The worst web hosting company in the world!

This is the worst company I have ever had the displeasure to work with. Their customer support people lack any knowledge, They are rude and they will steal from your credit card. They refuse to cancel services in a timely manner. My web site was down the whole thankgiving weekend after I contacted them the tuesday prior to thanksgiving. It cost me in exceess of $15,000.00 If this was the last hosting company in the world I would form my own company and learn how to host web sites just so I would not have to deal with them. If I could give them a minus rating I would. Avoid this company at all costs!

Worst Tech Support Ever

I relied on tech support to help me set up my e-shop. This process was very frustrating as I was put on hold repeatedly for long periods while the person I spoke with relayed my questions to someone else and then relayed the answers to me. I followed there instructions exactly and today I got my first sale payed for with a credit card outside of pay pal. The order shows as paid on my order page and my customer says they have payment conformation but I don't have the money! I called tech support and asked where the payment went and no one knows the just keep telling me to add pay pal as a payment method, I already have pay pal as a payment method. Dealing with 1 and 1 is the worst experiance I have ever had online.

Biggest Pro: None
Biggest Con: Overseas tech support

Avoid 1&1 like the Plague

I registered a domain name with them on Monday. I get an email from them right away telling me the name will be available in 24 hours. 48 hours later, my domain name is still "waiting for approval" in their control panel and impossible for me to configure DNS settings(I plan to host domain name with another company). I contacted them twice and both times their response time was great, except they route you to a CSR in India that means well but is absolutely no help at all. I just got off the phone with them and they asked for 12 more hours to sit and wait to see what happens. I have NEVER in my career heard of a domain registration taking 60 hours to propagate! They suck, stay away from them and go with someone else instead. Really, save yourself the frustration from dealing with total incompetence.

Biggest Con: They Lie

HORRIBLE. Downtime King is all I can say.

Downtime King. My business package goes down every other week, I already have these guy's phone number on speed dial because I have to call so often regarding down time. Absolutely horrible customer service and its unacceptable.

Biggest Pro: NONE
Biggest Con: Downtime every other week.

A Quadriplegic Company

24/7 Tech support is only able to make changes as long as the 9-5 department is open. Our account was locked because we sent out an email blast to our company subscribers, something very common to companies today. It was locked for email abuse. We called tech support to have it unlocked and were referred to the abuse department which was closed. They say to respond to the email notifications they sent us, but WOW! ... we can't get to our emails because OUR ACCOUNT WAS LOCKED! So now our website is down until tomorrow and we can't sell tickets to the event that we're hosting. Thanks 1and1, for being there when we need you most!

Biggest Con: Tech Support

Just horrible

This is the worst hosting service. I had an account with them and it is the worst customer service, the platform is slow, lack of support, etc. I also have an account with other host service and I can appreciate the difference. This is the last time in my life that I will use 1and1. They also charge you without notices and their personnel are rude and unprofessional. They went down to often and it is simple horrible.

Avoid them.

Biggest Pro: None
Biggest Con: Customer service

Terrible Security, Admin response extremely slow.

Start off to say that for a few years I used 1and1 with no problems at all. I had a few mickey mouse sites, nothing big. Not until I started actually building some sites did I notice that there was a HUGE security hole in their system. Safe_mode is off by default, you can see the entire shared server root with the upload of a single .php file uploaded to any directory anywhere. Regardless the chmod permissions on the folder, as long as the .php file is there you can see everything.. and I mean EVERYTHING! You can upload anywhere to that particular shared servers folder. Not only that but a we other holes. I emailed the admin but they have not gotten back to me in days. Even left it up for them to see. Hackers uploaded a linux trojan to their server, the webadmin.php file I was referring to, plus a canadian bank phishing page to my site!! My sites have basically been down a week while I have been switching. Now it even gets better! My 5 domains I had hosted and registered with them I transferred to another place and now they are locked!! Still waiting for them to get this resolved while I lose money everyday. Long story short if you are just doing some little site and you want a pretty good deal, look somewhere else :) If you have a good site then dont even think about it!

Biggest Pro: Decent hosting company for average websites.
Biggest Con: safe_mode is off, you are able to view the directory list of the other shared servers. Highly UNSAFE! I WAS HACKED SEVERAL TI

Keep your 'Cancel Service' confirmations

I signed up for the service enjoyed the features and low cost.

However, I no longer needed the website and so I cancelled it. i chose the option for keeping the website on until my contract expired.

After that period, 1and1 tried to bill me again, claiming that I did not unsubsribe for their service. They did not acknowledge my confirmation of cancellation number and sent me to collections (which I fought and won)

I do not recommend their service to anyone, unless you like dealing with bill collectors for fraudualent claims.

Wake

Biggest Pro: Good features // good uptime
Biggest Con: Lack of respect. Lack of intergrity when cancelling services

Customer No Service is their plan

We have an account with 1&1. for the first 2 1/2 years there were no problems. The past 1 1/2 years have been a bad experience. The support staff is in the Philipenes and they are pretty friendly but the sales staff in Chesterbrook, PA is rude and only reads from a script. If the sales people in my organization acted so irritating and discourteous, I'd hire a bull dozer and level that end of our building. My experience each time I've had problems (6 times this year alone) has made my blood pressure rise and set a bad tone for my whole day. These guys are the example of terrible customer service. I'm changing my host as soon as I can.

Biggest Pro: Big Company
Biggest Con: Anti Customer Service Tactics

A review of 1&1's shared Linux hosting

When I first started using 1&1 I found their custom control panel very easy to use, and in the subsequent years have found it meets almost all my needs. It is very intuitive, user-friendly and self-explanatory. It also has plenty of extra features that less technical website owners can drop into their sites. Its faults? Can be slow at times, and the statistics section takes more patience than it should. For example, you can't pick a domain, select number of unique visits per month, then click "Go"; instead you have to click unique visits and wait for a page to load, then select a domain and wait for a page to load, then select monthly and wait for a page to load. I have stopped using it in favour of Google Analytics. But that is two small faults in a brilliant control panel that beats the hell out of cPanel.

In total I have used 1&1 for about 5 years, and never once have I seen one of my sites unavailable or received a report of one being unavailable. That is impressive.

The one major fault I have found is customer service. On two occasions I have had cause to contact their call centre. Once for a billing issue, once for a technical issue. On both occasions I had long waits on the phone followed by conversations with people who had low levels of knowledge. Both customer service experiences turned into nightmares that I found hard to resolve. Both these issues arose over 2 years ago, and I haven't had cause to contact them since they were resolved. However, I have had cause to contact them by email, and the response has been prompt, full and helpful more recently (within the past year).

On price, their domains and hosting are reasonable, and they occasionally have good offers e.g. free .com for a year. Certainly not the cheapest, but good value.

Overall, a good host when things are going well, but if something goes wrong, it can be very frustrating.

Biggest Pro: control panel
Biggest Con: customer service