# Fatcow.com?



## redwings0921 (Jan 6, 2009)

Has anyone ever used them for webhosting? They were rated high. I have a good idea for a forum that i want to make, and am looking for a good webhost that provides a domain. Please let me know if you have ever used them before or know any other reliable companies.


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## thoughtdisorder (Jan 6, 2009)

Tbh, I've never used FatCow, though I know some folks who have and are happy. I've used GoDaddy and been pretty happy so far with their hosting as well as customer service. 

Most of the "big dogs" like GoDaddy and FatCow are essentially the same. What you'll need to do is evaluate the different prices/tiers, etc., for your immediate and short term needs to get the best bang for your buck.

For instance, do you need "Site Builder" services or do you have your own software for site building. That sort of thing........


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## Homeless (Jan 6, 2009)

I wouldn't recommend getting a domain with hosting as if you intend to keep the domain but drop the hosting, they'll most likely hold your domain for ransom.  Hostgator is one of the top web providers to my knowledge and they have relatively cheap prices.  Lunarpages is good as well.


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## lemonadesoda (Jan 6, 2009)

^ I had the same issue. I had a domain and hosting. I dropped the hosting, and asked them to transfer the domain. They didnt. They let it go. I could get it back if I waited until the 30 day expiry period, and reregister it. Guess what. Fxxking TuCows took it. And they are cybersquatting it asking for $500 to let me have it back. What really annoys me is they were the "registrars" used by the hosting provider. Completely unethical by TuCows. I came up with the name, I registered it, I have been the ONLY owner of that name, and now they have snatched it and holding me to ransom.  

W4NK3RS

Check carefully what your forum site requires, e.g. SQL, PHP, etc. Many webhosting places give you all you need for a static site, but for dynamic sites needing SQL etc. you will need to pay more.


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## FordGT90Concept (Jan 7, 2009)

Every domain I owned got taken over much the same.  I don't get why price jacking isn't made an international crime.  That is, you shouldn't be allowed to buy a domain for resell.

I think it was my RAC-NF.com domain.  Just out of curiosity I contacted the place that bought it after it expired and it sounded to me like they wanted no less than $100,000 USD.  I wouldn't be surprised if the going rate was in excess of $1,000,000 USD.  I told him, I'll pay at most $20 bucks or no deal.  They never contacted me back.   This was a few years back.  The domain is available again. XD

But yeah, ICANN needs to make that activity criminal.


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## redwings0921 (Jan 7, 2009)

thank you everyone! i am carefully looking at all my options and taking your advice into consideration


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## aeitos (Jan 11, 2009)

I am a customer of fatcow and I'd say their services are the best. Like for example.. my account. I have about 8 different websites on one account. Which I can have an unlimited amount of websites with no extra fee. I have unlimited diskspace.. unlimited bandwidth.. email forms/forums/blogs/guestbooks/galleries installs through the control panel and a shopping cart to build your store and web site builders and 24/7 support if you ever have any questions or issues. The only pitfall to using fatcow is their domain names are $20 a year.. but that's why I register my domains names through Ipower.com for $9.95 a year and then change the nameservers over to fatcow 

As for you guys who lost your domain name.. that is your own fault. Simply sending them an email saying "transfer my domain" and then leaving it at that for them to do all the work is not the way to go. You need to do some work and followup on it.. it's not their fault if you don't renew it and get it transferred. You should also have renewed your domain before transferring it. If anything it would be the fault of the registrar you are transferring to for not informing you on the rules and regulations and how to do a registrar transfer to them. 

ICANN, the organization responsible for the stability of the Internet requires that you:

1. Domain name cannot be expired or expiring within 10 days.
2. Domain name has been registered with your current registrar for at least 60 days.
3. Make sure you have access to the administrative email.
4. Make sure the domain is unlocked.
5. Make sure you get the authorization code from your current registration provider.

This does not apply for fatcow only.. this applies for ALL domains. And you would initiate the transfer by contacting the registrar you are transferring to and THEY would initiate the transfer and would contact your current registrar asking to take the domain.. your current registrar then sends an email to the administrative email address on the domain asking for the authorization code. After providing the authorization code the domain will then be transferred.

So just so you know fatcow is not a registrar. Fatcow is a web hosting company who resells domains for tucows. Yes I agree it's pretty crappy what tucows did to you.. but their aloud to do that because you let your domain expire and delete.. they have the ability to do this when your domain is in the deletion status which means they are in the process of deleting it and making it available to the public. They steal domains sometimes if they think they are valuable..  for example.. say google.com expired and was about to be made available to the public and you're the registrar who is about to delete it.. are you going to make it available to the public again for someone to register for a few bucks?? or keep it because it could be worth something.. well.... google would probably be worth (m/b)illions lol By the way it takes a month or two before you domain enters the deletion period so you had all the time in the world to renew it so it's not fatcows problem/fault.

Sorry for the rant  all in all, fatcow is a superb host in my opinion and they have hundreds of thousands of customers so they must think so too... i'm just trying to state that you shouldn't be dissing them when it's not their fault  don't be hatin 

later


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## lemonadesoda (Jan 16, 2009)

aeitos said:


> As for you guys who lost your domain name.. that is your own fault.


BS. You werent listening. The issue is that a provider was giving domain registration AND hosting. I ask to let the hosting lapse ($200 per year) BUT keep the name registration ($20 per year). THEY said, let it lapse and then re-register.

Well is didnt quite work out, did it? They let it go and tucows "got it". But WTF, tucows were the original registrars. That's just theft. They are squatting the name still.  I am the ONLY person that has had an interest in that name. I registered it. They've now taken it and keep re-registering it to themselves every year.  When I approach them to say, "that name was invented by me, you were the initial registrars, stop squatting it", they say, "OK $500 and you can have it back, nah nah". *W4NK3RS.*

Tucows stinks. They register to themselves at no cost and are squatting thousands of domain names. It's highwy robbery.


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## aeitos (Jan 16, 2009)

lemonadesoda said:


> BS. You werent listening. The issue is that a provider was giving domain name AND hosting. I ask to let the hosting lapse ($200 per year) BUT keep the name with them ($20 per year).
> 
> They didnt. They let it go and tucows "got it". But WTF they are the original registrars. That's just theft.



$200 a year?? maybe you're talking about a different web hosting company.. Fatcow has been charging $66-$99 for the longest time... i dunno... how long ago was it when this happened to you? I know quite a few years ago they did move everything over to new servers and the company was sold and under new management.. that was a LONG time ago though.. and I think even back then they didn't charge that much.. I dunno.

Another thing if you didn't know you could sign up a free account with fatcow as a domain holding account. And you can just hold domains on it... and you can renew the domains yourself through the domain central.


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## lemonadesoda (Jan 16, 2009)

$200. Yes, full service webhosting with email and sql etc. It was 3 years ago. It wasnt fatcow. Please read my posts... my complaints are about Tucows, not fatcow. However, if they are one and the same company...


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## aeitos (Jan 16, 2009)

lemonadesoda said:


> $200. Yes, full service webhosting with email and sql etc. It was 3 years ago. It wasnt fatcow. Please read my posts... my complaints are about Tucows, not fatcow. However, if they are one and the same company...



Ok. Well I just figured you must have been speaking about Fatcow since that's what this thread is about and you never specified which hosting company you were talking about. And no they are not the same company at all.


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## ronlenmac (Feb 16, 2009)

*Fat Cow web hosting*

WARNING ABOUT FATCOW
Today, Feb 16, 2009 

I have had a small digital image site hosted by FatCow for about 3 years and with a few minor issues at times I have been happy with it. lenhartimages.com

Lately they have been having issues with what I suspect is major hacking and today they (fatcow) were attempting to change all users passwords as I was working on my site. I logged off about 1PM and when I attempted to log back in after 2PM i was directed to a site that for all indications was Fat Cow but is totally foreign, it isn't even a spoof of Fat Cow.

Then i started getting e-mails from my subscribers to my site saying they were getting a commercial site, not mine. 

I attempted to call the Support line but no one is answering.

It would be nice if Fat Cow would e-mail it's users and let us know what is going on. 

Fortunately my business is a small hobby one and I can handle a short down time. I feel sorry for those who have major selling sites.

go to fatcow.com and you will see what comes up.  Also with my site lenhartimages.com, same thing


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## cdawall (Feb 16, 2009)

use hostgator i know the owner they hand write the linux code for all of the severs and are hella secure


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## ronlenmac (Feb 16, 2009)

*Fatcow customers*

Any other Fatcow customers experiencing DIFFICULTIES TODAY?

3:15 pm MST OK they are back online with no apparent ill effects on my sites. It makes me very nervous though, too many little issues lately with them.


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## paulm (Feb 16, 2009)

If you want to find out what the best hosting companies are, take a look at webhostingtalk.com

Never go with a host which offers more than 20GB of space and 50GB of bandwidth for under $10. Never register a domain with a host. Never look at host "review" sites, they are all getting kickbacks.

From my experience, www.medialayer.com is one of the best hosts out there. They are a bit on the pricey side, but support always answers within 15 minutes and they run very fast server software (Litespeed HTTP server and various PHP accelerators).

Don't believe companies giving unlimited hosting or 100GB's of storage and such, as they oversell (sell more resources than they have, knowing that nobody will use them all). You don't need much space for any website. When you do, its time to switch to dedicated servers or VPS anyway.

In your case, you do not need more than 1GB of storage and probably 5GB of bandwidth, and unless your forum grows very rapidly, you won't be able to use even that.


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## Nictanium (Sep 5, 2010)

*Thanks PaulM!*

I don't know if I'll actually use this forum ever again.  It doesn't look bad.  I really only registered so I could thank you for your post on registering domain names and web hosting.  It's so hard to sort all the crap on the internet from the truly useful info.  So, I really appreciated this post when I found it.

Also, I'm just getting started in website design.  Are you available to be a web coach?  I'm looking for someone that I could even just go to for advice or to bounce ideas off of just so I can avoid wasting years of headaches on something an experienced person would easily avoid.  I don't know if you'll get this right away but I'm planning on registering 5-10 or so domain names with GoDaddy tonight and would be willing to sign up under you if you're an affiliate??  


Either way, thanks again!

Nic D.


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## Kreij (Sep 13, 2010)

@Nic : There are many people here on TPU who are well versed in web design and coding. 
If you have a question, just ask. Someone will help you.

Btw ... Welcome to TPU.


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## digibucc (Sep 13, 2010)

as others have mentioned, what you do NOT want to do is get the domain and hosting from the same people.  

go to register.com or any other straight domain reseller... if you go to godaddy or the like they buy a domain name from someone else for you, but they control it in reality.  skip the middleman and buy the name yourself.

then find a host, the cheapest you can find(without glaring negative reviews) for starting out.  once you have full control over your domain, switching to a new host can be completed in under 2 days ... that's not bad.  also know that when you transfer hosting the actual downtime is negligible.... your name will continue to point to your old host until each DNS updates, and then it's start pointing to the new host... no real downtime unless the company you are switching from is down or shuts you off or something...

*tl;dr *- the important thing is having full control of your domain name, without any middleman.  after that, choosing a host is no big deal.  no offense but you are not starting  multi million dollar website , the price difference between 99% uptime (cheap & common) and 99.99% uptime is enormous, and not worth it unless tons of money is on the line.

edit: now i realise his last post was a week ago, guessing he already bought through go daddy.... ewww


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## Nictanium (Sep 13, 2010)

*Thanks for the info.*

Kreij and Digibucc,

Thanks for the warm welcome and feedback.  That will help.  I think I will keep an eye on the Tech Power Up Forums.



digibucc said:


> as others have mentioned, what you do NOT want to do is get the domain and hosting from the same people.  I'll keep this in mind.
> 
> go to register.com or any other straight domain reseller... if you go to godaddy or the like they buy a domain name from someone else for you, but they control it in reality.  skip the middleman and buy the name yourself.   I didn't realize the difference.  I thought with all the ads they were a legitimate/actual registrar.
> ...
> ...



Will do in the future.  I already registered some domains through GoDaddy for one theme, but I still have a different theme of domains I'll be registering soon so I'll check out Register.com.


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## Kreij (Sep 13, 2010)

I've used a hosting company called gnxonline, out of London (I think).
They're pretty reasonable depending upon what you need. Never had any problems.

You'll find TPU one of the best sites on the interwebz. Where do you think Leonardo DaVinci got all his ideas?


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## Kreij (Sep 17, 2010)

FYI ... GoDaddy just put themselves up for sale.


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## Amy (Mar 3, 2011)

Fatcow are one of my favorite hosts.


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## <<Onafets>> (Mar 6, 2011)

What about square space? If you pm me I might be able to find you a promo code.


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## FatCowBadDeal (Jul 19, 2013)

*Fat Cow = Bad Experience*

Our company has hosting by Fat Cow.
We took up their hosting offer of a "free domain name".
To streamline our management we decided to renew the domain name with a preferred & reliable registrar.
BUT.........
The domain name expired and Fat Cow wants $160 to release it.
- The domain name has expired
- over 45 days has elapsed since the expiry
- Fat Cow is not using this domain name (it's only worth something to me)
- I have this domain name now on backorder with our preferred domain registrar
and Fat Cow refuses to release the domain name.

What a bunch of douches!!!!!!!!!!
This is alleged EXTORTION.

And Hostmonster is no better.
BEWARE & BE WARNED


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## Ghost (Jul 19, 2013)

Currently using Internet Vision and Baltic Servers. IV is by far the best I've ever used. It's unfortunately unavailable to you, foreigners .

Baltic Servers is good too. Good prices, already has PHP 5.5, some PHP options that are usually disabled on other hosts. There's a free shared hosting deal ATM. Can get a coupon, if anyone needs.


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## shovenose (Jul 19, 2013)

Fatcow is an EIG (Endurance International Group) company and should be avoided.
Slow speed and poor reliability, as well as poor customer service, along with dishonest billing practicies, are typical of EIG brands.
Other EIG brands are HostMonster, BlueHost, iPage, and (recently acquired so it hasn't gone completely downhill yet but will soon) HostGator.


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