1&1.com Opinions Please??!!

I used them for years, very good all round service.

I cannot give you first hand experience, but my colleague ended up leaving them for Hostgator. He was disappointed by customer service.

Bobby

I've heard many more bad reviews/stories about them than good ones.

I do not use them myself but I have had a few of my offline clients that use them. My personal experience in dealing with the customer service wasn't excellent...average at best..... my clients were not happy at all with them. The website builder is a pain at times... I've had 2 clients switch from 1&1 to hostgator after they themselves dealt with the customer service.

Ken

HHMMMM..more cons then pros so far. I thought the website builder and options looked pretty interesting but it sounds like its not that great. Maybe Wordpress is the better CMS site builder then?

I purchased some domain names though then and really wish I had not just becuase of some pain they have been with little things.

I purchase most of my domain names there. In fact I just purchased one a few minutes ago. I like it because it lets you register the domain name privately without any extra fees. I remember having to pay an extra fee to register privately at GoDaddy if I am not mistaken.

Cannot speak about the website builder though as I host my sites on Bluehost and just do domain name purchases at 1and1.

I have Windows and Unix accounts with them. Their price is right if you do not need their help. However, if you need their help then you might not be very impressed with their customer service. Their replies are very short and sometime you have to ask them what exactly do they mean. I do not like their cron jobs in their Unix package. You will have to create cron jobs through shell. It is a pain and I have never done it. I host only those sites on there server which does not require cron job.
regards
Zm

I recommend using a web host who offers cpanel/fantastico control panels. They don't.


Andrew

I love 1and1.com - I prefer their backend system to cpanel

Had a few support calls in and always had great "above and beyond" customer support as well

I am in the process of moving my sites away from 1&1. Their customer service is not fantastic, not terrible, but there is better. Also, the lack of cpanel just makes everything harder. Also, i have noticed that they are a bit more vulnerable to hacks.

I can't give u really any details on their site builder or anything like that but I can give you my opinion on their hosting. Got setup with them back in February of this year. My old host was horribly unreliable and was complete and utter, well, you know what.

I got my sites transferred over with no issue and currently I actively run two blogs (running on Wordpress, also see note about what dorothydot said below), the sites in my signature. Their service and uptime is great (have the shared developer package) and only ran into two issues since I've been with them about 9 months. They were both issues with the MYSQL server and not processing requests. With a blog, it's not going to load in that situation.

Both times I called them up and their customer service was great to me. One of the occasions it was kinda hard to understand the guy, he had a very deep indian accent, but the two times I spoke with customer service, they spent about 30 seconds to find the problem, let me know what the problem was, and then shortly thereafter my sites were back up and running.

Below, I've posted a screenshot I took of a uptime monitoring service I use for my personal site. It's been in place since February (since I switched to 1&1) and these are the averages over that period. Not bad eh?



NOTE: Not sure what dorothydot is talking about them not being able to handle Wordpress since I've been running that platform for both blogs since February. Maybe she's talking about what some hosts have such as an automatic setup for Wordpress. I've always setup it up myself anyways.

In all honesty, your probably best going with a CMS such as Wordpress instead of setting up your own website through any website builder. There's just so many more options and if you know the right plugins, it can make your site load way faster and add other functionality. Plus, there's such a slew of themes out there (my favorites are Woothemes), you're sure to find something that you'll love.

Anyways, I wouldn't be writing this if I didn't firmly believe in the web host. Guess I've just been really ecstatic from coming from my previous hell of a host. One thing that really got me to switch to 1&1 was the fact that they also had a 90 day money back guarantee. Can't beat that with a stick!

Hope that helps!

I use a private host now but I can say 1&1 were... OK... nothing amazing... average support when I was with them...

On the other if you just want to register a domain name with them I'm sure they'd be great... I'd recommend NameCheap though!

Josiah

Lots of great advise. I think i will download WP this weekend and give it a go on host gator. Also though im checking out typepad and it looks pretty cool to. does cost money but they have some really cool widgets. decisions, decisions lol

I would suggest checking out some other providers before 1&1.

I've been with oneandone for ages and I thought the service was good but now I'm considering switching. The only real problems I've had is only being able to acquire one ssl certificate for a single domain on my hosting account where I have all of my domains and its not possible to access a mysql server outside of 1and1's own hosting.

I have a client that was using 1and1 and having major problems. We moved him to our machine and 1and1 even managed to screw that up. I wouldn't recommend them. The website for the client we just moved now does not show up on the internet because the 1and1 nameservers will not resolve correctly. run, don't walk. That's my $.02.

I've used both their dedicated and shared hosting account and have purchased domains with them.

I can not recommend their dedicated server offering. my server blew a hard drive and it took them over 72 hours to address. Tech support could barely understand English and I basically lost all my hosting customers. This happened in the 13th month of my engagement with them. This is my fault, but I had thought I was month to month with them at that time - but the really fine print in my contract said my contract would renew automatically for another year if I did nothing. So I had to pay a fee to break my contract with them. You need to be careful with this auto renewing option. My original batch of domains are like this so they autorenew each year although I don't really use them any more. I'm letting them age now to sell them later - but changing them from auto to yearly is a bit of a pain. Buyer beware for dedicated servers!

Now, having said that - I kept my share hosting account and now run several sites there. I've had no problems in 2 years on shared hosting. The few times I have called support they've been very helpful and courteous. Strange to me since my dedicated server had to be more profitable for them than my shared account. I'm pretty happy with the shared hosting.

When I get back into hosting I'll probably go with Hostgator or another dedicated server - obviously not at 1and1.

good luck,
--Jack

I only use them for Free Privacy with Domain Names.

I use Hostgator and LiquidWeb for hosting exclusively.

1&1 come on ... they ripped off a lot of people in the past and sent everyone to collections for a debt no one knew they had. These guys quickly sold the debts to a collection agency and made off like bandits.

I had some grease ball call my house threatening me... WTF... this was the first time I had a collection agency call my house. Before that I wasn't even aware of the debt. The dude on the other end of the phone told me to chalk it up to an inexpensive lesson learned.

People talk tough on the phone... I wish he were standing right in front of me now that would have put a smile on my face.

It happened to a lot of other people (probably thousands if not more considering the offer they ran at the time)...

Mike Hill