a post for Wuup about my experience with the web host Fasthosts. [...]
Smile IT Ltd on 13 October, 2009
Just use Heart Internet. Rock solid hosting and a great interface for resellers. Completely invisible to end-users – even the control panel can be branded. We have had one issue in 3 years resulting in about 45 minutes down time – and Heart told ME about the proble, not the other way around!
FASTHOSTS SUCKS!! on 15 October, 2009
I was a FastHosts for months, until I realized they were
taking a lot of extra money out of my bank account for no reason!!
They threatened and blackmailed me, threatening to cancel my Hosting if I reported the theft and made a big deal out of it.
((
So far, FASTHOSTS have taken an extra £1600 out of my bank account for no reason!!
tex0gen on 21 October, 2009
I too have had a little more than should have been taken from my bank account with fast hosts but not as much as the figure mentioned. still, £160 is alot.
Also, call our premium rate phone line to cancel us taking money. joke.
azaz on 12 November, 2009
to cancel webhosting with fasthosts you have to phone fasthosts that will cost you and they send you a paper to cancel (if they send it) you fill it in and pay for a stamp and they get it (If they get it) they will put a cancellation date on it and yes they may cancel after taking 1more year out of your account first, its in there terms to put a cancellation date on your hosting. If you are in the UK and you cancel and they send bailiffs out tell them its under dispute and to provide you with the original contract and receipt (They wont be able to do this) as fasthosts can not provide this as they want you to take something that you don’t want to buy. And don’t talk to bailiffs to all in writing (you wont hear from then much longer).
Dan on 24 November, 2009
Hey guess what guys! Emails have been down for over 12 hours now
got to love they improvements they made last time!
Alan Hamlyn on 25 November, 2009
Amazingly good service…
VuuZum on 23 December, 2009
Ah man I hate fasthosts!
richard on 20 June, 2010
Hi Folks
I am having a great deal of trouble with FastHost. I am using their dedicated server offering. The server crashed today. It has taken them more than 18 hrs and at least 20 calls from me for them to decide that there may be a problem with the hardware.
Do you have the name or number of a person managing the company that I could call.