Krystal Alternative: A WordPress-Only Host, Honestly Compared
If you are looking for a Krystal alternative, you should know up front that Krystal is very good. They own their hardware, they run their own cloud platform, they are a certified B Corp on renewable power, and they are a London company with a UK support team. This page is the narrow case for us rather than a case against them.
The Narrow Case For Moving To Us
WordPress, and nothing else
Krystal sells hosting, VPS, cloud, storage, email and domains. We sell one thing. Every setting on this platform exists because it makes WordPress faster.
An engineer at every hour, on every plan
Not a general desk with out-of-hours emergency cover on top. The same people who run the platform, at three in the morning, on the cheapest plan we sell.
Migrations by hand, free, every plan
Our engineers move the site and hand you a preview URL. You approve it before a single visitor is affected.
FastCow Next To Krystal, Without The Spin
Two independents with owned hardware. Expect ties, and one row we lose outright.
How this was put together. The FastCow side is ours to be held to. The Krystal side comes from their own site, documentation and knowledge base, and they can change any of it. Sources: krystal.io and their technology pages. Last reviewed August 2026. Found something out of date? Point it out and we will fix it. You can read how we handle every other host comparison too.
Managed Hosting And Managed WordPress Are Not The Same Thing
Krystal manages infrastructure, and they do it extremely well: their own hardware, their own cloud platform, a UK team that knows all of it inside out. What they are managing is the server. What we are managing is WordPress. The line between those two is where most people’s actual problems live.
Redis object caching on every plan, not the premium ones
Krystal documents Redis object caching as a feature of its Sapphire, Diamond and Tanzanite packages. We include it on everything, so the cheapest plan we sell answers repeated queries from memory rather than from MySQL.
LiteSpeed with its own cache
Both platforms run LiteSpeed rather than Apache, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Ours comes with the LiteSpeed Cache plugin configured against it by us, rather than a knowledge base article explaining how to configure it yourself.
The updates are ours
Core, plugins and themes. If an update breaks something, the person who ran it is the person who fixes it, and that person is not you at nine on a Sunday evening.
Every WordPress problem is in scope
A white screen after a plugin update, a block editor that stopped loading, a site hacked through an outdated form plugin. All of it is our job rather than the point where hosting support politely stops.
All four sit on every plan we sell rather than on a premium package. What the platform runs is set out on managed WordPress hosting, and who picks up the ticket on Guru Support.
Where Krystal Is Plainly The Better Choice
They win these three, and we are not going to pretend it is close.
You care about the environmental side
B Corp certification, 100% renewable power, membership of 1% for the Planet and millions of trees planted. We do not have an equivalent story and we are not going to invent one for the sake of this page.
You want more than WordPress from one supplier
Virtual machines, block and object storage, VPS, email and domains under a single login. If you need any of that we simply do not sell it.
You need UK certifications on paper
Krystal is London-based, ISO 27001 certified and Cyber Essentials Plus certified. If your procurement process asks for those by name, that is the end of the conversation and we would not waste your time.
Switching From Krystal Without A Minute Down
You keep working. We rebuild, you inspect, and the switch happens on your say so rather than on a schedule.
Pass Us The Credentials
One message and we begin. We map what is running, note anything that will need attention, and come back to you before we start.
Open The Preview And Poke It
Your site on a temporary address, ready to be tested properly. Nothing about your live setup has changed while you look.
You Choose The Moment
Update the DNS when it suits you. SSL sorts itself out and Krystal carries on serving until every visitor has followed the record.
Independent, The Same Way They Are
Krystal is privately held and so are we, so this is not the part where we tell you we are the trustworthy one. It is about what being independent lets a hosting company promise, because it is the reason either of us can say things the large platforms cannot.
No board, no outside shareholders
The roadmap is set by the people who run the platform, which is why it moves toward what customers ask for rather than toward what presents well to a shareholder.
Self-funded, so there is no clock
No funding round means no investor timetable, and no pressure to raise prices on a schedule set by somebody who has never used the product.
Every pound goes back in
Hardware, tooling and engineers, for the people already hosting with us rather than for the ones we have not signed yet.
Not for sale
Built to keep rather than to flip. If that ever changed, you would hear it from us before you read it anywhere else.
None of that is a premium tier. It is the entry plan, on day one. FastCow Hosting Limited, 39 C/O FastCow Hosting, Jefferson Close, London, England, IG2 6RZ. Same country, same commitment to being findable. About us, and what independence buys you.
Tell Us Your Setup And We Will Be Honest
Tell us what the site does and what you are paying. If Krystal is the better fit, which for a good number of people it will be, we will tell you that instead of selling to you.
Krystal Alternatives, Asked And Answered
Torn between two good options? Tell us the use case and we will be honest.
Talk to us →Yes, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise. They own their hardware, run their own cloud platform, are a certified B Corp on renewable power and have a well-regarded UK support team. The case for FastCow is narrow: a platform that only does WordPress, and a WordPress engineer on support at every hour on every plan.
Focus. Krystal sells hosting, VPS, cloud, storage, email and domains. FastCow sells managed WordPress and nothing else, which means every setting on the platform is there for one application rather than balanced across many.
Krystal web hosting starts at £7 a month, below our entry price, though their managed WordPress starts at £15. The products are not the same shape, so the comparison only means something once you know what your site actually needs. Send us your current plan and a month of traffic and we will tell you honestly.
No. No. Krystal carries on serving while we rebuild. You get a private URL to go through properly, and nothing switches until you tell us to.
Both, though the support model is the bigger one. On the technical side, Krystal documents Redis object caching as a Sapphire, Diamond and Tanzanite feature, while we include it on every plan, so our cheapest plan answers repeated queries from memory. LiteSpeed itself is a tie. On the support side, Krystal manages the server and we manage WordPress, which is where most people’s problems actually are.
No, and we are not going to claim we do. Krystal is a certified B Corp running on renewable power and a member of 1% for the Planet. If that is the deciding factor for you then they are the better choice, and this page is not going to argue with it.