Fasthosts Review

Fasthosts has been a fixture of British hosting since 1999, operating its own UK datacenters from Gloucester under the ownership of United Internet, the German group behind IONOS and STRATO. That parentage gives it big-company infrastructure while the support operation stays firmly, and audibly, British.

For UK businesses the jurisdiction argument now cuts two ways. Data stays in the UK under UK GDPR, which is the tidy answer for British customer data after Brexit, though companies serving EU users may actually prefer a host inside the EU proper. Either way it beats defaulting to a US host with transatlantic transfer paperwork.

The plans themselves are more generous than the price tags suggest: 100 GB of SSD storage on the single-site Start plan, 250 GB on Grow and half a terabyte on Pro, all with unlimited bandwidth and a 99.99 percent uptime SLA that is stronger than the industry-standard 99.9. Lifetime SSL certificates on the mid and upper tiers are a nice touch that avoids annual certificate churn.

Pricing follows the aggressive UK promo culture: a pound a month for the first term, then renewals of four to twenty times that. The 99p first-year Grow deal is genuinely good, but the honest comparison price is GBP 8 a month thereafter. Watch the small mailboxes too, 2 GB each will pinch a business inbox quickly.

Support runs 24/7 by phone and chat from the UK and is a real differentiator against offshore-heavy budget rivals. Performance from the Gloucester datacenters is solid for UK and Western European traffic. Shared pricing was confirmed on the live Fasthosts site; the VPS figure is approximate and flagged in its notes.