As contrary to common believe that vDeck is not as good as cPanel, the perspective should be put to test again with vDeck 4. Back in years, vDeck 2 is really not very useful due to the insufficient features and user unfriendliness. However, those were the days. With the release of vDeck 3 in 2009, the industry changed a little. And now with vDeck 4, we should really take a more serious look at it.

So What’s New with vDeck 4.0?

Under the new vDeck 4, Fatcow users enjoy a better navigation across all the hosting features: tabbed, drop-down menu, clean design, one-click access to QuickStart tool, which walks you through adding domain, creating a mailbox an building your site. It’s all under your control with simple mouse clicks. In short, the layout and design of FatCow is now more efficient. Tasks are easier to accomplish and things are easier to organize. This is definitely something built out of experience!

FatCow’s Install Central with Over 20 Website Applications

One of the famous features of vDeck 4 is the Install Central. It’s a scripting and add-ons library that content over 20 website applications. By choosing the application you want, Install Central will step you through the process of setting up your administration credentials, choosing your installation location, and setting up your database, with just a few clicks. There are wide range of applications for you to choose from, including WordPress, Joomla, osCommerce shopping cart, phpBB and etc.

With vDeck 4, FatCow has again gained momentum in the web hosting market and it’s becoming the most popular vDeck host. I believe FatCow will be more powerful with the brand new control panel and changes the industry a little. Let’s see the performance of FatCow in the time to come.

FatCow hosting is giving away a Smart-for-2 through their Host Smart Drive Smart Campaign. Sign up FatCow now and you may be the lucky star to drive away the Smart! Besides the Smart car, there are 5 more prizes await to be won including a Vespa scooter.

The giveaway starts from May 17, 2010 and ends on 11.59pm ET on September 20, 2010. There are plenty more time to participate!

According to the official rule, you will automatically receive one entry into the sweepstakes when you sign up for a new hosting or domain service. But since it’s a giveaway, there are many other ways for you to win the Smart car asides of signing up a hosting account!

FatCow has gone green!

Finally FatCow has become an eco-friendly host. FatCow is now 100% powered by wind energy. Although FatCow does not build wind farm but their determination and action to offset the use of fossil electricity is indeed appreciated!

Thank you for contributing in preserving our planet Earth FatCow.

Now you might wonder how much Carbon Dioxide has FatCow reduced from the air. The answer is 2,660 metric tons which is equivalent to removing 510 cars from the road each year. It is though not a huge achievement but FatCow does make a difference on our planet.

Honestly FatCow has been improving regardless of their hosting performance or their management, and now their environment friendly policy. However if you have a different thought, please tell us by casting a vote at our poll. Remember to check out the vote results too.

As comparable to Fantastico in cPanel, vDeck 3.0 has its own scripts library too – InstallCentral. Many people wonder how useful Install Central as compared to cPanel. Believe it or not, InstallCentral is equally powerful with Fantastico. Anyway, here is the post showing you all the available applications in FatCow Install Central. For your information, all the applications and scripts in Install Central are free to use on your website when you are signed up with a vDeck hosting for example FatCow.

Content Management System (CMS)

A content management system (CMS) is a pre-built system used to manage the content of a Web site. CMS’s are used for sites ranging from simple five-pagers to complex corporate applications, and are recommended for intermediate to expert Web users–mostly due to the learning curve required to understanding the data structure.

The available CMS brands are:-

• Joomla
• Drupal
• Mambo
• E107

Blog

A blog is a type of Web site driven by regular entries of commentary (posts), which are maintained by either an individual or a group of authors. Blogging software is typically easy to administer, employing a rich-text editor for posting entries and pictures, and is recommended for beginners to expert Web users. For your information, the website you are reading now run on WordPress (blog)

The available blog applications are:-

• WordPress
• PixelPost
• b2evolution

Galleries

Galleries are for easy photo browsing. You can install a photo gallery on your website so that others can browse your photos. Most of the photo gallery applications come with an upload wizard too. So you can manage your photos online without connecting to your server from time to time.

The available galleries are:-

• Gallery2
• Coppermine
• ZenPhoto

Forum

Yes you can install a forum on your website too. It’s a free application. There are 3 different brands you can choose from.

• Gbook
• phpBB
• SMF

E-commerce

E-commerce consists of the buying and selling of products or services over the Internet, and usually includes an online shopping cart and a payment gateway solution. Shopping cart applications, which are free through InstallCentral, provide the ability to showcase products and lead a customer through the process of making his or her selection and checking out.

The available shopping carts are:-

• osCommerce
• AgoraCart
• ZenCart

Others Applications

• Gregarius
• MediaWiki
• SugarCRM
• X7Chat
• WebCalendar
• Moodle
• OpenRealty
• phpFormGenerator

For more information on FatCow Applications:-

Unlimited mail accounts anyone?

As one of the host who offers unlimited, FatCow hosting allows subscribers to create unlimited numbers of POP3 email accounts. With that said you could have whatever number of email address with your choice of name on your own domain, for example, whatever-name-you-want@your-domain.com. What you need to do is to pick a name and create the inbox at FatCow’s Mail Central. You can then repeat creating as much email accounts as you wish.

In term of accessing the mails, POP3 account enables you to download email massages from the mail server to local computer. With simple settings on your mail client you will be able to get the messages delivered straight to the local inbox.

However if you prefer to read your email online, there are 3 different WebMail Clients to serve you: AtMail, SquirrelMail and Horde. Below are the descriptions on each WebMail Client that quoted by Fat Cow Hosting.

• AtMail: It is a feature-rich IMAP account e-mail solution that provides a complete and innovative user interface for accessing e-mail resources via Web browser or wireless device.
• SquirrelMail: A standards-based WebMail package, written in PHP4 for maximum compatibility across browsers. SquirrelMail has all the functionality you would want from an email client, including strong MIME support, address books, and folder manipulation.
• Horde: Horde is a comprehensive Internet Messaging Program that offers many of the features available in e-mail clients like Outlook Express. Users can read, send and organize e-mail messages, manage calendars, contacts, tasks and notes.

For myself I prefer to have POP3 accounts. Accessing my mail is much faster offline. However, WebMail remains as a useful tool when I am on the move. I could check my mail on a public shared computer with the clients.

What other mail features FatCow possesses?

Well, FatCow has most of the must-have email features, 2 of them are spam filtering and newsletter manager tools. People hate spam. So FatCow put up spam filter to opt out SPAM even before they reach your inbox; while newsletter manager tool is another great feature to create lists and send newsletters to your subscribers. This manager tool is yet another great stuff come free along with your hosting account.

For more feature details:-

How Others Find FatCow?

Basically I can sum up my finding into this – FatCow = great hosting. I know this conclusion is not persuasive at all without reasons. So here is what you want:-

Not mentioning about the good user reviews and reports that I have read, try this in judging FatCow. FatCow is in the business for 10 over years, 11 to be exact. Imagine for these 11 years of services, there are very little complaints or none at all in the internet. You want to know how to justify this? Easy, perform a Google search on “FatCow Sucks” or “FatCow Complaints” and these are the numbers that return (Inverted commas are needed for exact phrase search).

• FatCow returns 559,000 results
• “FatCow Sucks” returns 521 results
• “FatCow Complaints” returns 561 results

Out of 559,000 web pages that are related to FatCow, there is only 0.1% of pages relate to complaints. If you look carefully into the hate page results it is also easy to see that some pages are out of date and are not relevant to FatCow Complaints at all. Will a hosting have this least complaints if they are not trustworthy, especially for a host that has served this long?

And here are some of the reviews from real and existing customers:-

“I appreciate the service you deliver. FatCow’s high standards and fair price are a terrific combination that I recommend to all.”

Barry, callbackworld.com

“FatCow has been hosting our Web site for two years. They have remained committed to delivering the best value and customer service in Web hosting to the small business user. The technical support group is easily accessible (via telephone or Internet), professional and quick to respond. Our clients have never experienced difficulty accessing our site. We utilize the FatCow Plan, which is a great deal.”

Gordon, gordonpage.net

“Your tech support group is excellent! Please thank Daniel in your Technical Support Group. He was very helpful and knew exactly what to do.”

Ed, bizzybroomz.com

How Do I find FatCow?

Obviously, I like FatCow. FatCow is indeed a good host in all aspect from hosting features, uptime performance to their customer support. If you were to ask me do I trust FatCow? Certainly I do.

FatCow announces 29% growth in the first quarter of 2009. They achieve this tremendous growth as a result of their dedication to customer satisfaction according to the latest press release made. In fact the reason behind this growth is clear. The customers are happy with FatCow hosting and therefore they stay and buy more hosting accounts. Happy customers also spread words by recommending FatCow to their friends and family.

Editor’s Opinion On FatCow Growth

Well honestly, this is something expected to happen. FatCow has been in the hosting industry for long enough and possesses good reputation. Good reputation is not something easily gained overnight. FatCow has apparently put in a lot of effort in their service and finally the hard work starts to pay off now.

FatCow is indeed one of the best hosting from the aspect of performance, features and control panel. With the roll out of “HeiferCratic Oath” last year, FatCow has again proved their emphasis on customer satisfactory. In the HeiferCratic Oath, they actually pledge to adhere to 7 key rules including answering your call in less than 2 minutes. And free hosting will be given out upon failure.

So tell me how will not a hosting company grow with their passions?

FatCow Hosting Best vDeck Hosting (vDeck 3.0) Unlimited Storage & Bandwidth Free Site Builder, WordPress, etc Effective 24×7 Support Price: $88/year  $66/year   Reduced Again!    $48/year (only for WHD readers!) Follow this link to activate the coupon.

It’s always good to share discount coupon. So this is what happened – I’ve somehow manage to talk to the manager of FatCow, Paul and have requested a coupon for WebHostingDeals readers. And generously, Paul has given me an exclusive discount coupon for me to share with you. So here you go the details of the coupon.

FatCow Regular Pricing

FatCow offers only 1 hosting plan, which is a shared hosting plan. FatCow has only one pricing regardless of the length of your subscriptions. Their one plan one price concept is obviously due to their principle to keep everything simple.

• Hosting Package: Fixed 12 Month Term
• Price: $88

And here comes the discount for you..

FatCow Coupon

Every new subscriber is entitled to have 25% 45% discount on Fat Cow hosting plan. The plan has exactly the same features but with 45% lesser cost. You will get one free domain name, unlimited disk space, bandwidth, add on domains, email, free site builder and many more. The new price scheme is as followed:-

• Hosting Package: Fixed 12 Month Term
• Price: $66 (which translate into just $5.50/month)   Only $47.88/year – $3.99/month
• Link: Please use the above mentioned link to access the coupon.

For your information, this is a limited time offer and FatCow will anytime take back the coupon. So you know what to do if you want to save some money. For more information about Fat Cow, check out:-

General Hosting Features

In term of hosting features, FatCow offers unlimited disk space, bandwidth and add-on domains to users. According to FatCow, they do not believe users should be constrained by arbitrary quotas on disk space, bandwidth, or even e-mail. Therefore users can expect to host as much website files with FatCow as possible. On top of that, the unlimited add-on domains simply allow users to host as much websites as they want.

• Hosting Platform: UNIX
• Disk Space: Unlimited
• Bandwidth: Unlimited – Both disk space and bandwidth are subjected to normal use though.
• Add-on Domains: Unlimited – You can host as many individual websites as possible in one FatCow account.

Email Features

With FatCow, users can create unlimited POP3 email account too. By that means you can have whatever number of email accounts associated with your local mail client like Outlook. You can have my-email@yourdomain.com, your-email@yourodmian.com, his-email@yourdomain.com and whatever email address you desire. Also FatCow has spam filtering software that helps you to filter spam mails before reaching your mail box.

• POP3 Email: Unlimited
• Spam Filtering: Yes

Hosting Control Panel & Software

FatCow uses vDeck 3.0 as their hosting control panel. Famous of e-commerce functionality, vDeck has advance features for e-commerce usage like PayPal shopping cart integration and online transaction system. Besides that, vDeck 3.0 has many free script and software coming along with the Install Central embedded within. With those script users can easily embed systems like Joomla, WordPress and phpBB into their website. Not mentioning the free website builder, FatCow users can also enjoy website tools like Google Custom Search and Google Webmaster Tools. They have in fact integrated the tools into the hosting account where minimum settings are needed to get the tools working for you.

• Control Panel: vDeck 3.0
• Site Tools: Website Builder, Integrated Google Custom Search and Webmaster Tools
• Script Library: Install Central
• Available Scripts & Software: WordPress, Gallery2, GBook, phpBB, SMF, Poll, Survey, Joomla, Web Analytic Tools, Carbonite Online Backup and etc.

Other Hosting Features

FatCow has many other useful hosting features like databases, programming, domain management and etc which I will leave them for you to explore. It is time for you to research a bit otherwise you will get really bored with my words. A hint for you: You can easily get the information form their web hosting plan page as well as their video tutorial section.

Therefore as a conclusion, it is not difficult to justify that FatCow works for the people who own small or medium-sized websites seeing the available features. FatCow is indeed meant for simplicity that works for everyone. If you are looking for a hosting that you can utilize in no time, FatCow is definitely recommended.

To continue, I suggest you these readings:-

Fatcow provides shared hosting solutions to all range of users from medium sized business owner to individual webmaster. Fatcow emphasizes in simplicity in their hosting plan and as a result FatCow has only one hosting plan with clear features at 1 price.

Incorporated in the year 1998, FatCow has more than 10 years experience. I always have this concept in mind that a host is a quality host if they can stand that long. After all web hosting business is a very competitive business. Not anyone is able to stand the constant stress from the competitions, at least not Tom, Dick and Harry. For FatCow, they have not only survived the war they have in fact performed under such situation. They are one of the best shared hosting providers in the world though with just one hosting plan.

FatCow runs on LINUX and they have vDeck 3.0 as their hosting control panel. The Install Central in vDeck provides free scripts and software like WordPress and phpBB. Besides, FatCow offers unlimited storage and bandwidth. This attribute makes hosting multiple websites in one hosting account possible. Hosting features is one thing while the performance is another. FatCow hosting has been well performing. Their servers are up for services for 99% of the time. This is apparently a job well done result from the dedication of the team.

Also it is worth noting that FatCow has a Heifer-Cratic Oath in play that the support team as known as the Moo Crew promises to provide a quality service by solving your queries in the soonest time. If by any means someone feels that the Moo Crew has violated the Oath, an account credit equals to one month hosting will be compensated.

So what do you think about FatCow? Are they your trusted hosting partner? Do you feel comfortable with their Moo Crew? Or do you love their cute logo?