Heart Internet vs Fasthosts: Close Match, but Only One Winner [2024]

Fasthosts and Heart Internet are both based in the UK, and they offer very similar hosting plans. However, there are a few differences you should know about so you can select the best one for your needs.

To help you decide, I tested both Heart Internet and Fasthosts in different areas including performance, features, pricing, and support. It was a close call, but Heart Internet won in more than one category, making it the winner of this comparison.

Click here to see Heart Internet’s latest deals1, or read on to see how each service performed in my in-depth comparison.

1. Plans and Pricing

Heart Internet Offers Cheaper Shared Hosting Plans

At a glance, Fasthosts seems to offer cheaper shared hosting prices than Heart Internet, thanks to its attractive introductory discounts. However, its packages renew at a high rate compared to Heart Internet.

With Heart Internet, you can choose to subscribe monthly or annually, whereas you can only subscribe on an annual basis with Fasthosts. Both hosts offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Both Heart Internet and Fasthosts also offer a free domain name with its annual subscriptions for web hosting, but Heart Internet offers more domain extensions for free than Fasthosts. Heart Internet offers free website migration, but Fasthosts doesn’t.

The winner? Heart Internet wins the pricing challenge for offering cheaper prices than Fasthosts and free site migration.

2. Features

It’s a Tie between Heart Internet and Fasthosts

Both Heart Internet and Fasthosts offer shared hosting for both Linux and Windows operating systems.

With Heart Internet’s four Linux-based shared hosting plans, you can host from 1 to 200 websites and get 100 GB to unlimited storage, 100 to unlimited premium mailboxes, and unlimited bandwidth. All Heart Internet’s shared hosting packages include cPanel, one-click application installer for WordPress and more, free setup, and free simple SSL certificate with higher-value plans.

In contrast, Fasthosts offers three shared hosting plans for Linux. All three plans are SSD powered and give you 10 GB to 120 GB disk space, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited email accounts, one-click application installer, and from 1 to 100 hosted websites. Fasthosts doesn’t offer cPanel, but it offers its own custom control panel.

Similar to Heart Internet, Fasthosts offers free dedicated SSL certificate with higher-value plans, and additionally offers basic and advanced SEO tools (depending on the plan).

Compare Heart Internet and Fasthosts yourself through the following detailed comparison table:

Heart Internet and Fasthosts offer similar feature sets with their shared hosting plans. If you prefer SSD hosting, but lower storage, you’ll find Fasthosts suitable for you. If you’d rather have more storage on regular disk drives and cPanel, Heart Internet is a better option.

‌See Fasthosts’ Latest Deals

3. Performance

Fasthosts’ Loading Speeds Are Slower Than Heart Internet’s

To fairly compare Fasthosts and Heart Internet’s performance, I tested the uptime, overall performance, and page loading speeds of both services.

Heart Internet promises a 99.9% uptime guarantee, so I used Uptime Robot to test its actual uptime over a period of 30 days. To my disappointment, the result was 99.62% uptime, which is even lower than the industry standard (99.9%).

To learn more about what went wrong, read our full Heart Internet review.

When I used GTmetrix to test its overall performance, I was disappointed again to find it scoring a D at 67%, which is way below the scores I’ve come across with other hosts in its tier.

On a brighter note, when I tested Heart Internet’s page loading speeds using Sucuri, it scored an A, which exceeded my expectations.

Unlike Heart Internet, Fasthosts doesn’t have an uptime guarantee policy. When I used Uptime Robot to test its uptime for 30 days, it showed an average uptime of 99.69%, which is slightly better than Heart Internet, but still below the industry standard.

Moving on, I used GTmetrix to test the overall performance of Fasthosts, and it scored a B at 89%. It isn’t bad, but definitely better than Heart Internet.

On the other hand, Fasthosts flunked Sucuri’s page loading speed test with an F. The speeds were extremely slow in Asia, Australia, and some parts of the US.

To learn more about these performance tests, read our full Fasthosts review.

To wrap up, Heart Internet’s uptime was slightly lower than Fasthosts. However, Heart Internet managed to surpass Fasthosts in terms of speed by a hefty margin, earning it the winning title in this challenge.

4. Security

Heart Internet Offers Additional (Optional) Security Features

Both Heart Internet and Fasthosts secure their servers with advanced firewalls to protect against DDoS, Brute-Force and any sort of malicious cyber threats.

When it comes to incoming and outgoing emails on the hosted websites, both hosts provide inclusive free antivirus and anti-spam software to secure these email accounts and to protect your websites.

On the downside,  neither host offers free automatic backups or free Content Delivery Network (CDN), which places your website on a global virtual network boosting its performance and further securing it from external threats.

Nevertheless, Heart Internet offers optional security packages that come with a wide range security features that you can purchase separately to add an extra layer of security to your website. This isn’t available with Fasthosts.

I’m not very impressed with Fasthosts and Heart Internet’s standard default security features; there’s nothing thrilling about them. However, Heart Internet wins this round for providing separate security packages, unlike Fasthosts.

‌See Heart Internet’s Best Plans

5. Support

Heart Internet Is a Bit More Responsive and Has More Support Options

From comprehensive knowledge bases and FAQ sections to sleek and user-friendly websites, you’ll find it easy to get answers to your questions with both Heart Internet and Fasthosts.

You can contact Heart Internet’s customer support through live chat, phone, email, or support tickets. All channels are available 24/7.

Even though it’s a bit tricky to find the live chat link or get connected, the support ticket channel is highly responsive. I received a reply to my questions within 10 minutes and they were all answered in detail.

In contrast, Fasthosts offers customer support via live chat, phone, and support ticket. Unlike Heart Internet, only the ticket support team is available 24/7. Fasthosts live chat and phone support are available Monday through Friday (from 9 am – 6 pm GMT).

I tested the ticket system and I received a response within 20 minutes. All my questions were answered clearly with some screenshots included for further clarification.

Both Heart Internet and Fasthosts have adequate customer support teams. However, Heart Internet wins the support round by a hair. It offers more support channels and delivers quicker response times than Fasthosts.

Heart Internet Beats Fasthosts

You can observe that Heart Internet and Fasthosts share significant similarities. Both providers offer hosting plans with rich features, allowing you to determine which of the two suits your hosting requirements best.

Heart Internet won this competition but only by a whisker, in three rounds (pricing, performance, and support).

That said, Fasthosts also has some interesting features to offer.

If neither Heart Internet nor Fasthosts can provide what you’re looking for, I recommend checking out some more reliable solutions in our expert list of the best web hosting  services.

FAQ

Does Heart Internet use cPanel?

Not with all hosting packages, but Heart Internet does offer cPanel with most of its plans. However, all its Windows web hosting packages come with eXtend control panel.

Does Fasthosts offer a free domain?

You can get a free domain name for one year with Fasthosts’ shared and WordPress hosting plans, but not with all its services You can choose from these domain endings: .com, .co.uk, .uk, or .london.

Check out our ultimate domain name guide to learn more about choosing the right domain name for your site.

Does Heart Internet offer dedicated server hosting?

Yes. Heart Internet offers two dedicated server plans ( Power Range and High Power Range). You can get 32 GB to 128 GB RAM, storage from 2 x 2TB SATA RAID 1 to 4 x 1TB SATA RAID 1, and up to 1 Gbit/s bandwidth. You can also choose between cPanel or Plesk and get full root access.

Does Fasthosts offer WordPress hosting?

Fasthosts offers only one WordPress hosting package. It comes with automatic installation of WordPress, free SSL certificate for one year, 10 GB SSD storage, five 2GB mailboxes, and unlimited bandwidth. You also pay less when you add more WordPress websites.

If you’re looking for a bit more, don’t miss our list of the best managed WordPress hosting providers.