1and1 Hosting Review
For those of you who haven’t seen an ad somewhere or experienced the company’s services, 1and1 is large domain, web hosting, and e-commerce provider. When 1and1.com stormed the U.S. back in 2003, I was one who signed up for one of the company’s free professional hosting package. Skeptical, I wrote this circa 2005/2006:
I signed up for a 1&1 (1and1.com) account a while back and have been evaluating their web hosting and domain registration service for over one year. A few observations so far are that the 1and1 web hosting speed and uptime appear good. Customer service is mediocre (that’s stretching it, really stretching it). The 1and1 web hosting control panel is slow and a seems underfeatured when compared with others like cPanel.
I am happy to report that I’ve noticed some nice improvements in speed, usability and backend processes in my basic 1and1 hosting account. I discussed some of the changes that are taking place at 1and1 with Joshua Sloan, Director of Online Marketing for 1and1 Internet Inc. and definitely agree with him that “1and1 has come a long way since first entering the U.S. market.” It’s always nice to see a company improving products and services. Someone at 1&1 is listening, I’d say!
I still have my original 1and1 hosting account and plan to keep it. Also, I am a big fan of the 1and1 domain registration service and plan to continue using it due discounted price $5.99 per year and free private registration.
Check out the 1&1 review. Have you tried 1&1 hosting ? What are your impressions?
March 29th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
I’ve been using 1and1.com for domain registration and hosting for the past 4-5 months. I’ve been pleased so far. Uptime is good. I’m not a big fan of their Website Builder panel but I use it anyway. I find it clunky and awkward and it often doesn’t like to paste in html or links on images for some odd reason. They still need to work the kinks out. Other than that, I’m really pleased with them. Good bang for your buck. I have the minimum hosting package (about $4 a month) at the moment and it comes with a Wordpress blog and photo album.
April 5th, 2007 at 11:11 am
I think there customer has some serious flaws. They need to spend more money on support and less on full-page ads.
May 2nd, 2007 at 2:40 pm
I have been using 1and1 for 2 years now and have a small business account with them. The tools they have are great and works well. I was also very happy with the service and support in the beginning. I recently needed support with an obvious server problem. When I try to access one of my e-mail addresses via the webmail interfaces, I get an “internal server error 500″. I called support and got a very bad phone connection to somebody with an oriental accent. I had a hard time to hear and understand the person. She told me this problem would be resolved within the hour. Now, 2 days later, with several phone calls to friendly folks with marginal English and 2 more case numbers, nothing has happened.
It’s so sad that companies as they start to grow seem to go down that road!
May 3rd, 2007 at 3:33 am
I would not recommend this people, three years ago I registered a domain with this company trying to swiich form ev1 servers becasue they cancelled their domain services, and as a general rule I never let the system to make automatic renewal, because some of my customers only needs their domains for 2 to 3 years maximum, and thats why I opt to renew year by year.
I had been a ev1servers.com customer for the last 3 years and never have any problem with them, I was trying to move my server to 1and1, and his sales rep, treat me like Sh****t too.
Well after the first year I thought that I didn’t have any additional responsibilities because I never choose automatic renewal, this is not true, now I had a lot of threats about collection agencies, cancelation of service, etc, for only $17.95.
STAY AWAY form them, they do not respect whatever you selects at the registration time, they will keep charging you. STAY AWAY!, if you want to register go to godaddy.com.
May 4th, 2007 at 4:58 am
I use godaddy, I do not recommend godaddy to anyone. Their service is not worldwide. It could not be open in many countries.
May 10th, 2007 at 8:38 am
1&1 are BULLIES!!!
I signed up to the 1&1 Professional Preview Package in 2004 - which allowed me 3 years free hosting - ‘great’, I thought. However, I guess it’s true what they say - ‘there’s no such thing as a free lunch’.
I didn’t receive a reminder warning and consequently my website suddenly disappeared and my connected email address ceased working. They locked my account and told me that the only way that my website and email address would work again is if I paid to upgrade my account.
I’ve phone and I’ve emailed my complaints, but all I got was a trite “all we can do is apologize” response.
They’ve withdrawn the money for my domain name registration from my card. However, I can’t even forward my domain name because they’ve put a lock on that too! So what have I paid for? I might as well have signed up to a protection racket!
May 18th, 2007 at 9:07 am
Hi All,
As a new fan of Clickfire, I will pop in from time to time.
I wanted to let you know that IMHO I am seeing improvements in all kind of areas over the past couple years. We’re constantly hiring for techs, and implementing improved training for both techs and billing folks. We have streamlined the cancellation procedures, eliminated internal domain transfer fees, increased package features, increade our tech support personnel, decreased avg. response times, and more. I don’t find our billing or contract terms unreasonable at all, but I do know that some people don’t pay attention to what they are getting into, and don’t keep their contact info update. This would cause problems for any company, the phone company, the cable company, and yes for hosting compaines. But companies cannot accept all the responsibility if clients don’t receive or ignore notifications. If you buy anything that has a contract, it does behove your to either read the T&C or call the company up and ask them to address your major concerns before buying.
As for the 3-yr free customers, I know we tried very hard to reach all of them to let them know that the free period was ending, and fees would start to accrue if they had added domains or had a credit card on file for other fees/services (otherwise the account could be terminated.) Unfortunately after 3 years of free service, some peple took the service for granted and did not receive or respond to our ‘end is near’ emails. We are indeed very big, but I can assure you there are no nefarious or evil people at 1&1, everyone I know and have net here are sincere, honest, and proud ‘hosting geeks’ like myself.
Pragmatically speaking, I know we can’t be right for everyone, but I am proud to say that for most people we are indeed a very good choice. Even for those who do not choose 1&1, our presence in the market as a large player means other hosting and domain companies are being forced to offer people more for less. This is a good thing for the whole industry.
That being said, don’t sign up for 1&1 because I like them and work there, double check the features, the many free value-adds, the guarantee period, and call the InfoLine to discuss and concerns you have about cancellation and billing policies. If these meet or exceed your needs or expectations, I know you’ll like the prices.
Warm regards to all clickfire readers,
Joshua
May 24th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
I’ve been useing 1&1 for 7 months now, I have domains I can not figure this out to save my life! 1 site is being done by a webmaster the other I’m trying to do myself-I used one of their programs-templates clicked the button that says publish now….and nothing….I do not understand their tech sup. and there blank answers.
May 27th, 2007 at 1:01 am
I have been registering domain names with 1and1 for 6 months now and using their 1and1 home package for 2 months. I do not have any complaints. Uptime is good(haven’t been down yet, except for scheduled). Speed is good, my ISP is the only limit. I can’t comment on the quality of the customer service, I have never needed to use it(no problems yet). I have 7 domain names registered with 1and1, 3 web sites and 4 MySQL databases running right now. I have not had any problems so far.
I see a lot of negative reviews of 1and1. I can’t confirm any of these yet. So far my experience with 1and1 has been positive.
May 29th, 2007 at 2:10 am
1and1 sucks, horrible customer service! I will never use them again!
July 4th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
Whoever likes 1&1 must be drunk. They are the poorest of the poor and I for one was glad to part company. You don’t get what you pay for and their after sales sucks. Leave this company well alone because they smell of sh**!
July 10th, 2007 at 5:41 am
1and1 has bottomed out. I have been using their Business Package for many years and have 13 domains registered. All sites went down early am on July 9th. I called tech support and was told there was a hardware problem on the server. 24 hours later the problem has not been fixed. 24 hours for ecommerce sites is an eternity. Needless to say I will be moving all my web site hosting ASAP. Has anybody ever recovered lost revenue from a hosting copmany?
July 10th, 2007 at 6:13 pm
1and1 use to be the best but since jan/feb they have been nothing but problems. Like an idiot I moved my company to 1and1 a few years ago and had great service from them spending about $250/mth on a developers account, managed unix server and 2003 server. So far the only good thing is the 2003 server. In jan they tweaked an apache variable that kept my users from downloading large files off my website claiming I needed to up grade my managed server to get more memory, uh then why did it work fine for the past 2.5 years. Now my company web site is down and has been down for 3 days. It went down on sunday morning. I’ve called 7 times talked to guys in india over bad phone lines and every time they say it should be up in about 3 hours. Wish they would say a few days, then I could point my domain name servers to another system and atleast get warn my customers of the problems. Will these sites ever come back up. I use to run a server farm at a national lab, and 4 hour downtime was all my users ever experienced, you back up a server if it crashes restore it on another box move some pointers and your off and running. This is very unacceptable! Very poor support and service. I’m losing hundreds of dollars in sales every hour not to mention all of the advertising that is pointing to a website that times out.
Avoid 1and1 if you have any sense.
July 11th, 2007 at 1:33 am
1and1 sucks b****. I cant even use my own HTML and am stuck with their sh**** templates. Now with all the negative feedback I fear changes hosts will take forever and still fear they’re going to keep charging me…
July 12th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
I received an email today from the 1and1 Customer Services Director that explains some of the strange goings ons reported with 1and1 hosting lately. Here is an excerpt:
As you are probably aware, 1&1 experienced a major problem with the server your website is hosted on over the last few days.
I am writing you today to personally apologize for the prolonged downtime which you experienced. Essentialy we had a system crash on the server which made it necessary to run a file system check on the machine to ensure data consistency. During the check it became evident that a harddrive in the RAID Array attached to the server was failing which reduced performance dramatically. After replacing the hardware we had to recheck the filesystem which took additional time.
The machine is now up and running again with all the data available and performing nominally again.
Our engineers are conducting a thorough review of the incident to prevent such problems from happening in the future.
Considering the amount of time our services were unavailable to you, we will credit one (1) month’s hosting to your account in the next few days, which will result in the date of your next bill being pushed back one (1) month. Please note that any additional items, such as domains will continue their normal billing cycle.
July 16th, 2007 at 5:45 am
We are down again more than 24 hours. After being with 1&1 for several years, we have noticed substantial downtime for the last several months. A few days over a couple of months that we noticed and the last week for 3 days or so and then we received the same email as shown above . Now we are down again during a marketing blitz. Not good. Last month we opened up a NetSol account to forward the marketing domains just in case this happened again but when the server goes down we learned it does not forward either.
We received these emails this morning… Seems like they are moving their servers cross country.
—–
Again, we apologize for the inconveneince that this may have caused you.
We are doing our best to resolve the issue that you are encountering right now as soon as possible and we know how important your account is with us, it’s just that there are circumstances for this issue that are out of our hands.
Again we apologize for the inconvenience.
If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us.
——
Dear Customer,
Thank you for contacting us.
Can we have one of your domain names so that we can follow up checking your account here in our end. We do apologize for the inconvenience for we are moving our servers from New York to Lenexa to serve you even more better.
If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us.
—–
Right now, I can not and will not recommend 1&1 until they can prove reliability again.
July 24th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
Do NOT use 1and1. PLEASE SAVE YOUR TIME AND SANITY. I am warning you because I don’t want you to have to suffer (yes I used the word suffer) at the hands of their poor service and non-existent customer support. You mae THINK you are saving you or your company a few bucks a month with 1and1, but let me ask you, how valuable is your time? If you are ready to waste hours and hours solving a simple problem, then 1and1 is for you. Don’t do it, pay the extra $5 or $10 per month to go with another hosting company to get the superior support.
You know how 1and1 says there is 24/7 phone support, well, in reality 1and1 farms their customer support to a call center in some foreign country. The people who answer the phone are COMPLETELY useless and can barely speak English. And when I say completely, I mean, they have NO power to do ANYTHING to fix your problem. If it is more than a reset of a password, all they do is say “I am going to upgrade your case to the next level of support”. What does that mean? THEY DONT EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS. In fact, all they are doing is filling out an online form that then gets sent to someone else, somewhere in the world. They don’t know who gets it and they never have contact with that person. So what happens, the person that receives your “support case” has no clue about the 2 hour conversation you just had with the idiot at the customer support call center. So then you get emails telling you to “Try This” when in reality, you have already tried that and the next 10 things they send you to try. And this goes on for days and days and days without any results.
I give you fair warning, they might be the cheapest web host but you truly get what you pay for, which is useless customer support and services that don’t work half the time. Example? I signed up for their Microsoft Exchange Shared Hosting. Sounded like a good value. Until we realized that we couldn’t even send emails to our co-workers within our company. I must have called and emailed 1and1 30 times and no one, EVER solved the problem. I resorted to calling their corporate office — even calling the Sales department just to speak with an American. He of course couldn’t do anything and wanted nothing to do with me. I seriously begged with the guy to help me and he just told me to write a complaint to complaints@1and1.com.
Yeah, I am serious. They have email addresses like complaints@1and1.com. DOES ANYONE REALLY BELIEVE THESE COMPLAINT EMAILS ARE GOING ANYWHERE EXCEPT IN THE TRASH? By the way, I have sent over 30 complaints and not 1 has EVER been addressed. In conclusion, I write this because I hope that someone out there will read it and save themselves the complete frustration and exhaustion of hosting with 1and1 and go some where else. Thanks.
July 31st, 2007 at 7:57 am
1and1 is down AGAIN. I don’t understand how a company that invests so much in marketing cannot invest a few $1000 to ensure that one’s website and email is generally available. Given that they have servers in the US and Europe, why not do maintenance in the off-peak hours on each continent?
Their customer service is generally good but useless when it comes to responding to service outages. My business depends on email - can anyone suggest a better and more stable alternative to 1and1 email servers?
I’ll eventually move my domain to a more expensive but more responsive host/server. Unfortunately you DO get what you pay for :(
NOTE: I was given an email address to send my complaints in but the email kept bouncing back with a German error message (and had a .de extension)! Thought they were a UK company?
Joshua - if you read this, please do something about communication and provide alternatives so emails are not down for extended periods of time. Otherwise your future planning meetings will start with “Gentlemen, we have a problem with customer retention”. ;)
July 31st, 2007 at 6:01 pm
I am looking at 1and1 to consolidate my Client’s websites (developer account or VPS). The package looks good but I am concerned about what I read here. For the people complaining, have you found a better solution?
August 2nd, 2007 at 6:14 am
I have been using 1and1 shared hosting packages (Microsoft) for and extended time, with no problems. For 20 USD a month- 3,000 GB transfer is a fair price. I don’t use any of their included mail services. It may be an unrealistic expectation to pay four dollars a month (or even 20) and expect priority service! MARK –If you have clients/customers depending on you, please consider a dedicated server. I have hired two dedicated servers from commercial farms (not from 1and1). My experience with dedicated servers has been that the advertised transfer speed IS as advertised.
Hosting companies put a load on the machines servicing shared hosting packages.
August 4th, 2007 at 11:17 am
I have been with 1and1 for over a year now and have experienced only one time that everything was not available. That time I waited about thirty minutes, tried again and found everything working. One, relatively short failure in a full year does not seem excessive to me.
I do my own HTML so I cannot talk to their point and click options but if you know what you are doing, I see no problem - at all.
Comparing 1and1 to the two other web hosting companies I have used, 1and1 provides excellent price to performance service.
August 7th, 2007 at 2:42 am
I agree with WOIPL, 1&1 is a great company if you only know what you are doing with the stuff that your bought from the company. You can’t expect 100% satisfaction in every company because in the real world that don’t exist. Every company has its ups and downs… its just a matter of dealing with it and knowing what things are needed to be done particularly…
I agree, most of the agents can’t speak english well, but if you can just ask them whatever sentences or things that they’re saying they will gladly repeat those for you.. please bare in mind that call centers are mostly located in some foreign countries probably in india if im not mistaken.. so meaning to say, they don’t have an access to all of the servers and stuff because from what ive heard, all their servers are in the US and in Germany.
I’ve been in there hosting almost a year now and so far its been excellent.
Pricing is top notch, customer service is fair… great company, and it works with people that KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING.
August 10th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
Don’t expect to be able to cancel 1and 1 in the first 90 days. Its a trap. They make it virtually impossible to do so. So… if you buy it for a year, and it does not work for your needs….you are going to be stuck paying for the year whether you use it or not.
August 16th, 2007 at 10:07 am
I was originally drawn to this firm by their recommendation from a respected friend. Since setting up an account, I experienced a series of problems that Technical Support could not resolve;
- Loosing Email
I subscribe to various email lists and archive the content, posting it for others as reference material. The EmailListServer immediately flags account errors to the list admin. No errors occurred but my inbound emails just stopped arriving. I opened a complaint on 20070605 with Tech Support and furnished everything they needed to isolate the problem. They said they would escalate the issue to the “Admins” and they would be in touch.
- No response to open Technical Support requests
After 30 days with no follow-up from the “Admins”, I contacted Technical Support, worked through their outsourced Level 1 support staff. I find out Technical Support cannot even contact the “Admins” because “Tech Support is in the Philippines and Admins are in Virginia or Germany, I’m not really sure.” The Tech Support supervisor arranged a billing deferral while the issue was resolved.
- Internal policies not followed
30 days more transpired (still no contact from Tech Support or the Admins) and I received a Billing notice that the account will be suspended for non-payment. What the heck, I have a billing deferral! I write to complaints@1and1.com to inform them of the situation. I got a response from Technical Support asking to tell them about the problem I opened the ticket for in the first place. Huh, you lost the open ticket and all the related documentation that lead to the billing deferral? I responded that they already had the required data and they acknowledged the problem existed. All of a sudden, the responses halted, leading to,
- Account Suspension
With no activity on the tech issues, I finally cave in and figure I’ll just switch to another hosting service when the committed-to one year contract expires. I enter my revised billing info and find the account is now locked out.
I am sure this saga will continue but you are smart enough to learn from my mistakes. If you are even thinking about 1 & 1 hosting, just go elsewhere.
August 20th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
We were 1and1 customers since they arrived on the market (2003). We had 2 root servers + 10 exchange hosting + sharepoint. Never a problem with them.
Early 2005, I took their free 1 year business hosting to play with. I cancelled it in July 2005.
Few weeks ago (07/2007) looking at my credit report I noticed a collection report for $30 from 1and1… that costs a bunch of points. I called 1and1 billing about these $30 - they don’t have a clue, my account has always been current. weird. I asked them to investigate…
The $30 is the famous 1 year free business hosting I supposedly never cancelled. I complained about the situation and told them that I would pay but I needed the crap removed from my credit report, they can’t do it! It depends on the collection agency for which they don’t have a name nor a phone number.
That’s ok… I signed with a local company and cancelled everything we had with 1and1 - over $500 monthly lost for a stupid $30.
I got 4 phone calls from billing, sales and an admin offering me 20% discount but the only thing I requested was a written confirmation of all cancellation which I received 3 days later.
August 24th, 2007 at 7:27 am
160 Hours downtime. In one week.
No explanation. No apology. Hours on hold, cut off more than once. Customer service people working against each other (one rebooting, the other trying to fix). Total re-image required.
Google 1and1 review, then decide for yourself.
August 27th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
1and1 is literally the WORST service we’ve ever used. Our website constantly goes down with “internal server error 500″ and their customer support is in India led by people who know little to nothing, apologize and get nothing done, and just p*ss you off.
I think 1and1 must be the worst managed company I’ve ever seen. It’s just a nightmare to deal with them. Hopefully you read this before signing up and stay FAR AWAY!
We are in the process of switching away from them now. I’d never ever recommend them to anyone.
September 3rd, 2007 at 9:58 am
1and1 are the worst hosting company I have had the displeasure to experience. Their support is the worst I have encountered too - many of my emails were simply ignored and they don’t appear to read them properly either. Do not expect any technical help as all they do is point you towards their mediocre (yeah it is stretching it) help files.
They also have a dubious method of dealing with late payments. I was late paying a domain name registration and they locked that account (understandably as I was in error). BUT they then proceeded to lock my fully paid business package too. It took around two weeks to get myself back online and during one telephone call I was promised a refund for the time my business acount was locked. Six months later I am still emailing them to honour this refund but they are now saying they never told me that. So basically they are calling me a liar.
I finally had enough and cancelled my contract but I withheld my final payment of £10.56 due to the fact they owed me a refund. Within a few days I was sent a threatening letter that incurred an extra charge of £15.00 and was later sent further letters by their collection agency which threatened court costs going up to £150.00 or more. This was all during the time I was trying to reclaim my refund, they did not even have the decency to wait until they had finalised that matter. It doesn’t appear that the left hand knows what the right hand is doing.
So now on principle I am still trying to claim my refund, but all they do is pass me back and forth between billing and complaints and continue to send me ‘handy tips’ on how to pay my bills. It is either that or they simple ignore me altogether.
I really cannot recommend this company to anyone. Their treatment of customers is the worst I have ever encountered in any line of business. I cannot put into words the frustration I have felt with this company.
September 4th, 2007 at 12:40 pm
1and1 Internet is absolutely the worst hosting company! Failing servers, lying customer support.
Error 500 appears to be the keyword for their so-called customer services reps to flip their magic 8 ball over for some canned blame directed at their customer.
Don’t even think of hosting a website with 1and1 Internet - they suck!
September 6th, 2007 at 4:49 am
Many of you gave good reviews of 1and1 Hosting. Perhaps had not had the misfortune of talking to one their Customer Support. The language issue is one thing, many big companies use offshore contractors tech/customer help. 1and1 somehow uses those that have difficulty of understanding tech issues, and have very limited experience beyond what one can find in the FAQ (why would anyone call, if the answer is available already?).
It is very difficult to go beyond the first tier support, when it is obvious that the first tier can’t handle. Not only that “defensive” & “rude” (hung up), the customer help we would characterize. It was quite evident in a number of occasions that 1and1 had no clue of fixing problem. First always helps to call back and get different support. You would quickly find that the answer will be strikingly the opposite! Just yesterday PLESK slowed our system down to a halt; the tech took 1 hour to fix (reload) PLESK. In the process our DNS server was wiped out! Naturally none of our domains worked. Subsequent tech support advised us that they can’t help, because we “choose to use our own DNS”, but have not chosen for the tech to screw up our DNS server. This meant our system was down for than a day. It is unacceptable by any standards.
September 15th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
I have been using this company 1and1 for quite some time. They have been moving their customer service to phillipines. I wish to register my frustration with 1and1 support. A ticket was created on friday morning in which our mailboxes were locked, and I responded back immediately. Yet the mailboxes are still locked. and when I called on friday around 4 pm. the department was already close. Is this really 24×7 customer support. What am I suppoed to do now… I am at the mercy of 1and1 and its policies… We realy lost a lot of bbusiness… and due to 1and1 lousy customer support (phillipines is very irritating, coz they don’t even understand and are so limited) of 1and1 we now have unsatisfied customers…
We have been a long time 1and1 customer, and wish to bring our frustration and agonies…
We need to be heard….
September 18th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
so then what hosts would u guys recommend?
And did anyone got back their money after cancellation of their hosting account at 1and1, which they guarantee that within 90 days, we can cancel and get full fee refund.. did someone get any?
September 19th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
1and1 …
With them since two years …
There customer service is sooooooooo bad. I have a downtime of 4 days. And i have a ecom.
They are locate in philippine and speak at the phone with a sh** acent. Dont use there service.
My worst nightmare since 4 days …. 1and1 is not a good investment.
September 20th, 2007 at 5:15 am
technical service is actually good. yet, if ever one of their services goes down. there goes the problem, because it would take weeks for them to fix. even my friends in the other forums have the same experience. but so far, for me their service is OK.
September 22nd, 2007 at 1:06 am
Aks, here are the hosts that we have setup accounts and reviewed here:
http://www.clickfire.com/viewpoints/reviews/webhosts/
They all have details and ratings which should be helpful. Good luck in getting a good host!
September 23rd, 2007 at 5:31 pm
thanks emory for the link.
September 25th, 2007 at 2:14 am
This is the worst hosting company out there. Tech support is horrible. I have had a problem for six weeks now and all they can say is that there is no estimated time to fix it. When I upgraded to business, they will not give me the software code for the basic package, they would rather that I downgrade to get the codes than to give me software that I paid for.
This is a total rip off — go elsewhere!! Their customer service has no clue whatsoever, I think they are a bunch of elementary school drop outs because there is a zero comprehension level of anyone you talk with.
September 27th, 2007 at 1:57 am
i’d say cust service is terrible at all.. but their servers are good to me.
September 28th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
I set-up BankRaid a few years ago to highlight my battle with 1&1. A couple of years down the road and it all became too much too handle - and too costly as well. Too many folk ‘out there’ were writing to me asking for help. So, now I’m taking a different tack. I cannot afford to be so charitable and need some recompense for all my efforts. I’m proposing an alternative way forward. As it appears that 1&1 are virtually beyond the law, inasmuch that regulating agencies (both government and on the internet) seem reluctant to help the consumer, I thought I’d set up my own hosting company and try and attract customers - hopefully many from 1&1! Just seems that this is the only way to go. Please visit bankraid.com and see how life can be so much better!
October 26th, 2007 at 2:15 am
1&1 is great compared to other hosting company… Those irrate with 1&1 are those dull customers… 1&1 is the NUMBER ONE WEBHOSTING COMPANY as they catered worldwide. 1&1 is dealing with ****millions of customers worldwide.
Facts & figures
As the world’s largest web host, 1&1 is both profitable and completely focused on the web hosting business. We’ve been a driving force in the industry for more than a decade and are the most financially stable provider in our class.
Foundation: 1&1 was founded as a reseller of technology products, including an early online service, in 1992 by Ralph Dommermuth (now CEO of United Internet, the public parent company of 1&1, and CMO of 1&1).
Schlund + Partner, a leading web host and registrar acquired in 1998, was co-founded in 1995 by Andreas Gauger (now 1&1 Chairman of the Board) and Achim Weiss (now CTO of 1&1).
Mission: To provide an optimal Internet presence for private users and small-to-medium businesses by offering a complete range of innovative, high-quality web solutions at value prices.
Employees: Over 3,029 at 1&1
Total of 3,430 at United Internet
Technicians: Over 250 developers and administrators
Data Centers: 5 operated by 1&1, 2 owned by 1&1
Servers installed: 40,000
Connectivity: 20 Gbit external carrier class connectivity
our own backbone
Customers: 6.39 million customers on paid services
Domains: 8.80 million domain names are registered and handled by 1&1
November 2nd, 2007 at 6:34 pm
I have 1 hosted account with 1 & 1 and have registered 18 domains with them. I have used technical support 3 times and all 3 times I was helped by a friendly, albeit foreign, technical support person. For individuals seeking good value from a BIG company and all the pros and cons that come with choosing a BIG company, dont’ rule out 1 & 1.
For those seeking more personal attention and American technical support, try LinkSky Value Host. I have hosted my business website with them for 4 years and had less than 12 hours down time! Shirley and Joseph really care and they work tireless for their clients. They cost a little more, but you’ll get good service.
Good luck all.
November 6th, 2007 at 9:44 pm
I have requested to cancel my hosting with them, since i realized that their wordpress one click installation was so dated. I called and cancelled. But after one month, I checked cancel.1and1.com, it was still not finalized. then I emailed and asked why it was still not done. Then I was told it can not be cancelled and refunded. My question is if it can not be cancelled, why didn’t tell me at the beginning??? Where is that 90 day money back guarantee you stated in your website?? I did the cancellation only after a few days of the purchase. I emailed and asked those questions, then I got an email telling me to go to cancel.1and1.com to cancel. What??? Was I talking to a robot? Then i replied and repeated the whole thing. 3 days now, I have not heard a thing back from them.
I wish I can get the hosting payment back. For the domains I have registered with them, i will consider transfer to someowhere else before it expires.
I have to say their service is the worst I have ever experienced.
Stay away from their trap!!
November 10th, 2007 at 3:05 am
I woke this morning to find my account locked, I’ve been with 1&1 almost a year and have never experienced any down time so I was a bit confused as to why.
It turns out that there is an outstanding invoice which I was not made aware of. Looking at my billing overview everything seems fine and I have had no emails telling me their was a problem. I looked in the bank and the money is there so I don’t know what cocked up but I know it wasn’t me.
but here is the kicker, I phoned 1&1 to sort the problem and was told that the department which deals with unlocking 1&1 accounts is only open Monday - Fri and this being Saturday I would have to wait 48 hours to get my site back online.
NOT IMPRESSED I hung up,
after looking through my billing section again and again finding no irregularities I decided to phone back and complain. The second guy I spoke to was a little more helpful,
He also told me that I faced a possible 48 hour wait but told me that by updating my credit card details (i.e. resubmitting the exact same information) the system would automatically unlock the site in a few hours
Here’s hoping he’s right.
November 20th, 2007 at 12:06 am
They have the worst customer service experience…i would never recomend it to NOBODY. i am using a different hosting provider for 4 years and tried different other hosting providers…none compares with 1and1.com on terfible customer service.
December 19th, 2007 at 5:12 am
hey, i already said this. but i think those who are unhappy customers of 1and1 are those in MS Windows server. a friend of mine who’s using .net framework, is not happy with their service. however, me and my relatives are not having problem with our linux packages. that excluded the linux root servers because we are the one who maintained it.
the price is very low. i’m using a cgi script to check the uptime on the shared server, and it’s 105 days already.
January 20th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Same problem as others here. 1&1 will just lock your account without the slightest warning when their dumb arse credit card processing system system screws up and for whatever reason decides to not accept the same card details it has already successfully used in the past. First you thing you get to know about this is when your websites go offline and you can’t access email. Worse still, any mail sent to your mailbox is now being bounced back to the sender. Fixed by logging into admin and re-entering the same credit card details again! Locking accounts like this is a really stupid thing to do to paying customers. Don’t join 1&1 unless you want similar trouble. And if you do join, don’t expect any customer service — it doesn’t exist.
February 14th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Today my website’s is down because 1and1 internet disabled the website’s admin control panel since they failed to charge my credit card for the monthly hosting fee which is around $7.
They did that without my notice, they did not even give me email notice. Suddenly, my website is completely down and I had no idea, but I can only called 1and1 internet customer service. I made three calls and every call keep me waiting about 18 minutes. After the 3rd call (5 hours later), I checked my site and it was working eventually. I should have transferred my domain name 1 month ago if I have knowledge about php and my sql.
I hate to deal with their customer service.
Last year, when I want to cancel my VPS package, I called them and did it according to what the rep told me. But their cancellation procedure is a little complicated and tricky. Only after one month that my credit card was debited one more month’s fee did I recognize that my VPS is still active.
Actually, this is my only site which is still hosted by 1and1.com . I have transferred the other 5 websites to other hosting company since 1and1.com left me such bad bad experience.
One more thing which is worth pointing out is that 1and1 internet continually send us email so frequently and I can only delete their email every time. I don’t even read its since I know 99% of them are all spam emails. They keep bombing my email address for the whole year. I am not against company sending valuable emails to customers, what I am against is you can not send customer emails too many times.
What I am writing this about article is everybody who is considering a web hosting company should carefully research before you make your decision. Of course, I don’t recommend 1and1.com.They throw the most dollars onto the major business related magazines and they ever buy 10 pages whole page ads on one famous tech magazine. But what they deliver is the world’s worst hosting and very bad customer service. I am very curious why such a crook company can still survive in a competitive hosting marketing.
March 24th, 2008 at 4:12 am
1and1 is the best. Those dumbheaded customers are the ones who normally complain…
March 31st, 2008 at 4:00 pm
1&1 Internet Inc., the world’s largest web host by known servers, today announced the company’s 10 millionth domain registration. 1&1 not only retails some of the lowest priced domain names, but bundles each domain with a 5-page starter website and search engine submission – and so provides a professional-quality web presence for only a few dollars. 1&1 also revealed today a survey of 1,025 U.S. consumers , commissioned by 1&1, which found Americans in 2008 to be surprisingly confident in being able to build a website themselves (1). Almost 1 in 4 (22 percent) believed they could build a good website in less than 3 hours, with the average consumer believing they could successfully complete the task in less than 3 days.
In less than 3 years, 1&1 has doubled the number of domains it has registered to 10 million. 1&1 has a broad 50/50 consumer and business user base. In the past year alone, the number of 1&1 registered domains in the U.S. has increased by 46 percent. The company also saw a further 35 percent increase in .us domain registrations made over the past 12 months. 1&1’s product features have been a key driver in its popularity.
Andreas Gauger, Chairman of the Board, 1&1 Internet Inc., said, “We have seen pleasing growth in our domain registrations worldwide. Consumers nowadays require more than a raw solution at a low price. 1&1 products deliver a quick and effective web presence and our domains are no exception. We see a direct link between our rapid domain growth and our unique domain features. We will continue to add to our domains and make it even easier to launch online.”
Interestingly, 1&1’s research reveals notable consumer confidence surrounding today’s web hosting packages. With the right tools to hand, consumers appear keen to take on the task of creating a website, whether for a business project or personal publishing. An impressive 1 in 4 consumers polled believed that they could create a good quality website themselves, using a web hosting package, within 3 hours.
In line with the uptake of 1&1’s domain name features, the consumers questioned placed a high value on ‘easy-to-use web building tools,’ with 75 percent rating this to be the most important factor when choosing a web host.
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See? Those people who are unsatisfied with 1&1 are just .000000000000000000001 of the whole. 1&1 wouldn’t reach this far if not for their excellent service.
Majority of the posts here are billing related issues.
Don’t blame 1&1 for your financial problems.
April 26th, 2008 at 5:05 am
Gee, Unregistered — you smell like astroturf.
Right now their HTTP proxy for Exchange, as well as their OWA portal is down. It’s been down for my entire team all day. This is a geographically disparate group of people all working remotely and it’s not to be blamed collectively on routing issues. Not only is it down for the count, this is not an isolated incident.
They have multiple ways of trying to access their hosted Exchange service and some days one way is more ‘right’ than others that suddenly flake out. They’ve lost our goddamn email archive for a week already and told us ‘Whoops, our bad!’. Our clients certainly didn’t really understand or appreciate that we had to check back details with them since we were relying on 1&1 at the time.
Those days are over, we’ve all migrated to a colocated Server 2003 setup where I can directly manage Exchange via RDC. I’ll take the hassle of having to do the lifting if it means it @#%& works.
Good try, astroturf. Good try.
May 8th, 2008 at 11:04 am
1and1.com is a s*** company, I’ve had my website down for day because of 1and1’s crappy service. I’ve had 20 domain names with them at one time, i’m moving them all over to hostforweb.com. I’m still in the middle of trying to move my domains. If you use 1&1.com you will be screwed, they will cost you a lot of money and even more time.
Vaun Norwood, UglyKittyMedia.com