1and1 Review
1and1 Overview
Headquartered in Montabaur, Germany, since 1988, 1&1 has been one of the largest hosting providers with more than 19 million global sites served. Their huge business is powered by over 10 support ceners in multiple continents with over 7000 staffs. 1and1 is known as super cheap hosting service and domain with a wide range of Web hosting solutions. 1&1 offers users every available resource to easily and affordably create and maintain an optimal Web presence.
1and1 Review – Hosting Features
1&1 provides a wide range hosting solutions from shared to cloud platforms. Each level service are divided into multiple grades with different features. For most users, they will need to spend some time to understand the structures and choose the service they need. Briefly, the 1and1 hosting service are provided in following categories:
Domain registration: 1&1 is one of the very first ICANN certified domain registrar with a bunch of available domain extensions to select from. 1&1 is probably offering the cheapest domain registration service starts at $0.99/year for top extensions like .com and .net
Web Hosting: There're 3 classes windows & 4 linux hosting plans being offered on shared server environment. Disk space and monthly traffic are all provided for unlimited. Main difference between hosting plans are CDN support, number of databases, FREE ssl & dedicated IP. Each plan provides a free domain registration. General features including:
- Free domain registration
- Free sitebuilder
- 24×7 technical support
- Price from $0.99/mo!
- 90 day money back guarantee!
Managed Hosting: A server service with no server management. Your site is hosted on dedicated platform and fully isolated from other clients. It's ideal choice for people who have limited time or skills in managing a server, everything is handled by 1&1 tech team and we just focus on business.
Website builder: A seperate service aside from web hosting. No programming or design skill required, this drag/drop sitebuilder automatically optimize the site to be compatible on different devices. This plan provides a free domain name with up to 30 days free trial.
VPS Hosting: Total of 4 class plans, the virtual server is configured at very powerful setup & good prices. Each server has Plesk installed for professional management at low cost. The purpose of 1and1 vps service is to make sure everybody is capable of paying for server management.
Dedicated Server: A bunch of solutions for different management purpose. The 1&1 dedicated servers are configured for basic to advanced structures at very promotional prices. Client get mobile monitoring of server performance and troubleshooting tools when server got into problems.
Cloud Server Hosting: Fully custom setup based your exact requirement. Pay as you use and up to 6 months file storage under "sleep mode" when server is not in use. The biggest advantage of 1and1 cloud platform is their huge data center service on multiple locations. They have full management over such equipment for real hardware solution other than simple virtualization.
1and1 Review – Control panel
1and1 use inhouse developped hosting control panel other than popular choice of available solutions. The control panel concept is based central control of all services so we can manage all stuff via a single login. We can also manage service upgrade directly in control panel center but not to contact support seperately. The system will handle the request automatically. There's a feature called "messaging" – SMS as Fax, Fax as EMail, EMail as voice message, in this way we can manage business in modern style for less costs.
1and1 Review – Performance & Support
1and1 Manages total of 4 different datacenters with over 70,000 servers, 1and1 announced to provide 99.9% server uptime with 24×7 technical support and unlimited email support. Their support staff are all over the world and working around the clock. In this way, they have sufficient technician at any time point to make sure your requests are handled efficiently.
Being a hosting company with long history, 1and1 collect great experience in managing their service well and how to low down the service costs while keeping or improving its quality. The monitoring report shows the 1and1 server uptime and connectivity is between 97~98.5% which is pretty fair based their price.
What might go wrong with 1and1 hosting?
We analized 150 complaints and concluded following points:
Lack of support
Although they manage a huge support team and running 24*7, sometimes it's hard to get updates on problem solving. It's reasonable for their huge business but they can definitely do better.
High cancellation fee
1and1 offers up to 5 free domain names registration and considered a big spotlight with their service. However, if you have taken the domains in account and want to transfer to somewhere else, they will charge you pretty high registration fees plus account setup fees. The overal fee amount is even higher than initial payment.
Plan Confusion
Navigation among hosting plans are not so direct and many people signed wrong service than expected. For example, we need to host sql server database but we signed linux service because the layouts are exactly the same.
How do we think about 1and1 Hosting?
Being one of the largest hosting provider, 1and1 definitely doing something great such as their super cheap domain service. Whil we get it at $0.99/year, it costs ten times more from every other registrars even on promotional offer. Especially when they proud to offer super cheap hosting service with free domain included, we can not get this offer from other hosting providers. There might be some issues from client end, but it's absolutely common for its huge business. If we have very tight budget in hosting investment, 1and1 is simply the one you can trust mostly.
Check out 1and1 cheap hosting offer on www.1And1.com
