1and1.com Sucks! 1 and 1? Says who?!?!
I came across another rant about 1and1 the other day and thought I’d post something I’d sent off to Michael ages ago. It sums up my thoughts on the subject completely and required very little editing…
1and1.com has labeled themselves “The worlds No. 1 web host [by the number of sites hosted]”. So they are a big target. It is true that they do not hold your hand, but that’s not what I am concerned about. I don’t care if they have crappy extras, in fact the more extras they add, the more stuff I’m paying for that I won’t ever use. What I care about is that they are willing to give you the access rights to add more to your shared server. Right now the ONLY things that I haven’t been able to do with my 1and1 account involve port access. And that simply isn’t possible with a shared server.
You will always find complaints about a company. Sometime they are valid. For 1and1.com, the complaints seem to come from the less technical users who looked for help. I agree that 1and1 isn’t great about explaining how to do new stuff. Three years ago, I was in the same situation, learning… but that’s what is great about the internet, there are many many resources available. That can help you through the rough spots if you’re patient and willing to work on it… I find that hosting at 1and1.com and searching Google works well for me and I’ve had my now account for three years plus.
Dreamhost* has the best help system out there, AFAIK, but their best service plan is $79.99. Through accepting an advertised upgrade deal for existing 1and1 customers, I have way more resources available and pay only ~12% of what a DreamHost customer is paying. I’m getting more resources for my money. I realized the other day that my 1and1 account has space available than what I’ve partitioned my Windows partitions to and that includes the partition I’ve set aside for multimedia. I’ll take my $839 dollars a year savings thank you very much.
*Update – Since the initial writing of this email, DreamHost has radicaly increase their available space available and resources. The prices are now comparable to what I get from 1and1.com. There are trade offs, but by stats alone they basically even out until you look at the extra charges DreamHost has. DreamHost charges a $50 setup fee (It’s like charging an extra $4.16 per month for the first year) and has 100% higher domain registration fees.
I should leave this out and follow the “If you want comments, leave holes in your posts to allow people to reply.” But I know some WILL say “YEAH – but have you ever tried to cancel a service from them?”. Sure, I’ll address that and then THAT you can reply to. EVERY post I’ve seen about this subject has been from someone who’s filled out a form to cancel the service and then not checked on it until 6 months after the fact when they receive the next bill. I’m sorry but if something is important to you, you, yourself, ensure that it is done.
People would have had no problem if they’d:
1. Ensured that the cancel was on record the week before it was due to happen
2. Ensured that the cancel a week later that the cancel took place
3. Ensuring that the 1and1 representatives made notes on their accounts recording each call.
4. Recorded the name/number date and time of each phone call.
1and1 will retroactively refund if you can prove your case. I’ve read about that happening too. I don’t anticipate a problem if and when I cancel. And I CERTAINLY more willing to work toward cancelling a service if it means that I never have to worry about a site I have worked to build isn’t sniped out from underneath me. 1and1’s process doesn’t let that happen and I never have to worry about paying some scoundrel/thief/blackmailer $800 just to get back what is already rightfully mine.
Support is something I know about. I know what an effort is involved for our office to provide the best tech support in our industry. We’ve spent years learning what works and what does not. Mistakes have happened and we’ve learned from each one. When I make a call to any company, a call that matters to me, I’m going to do my best to make that representative take the steps needed to provide me with a good technical support, whether they are trained to do so or not.
Likewise, I realize that we will have customers that we cannot help for whatever reason. I also know that those customers are likely to complain, as loudly as they can, that we have the absolute worst tech support of anybody in the world. All that matters to them is that we could not help them, whether it was an issue on their side or if we did make a mistake. So, I naturally question the most inflammatory posts I read. Mistakes do happen, but all in all it is in the company’s best interest to provide good support. That’s true for where I work and has to be true for 1and1.
Anyway, that’s my take on it.
I guess some people need more help than others (link)…
UPDATE: Oh, look. Here’s another generic “1and1.com Internet Web Hosting Sucks”
article (link) from an SEO guy…
“They are by far the worst hosting company.”
Ummm… He doesn’t mention a single word about their hosting. So, I’ll ignore this part…
“They make it impossible cancel and account, “
OK, he’s upset. Obvioulsy, he’s gonna have some thick thumbs…
“and if you don’t do it correctly they will keep billing you.”
WAIT? WHAT? If you don’t actually cancel the account, the continue to provide you with service? AND they expect to be paid for that?????
No!!!!!
“Think you’ll be ok when your credit card expires don’t worry they will keep billing you and eventually refer you to collections.”
So, he ignored the problem and assumed a business that he had an relationship would simply say “Oh, I don’t care about that money. It doesn’t matter that much. It’s only bad debt. Why collect on that?”
Why in the world would someone be surprised that they would collect upon what they see as a valid debt? Of course it is going to go into their “collections” department and you’ll be sent scary letters! That is evidence that the company is well managed and not that is evil. Just because you don’t feel it is important to follow up where your money goes, you should not assume someone else will be equally lax about where “their” money is.
When you call to speak to a supervisor and tell them to cancel an account you aren’t using anymore and is in collections, they still won’t cancel it.
OK. He had problems with the first cancellation. Don’t you think it would make sense to call and receive confirmation that the account was cancelled successfully? If he did that, I see no evidence of it. I do see that he admits to making a mistake in initial cancelling process. I’d guess that he never verified the cancellation that time either. Obviously, there was a mistake here and 1and1 should have canceled the account, and billed him for only the service up to the day of this “second” cancellation. Hmmm perhaps that’s what they did. It is not clear if the continued debt is the full amount due for that period.
They will however keep sending you an email to an address that no longer is in existence and refer you to their online web form.
So, he didn’t even continue update them with his correct contact information until the situation was finalized??? After all why should he care that they be able to reach him? Maybe he is just to frustrated to type all the details in this article but wait, he can clearly think of all possible search term for his post: (parenthetics mine)
1 & 1 Web Hosting Sucks (um not)
1 & 1 Hosting provider sucks (HA!)
1 & 1 Hosting Sucks (Oh really?)
1&1 Internet Web Hosting Sucks (says who?)
1&1.com sucks (Did you try to protect your money?)
1&1 Control Panel Sucks (HORRAY for those that build their own!)
1&1 Internet Inc FAQ SUCKS (Not really)
1&1 Hosting Reviews (but he never reviewed their services)
Reviews of 1&1 (He still doesn’t offer a review)
From here on he just copy and pastes… yeesh… That’s enough for me…
I think I’ll spend 4.95 to get a domain and then cancel it before the year is out… It would be worth $5 just for the experience… I should make it something like “Wonderful1and1.com” so that people won’t say the name made them cancel it. Hmmm Not a bad idea….
UPDATE: Here’s a nice review of 1and1 (link):
The 1 and 1 services offered to the small and medium enterprise are impressive. Their strength is their excellent value for money, in offering a very large array of services and features with their web hosting products for an extremely low monthly charge.
The 1 and 1 homepage is attractive and is set up to give clear information about their products and services and what they offer. There is a graphic showing very clearly the extras to be had for each package, helping reveal what stands out. This is definitely a plus in deciding which package to choose. The company track record is also clearly stated with financial summaries, and is rock solid.
You have been hacked! or What not to do with your 1and1 account…
How not to query a Quake, Halflife, RtCW, FarCry game server status via PHP…
How to run PHP5 on 1and1.com in 1 easy step…
About Author
Bingo and bullseye. After 2 days surfing the Net and the blogosphere before making my own decisions about what to keep/move/add or do and don’t do at 1&1 I completely agree with your bottom line. I have been a satisfied customer for over 3 years. They always did what they said, and the few times I needed help with things like Front Page extensions, the help was very helpful (and free to me). Most of the complaints I found seemed to be from people who did not read the fine print or follow the steps and then wanted to blame the provider.
The other thing that has become obvious to me (and I wish someone would summarize well all in one place for the non-techies) is that every type of service provider has its “sweet spot.” If you want shared hosting on a CPU that can handle spikes in traffic, then don’t try to do it on 1&1 or the other mass-market providers who cater to the untutored expecting them to have simple needs, like static pages. Or if you do, don’t expect first class catering in the budget class seats.
What seems true to me is that every kind of provider has its “sweet spots” and you need to do the research to find the best in breed for your particular needs. Or you need to do what I will probably do, i.e. quit hoping to find it all at a price I like all in one place. I see myself most likely to keep my static (Front Page) sites on 1&1 where they excel at that, but if I start a blog with WordPress or a forum with VBulletin, then I would be looking hard at a source such as Media Temple.
I will also henceforth be checking the blogosphere tags first instead of last!
Anway, thanks for the concise clarity. Good job!
I’ve also been happy with their hosting. Never had a problem. 🙂
Hello Brian,
I have a 1and1 account and i don’t like it for some obvious reasons. I am not going to bother you about cancellation problems with 1and1. I will cross that bridge when i get there. And looking by the way things are moving, i will be there sooner than latter.
I don’t know about you, but i do ASP.NET applications and natuarally, got a MS Business package with them. Every thing about 1and1 was fine (Good speed, Okay Control panel, good FAQ etc), until i was about to host multiple ASP.NET application.
They don’t let you map your domain to a direct folder access. I know it is not easy to explain this in one sentense. So be patient with what i am to say below..
Domain Name : xyz .com
path: . \ xyzapp\
file : default.aspx
Traditionally you map a domain to its physical path.
I do the same here. xyz .com is mapped to .\xyzapp . I also mapped http://www.xyz.com tp same folder too. Ohh i made the xyzapp folder as application folder.
Now i type http://www.xyz.com/default.aspx , i get a page not found error.
What happened is, they don’t let domain map to a folder, instead i have to map to root and write a redirection page to my destination folder and files.
What does this do to my link, it changes to http://www.xyz.com/xyzapp/default.aspx .
I dont like this and so are my clients. The want to see http://www.xyz.com/default.aspx
This works fine, if the page is a static page, ex index.html or default.html.
Now my question to you is, if you are a .net programmer, have a found a way around this. Please note, i dont want Frame Forwarding. I hate that in my guts.
I am now considering moving to godaddy.com, which provides 2 MSSQL dbs and 25 MySql DBs. And they do allow me true domain to folder map.
Feature i like in 1and1
25 FTP accounts
Humongous Transfer Bandwidth
Web Space
Chat tool
etc
But all this is a waste, if i cannot have a clean web address on the address bar.
I wont say 1and1 Sucks, but it just made me unhappy.
Please help, before i get to that BRIDGE i was talking about : )
PS: i am Suresh, and i am a .NET programer, and i am looking for Programmer friends to share knowledge and resource.
Thank you.
> they don’t let domain map to a folder, instead i have to map to root and write a
> redirection page to my destination folder and files.
Suresh, I do not have their Windows package, but I would be absolutely SHOCKED if that’s the case. That’s not how it works on the Linux side. I’ve got dozens of domains and subdomains running out of my 1and1.com account and pretty much of them are running out of subdirectories or doing things even more complicated. Some subdomains don’t even connect to 1and1 even though the domains do.
If you have the 1and1 control panel, go to the domains page, click the check box for one (ONLY ONE) of your domains and then click the destination button. Once that is done, click the edit button on the next screen. then put in your path. If you only have a dozen or two directories, you can chose it from the list box. When you get more, you have to type it in. The paths are relative to your htdocs directory or equiv.
Maybe this screen shot will help: http://www.thecodecave.com/images/1and1_domains.png
Additionally, I’m sure there’s an equivelent to .htaccess that might also provide a solution for you…
Hi Brian,
I am not very sure about the .htaccess config file (By the way , i just read about in google search, i am no PHP coder). There is an equivalent concept in .NET, where we use web.config files to configure and set web directives. But i an not aware of anything that can handle domain to folder mapping.
Here is one of my sample site where the entire path of the folder is showing on the address bar.
http://www.onlinetharagar.com/
There is a index.html file which does a meta redirect to /olt/landing.aspx page. Infact the index.html opens fine and is the default page, but as it tries to open the landing.aspx, it cannot see it. That is because 1 and 1 does a weird way of configuring static page as against script pages. Honestly i dont know how better to explain this to you on a comment section like here. No pun intended.
I would really appreciate some help.. call me 817-791-6365 and i can explain this better to you.
P.S> 1 and 1 themselves agree that there is no way to point a domain to a folder other than root folder or try using a frame forwarding. I think that is dumb.
The thing is, that this is actually a Windows / ASP.NET limitation.
Well if “Dang” is right, then that’s where you need to look for a solution.
For example will this help:
http://www.w3coder.com/alphatalks/v2urlmap.aspx
I don’t really want that much from 1and1, so I guess that makes me one of those newbies. This is the first intelligent conversation and pro-1and1 rhetoric I have read in the last week, AFTER I purchased the domain.
Can you answer these questions?
1)Is there any way the frame forwarding will work in conjunction with a Feedburner feed? If I try to run feedburner through the domain to get at my xml file instead of directly at my host, it passes through that redirect page and feedburner gets royally confused, saying that is not a valid tag. Summary: 1and1 cannot look directly at my XML document.
2)Is there any way I can put images into my webpages without making their actual real file paths visible in the source code or right clickable properties?
3)Lastly, is 1and1 not the service for me? Should I be looking elsewhere? I just want to provide an anonymous domain face for my podcast that is hosted elsewhere.
Thanks gang
I don’t really demand that much from 1and1 but I’ve still hit the wall. Guess that makes me a newbie. This is the first intelligent and pro-1and1 rhetoric I’ve read in the last few days AFTER I purchased the domain
With regard to domain name forwarding through frames:
1)Is it impossible to have feedburner look at my XML document hosted elsewhere when passing through the domain? I give feedburner my XML file URL through the domain and it gets hung up on the redirect document running behind the scenes at 1and1, saying is an invalid tag.
2)Can I put IMG SRC tags into my webpage without putting in the actual location of the files?
3)If I’m asking for too much, do you guys think I should bail and go to a new service? I simply want to put an anonymous and catchy domain on my podcast instead of where it is actually hosted. The path doesn’t need to be pretty, but it does need to NOT confuse feedburner (want those neat stats) and where my files really reside.
Thanks gang.
1. Cetainly sounds possible, but I am a little unclear about exactly what you are trying to do. I’m sure we can get your system to work without the frames. But I need a little more detail.
2. Yes, there are a couple ways to do that. Do you have an example of what you want to do?
3. Nothing you’ve asked about is anything more than basic configuration. 1and1 uses frames to mask some of what it does for those who haven’t yet learned how to do the stuff manually. However, If you’re willing to go through the learning curve, there’s very little that you can’t do on a 1&1 account.
I’m running 6 WordPress blogs, A Vbulletin forum, a PHP forum, a dynamic DNS service, I offer webmail and pop mail services to a bunch of my friends, instead of typing webmail.1and1.com, I quite easily set it up to accept webmail.thecodecave.com, I’ve installed AW Stats to provide additional stat record, prior to them providing it I instaled PHPMyAdmin and I stil use that because I can customize it, I have a MP3 service running where I can log in and listen to my music from anywhere. I provide several services for my office that I’m not going to go into detail about. This site currently has a 309,866 Technorati rating and seems to be doing quite fine here. The only slow downs are due to the configuration of my themes.
And it is all in a price range that AdSense on two sites pays 100% of its cost. No, you’re not asking too mucn. In fact how can you go wrong?
I’ve just setup a topic on my forum. I’ve found that WordPress comments don’t lend themselves to conversations. Just go here (link) , create an account and start a topic. Maybe I can answer your questions.
I thought I created an account and the forum says my address is already taken, but I received no confirmation message.
Dang.
I am willing to go through the learning curve.
I’ve approved you…
Hi Brian,
I do think 1and1 sucks and I have a particular reason. I am not satisfied with its up time. So far my website was down two times already within a month. First time it took 23 hours to solve (I found out at 11 am on Wednesday, sent and email to the support team, waited, checked my website every hour, until 10 am on Thursday my website finally worked. The support team sent an email to apologize at 2 pm. on Thursday) The second time is right now. My website is down again. I don’t like the fact that it doesn’t explain to me before they are going to do something with my web server such as “Hi, we are going to do some maintenance.” Something. It never sent anything. I used to host another hosting company, and I could see the status of my server whether they were upgrading. So for the score of reliability of 1and1 = 0. I never had any issues with the control panel, help search, etc. All I have issues are the uptime. And I think it is a major issue because I can’t do business if it keeps doing this to my website. And it didn’t happen only on my website, I referred 1and1 to my client as well, and his website was down already within a month since he started (this January). I felt bad because I told him that 1and1 was a good hosting company and then it was down in the second week. These are not about limited knowledge of the users, it is really about their performances.
Down time certainly is a valid issue. They guarantee 99.99% uptime. They have just installed a new datacenter in Kansas (link).
99.99% uptime means the site can be down for up to 9 hours for the entire year. Your 23 hours is well outside that range. Did you call them to see what the problem was? Their 24 support line can check service status immediately, but it can take a long time to get through. I’ve noticed my site being down three times in the last year. One I think I might have caused. Each time it was up again within an hour.
Now I don’t exactly know what their “99.99% guarantee” means, but you should get at least a full refund of your monthly charges. Since you contract is probably a yearly thing, you should really be able to get a full refund of the amount you’ve paid and be let out of your contract. I hate it when the word “guarantee” is used and there’s no indication of what a violation of that guarantee means.
Once again, reason for leaving 1&1, downtime and lack of customer support. Got tired of being held on line for ages and 1&1 not responding to emails and lame apologies.
When I told them to alter my email address from one to another and made this clear to them they just completely ignored the issue and yet they can leave messages in their control panel!!!!
Oh well proves what dolts they are…
I am sick of all those rants too! 1and1 is about the best service provider I had! I use both Linux Business and Linux root. I don’t recall the server going down ever. No problems in 2 years. I used lots of other other providers (GoDaddy, Magicalworks, DailyRazor…), but none of them come close.
wery good site
hi good site
vv vvv vv
fff
hi wery good site
1and1 has been the best of 6 different host/registrars I’ve tried. I originally started with a 1&1 Linux Developer Package at $19.95 monthly and it was packed with really great software. I think the control panel is the easiest ever. Wanting to learn, I purchased the Microsoft 1&1 Developer Package. After a year, it became super slow and with many long phone calls I moved my 18 domains to the Linux package. The Linux package has over 48 domains and 22 have Front Page Extensions supporting forms. I’ve had NO problems with FPSE other than what I caused! 1and1 now saddens me that they are discountinuing FPSE and as this is not my main business, it’s difficult to learn to convert my forms to another form (hey, I’m 53 years old). I’m now searching for another host that will support what I know untill I learn another way.
BTW: this code cave ROCKS! TY!
P.S. Been with 1and1 4+ years!
I understand that there will always be some problems somewhere with a big company like one and one, unfortunately I’m one of them who had a terrible service from them.
My site keeps giving me “Service Unavailable’ notices. However, this is very intermittent and as soon as 1&1 access my site their end it’s fixed leaving them thinking I’m making it up. After a year they at last admit there is a problem, they seem incapable of fixing it.
My constant requests to be moved to another server are ignored they seem happier to give me a free month (got two months so far) but who wants a free service if it is completely unreliable?
I have setup other sites with 1&1 which are fine, just seems to be my server, I’m about to drop 1&1 and move somewhere else.
In Christ, Karl.
yeah, im experiencing a 6 hour+ stint of “Service Unavailable” – after two calls to service, im told “its escalated to admins”
well i know that means it’ll be about two days until i see my sites up. thats hundreds of dollars lost. I get what i pay for though
A actually fascinating read, I could well not agree completely, but you do make some quite legitimate points.
The post posted was very informative and helpful.
You people are performing a terrific job. Maintain going.