1and1 Review

1and1 started its business in 1988. As one of the first web hosts in the world, 1and1 now is having over 12 million customers, and managing about 18 million domains.

1and1 offer a wide range of services to help people setup a web site, which include Domain registration, shared hosting, VPS hosting, Cloud hosting, Dedicated Server Hosting, eMail service, Internet Marketing and etc. But the most notable services from 1and1 are their domain registration service and dedicated server. 1and1 domain registration fee is one of the cheapest one you can find in the industry (never higher than GoDaddy). And its dedicated server comes with very rich features at very low price.

For the other service like Shared Hosting, VPS hosting, and Cloud hosting. 1and1 used to be cost-effective, but quite many web hosts offer 50% off to their service now (such as Bluehost), which makes those 1and1 services relatively expensive.

1and1 Review on Features

1and1 provides good features in all its hosting package. For example, in its shared hosting, people will get unlimited bandwidth, free domain, MySQL, PHP and free Plesk control panel. But compared with some other well-known web hosts, there are still quite some gaps 1and1 need to fill.

Let’s take 1and1 Starter plan as an example, the price is at $4.95/month, but no free domain is include, shell access is not allowed, and people could only be provided with limited disk space, Email account, MySQL, and FTP accounts. And from Bluehost, its price is low to $3.95/month only, and people could receive much more features.

1and1 Speed and Uptime Review

Now, 1and1 is managing over 40,000 servers. Their data centers are located in Kansas, which are equipped with 60 Gbit connectivity and high redundant capacity, capable of routing thousands of Tbytes of traffic per month without any data jams. 1and1 guarantees 99.9% uptime.

In terms of 1and1 server speed. In our testing, we do see some performance issues on their shared hosting and VPS hosting, especially for those MySQL operation tensive applications, such as WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla. The servers become very slow when data grows. But its dedicated servers looks very promising, and could handle high traffic web site quickly without any problem.

In general, we feel 1and1 either oversells its shared hosting and VPS too much, or its MySQL server is not well-optimized which cause performance issue to those applications which interact database frequently.

1and1 Review on Customer Support

1and1 provides customers with 24/7 customer support via toll-free phone call, E-mail, and online knowledge base.

According to our experience with 1and1, it’s hard for us to praise its customer support. For the dedicated server account, the email normally could be replied within 2 hours. But for shared hosting, or VPS hosting, we have to wait at least 8 hours to receive a response. For toll-free phone call, we could be connected very quickly (this is good), but looks like their engineers has no willing to answer any question related to the hosting issues related to applications ( such as WordPress, Drupal). They normally request you to figure out what the problem, and then tell them what change they need to made on the server.

Out last experience with 1and1 is really very bad. We call in to cancel the account (they don’t allow for dedicated server account cancellation via online form), and the phone call were transferred for 3 times, and over 30 minutes waiting in the last transfer. This is terrible. Thanks god, 1and1 hasn’t make more barriers to cancel the account.

So, when using 1and1 hosting service, please don’t expect a good service. You should have good server knowledge to handle issues by yourselves.

1and1 Review on Ease-of-Use

1and1 offers its customers with Plesk control panel, an easy-to-use control panel, to manage the file, database, email, and server configuration. It also includes some SEO tools, or 1-click installation tools to help its customer setup web site and promote the site easily.

1and1 Pricing

1and1 gives people an impression of “Cheap”, but according to our data, 1and1 only offers good value on domain registration and dedicated server. In terms of its shared hosting, VPS hosting, and Cloud hosting, they are far more expensive than some other professional and businesses hosting packages.

For example, below is the quick comparison within 1and1 and Bluehost shared hosting package. You could clearly see than “1and1 Unlimited” offer less features than Bluehost, but its price is over 75% more expensive than Bluehost.

For its dedicated server, the price is at $59.99 only, and include 2*2.2 cores, 2GB memory, and 250GB disk space, which is really a high price value package we would like to recommend.

1and1 accepts credit card and Paypal, and it guarantees 90 days money back.

Is 1and1 Recommended?

In general, we would like to recommend 1and1 domain registration service and dedicated server. For shared hosting, you could check out the list of Best Linux Hosting, Best Windows Hosting, Best VPS Hosting and Best Cloud Hosting, from which you could find much better product at even lower price.

To know more about 1and1, please visit its website www.1and1.com.