1&1 is one of the largest and
the most well-known companies in web hosting industry. The company is now owned
by the German internet services company United Internet which owns other brands
such as FastHosts and Sedo.com.
1&1 was first established in
1988 and can claim to be one of the largest hosting organisations in the world
with more than 10.5 million customers and handling 11 million domain names. The
company has 10 separate arms located in Europe and North America, each with its
own website and hosting plans. The company is truly massive, so for the
purposes of this review, I will focus on the UK arm, which was opened in 2000.
UK customers may already be
familiar with 1&1 through its TV advertising. The company is focused on
domain name registration and shared hosting services, although there are wide
ranges of other services on offer.
Here are some good points that
make me so happy to go with 1and1 web hosting:
1.
So
affordable price
There are three shared hosting
packages to be chosen from, including Basic, Unlimited and Performance. All of
them have different features and accordingly they are priced at $5.99/mo,
$8.99/mo and $14.99/mo regularly. Now the packages are promoted with a discount
price starting at $0.99/mo, $5.99/mo and $10.99/mo respectively.
Like many web hosting providers,
1and1 also reaches out discount price at $0.99 only for the first year. So,
don’t angry with them if you are so shock with the renewal price.
Anyway, no one has a price as
cheap as 1and1 now.
2.
So
nice support team
There are a range of support
facilities offered by 1&1. Before going into these, it’s worth noting that
each arm of the organisation has its own technical support contacts; in America
there is a US-based email address and phone line, where in the UK there is a UK
number and email address.
Technical support is available
24/7 and the phone line is a freephone number.
Customers also have the option to
allow the technical support to view and guide them through a solution using the
Netviewer application. The company also maintains a comprehensive list of FAQs
for self help purposes.
1&1 has active Twitter and
Facebook accounts (again, these are country specific: there are different
accounts for German, US and other areas, so make sure you follow the right one
for your location). Looking at the accounts, 1&1 do seem interact with
their customers through these channels and will readily respond to support
queries on social media.
There is also a YouTube channel
where 1&1 videos are posted from time to time.
3.
Good
security
Another aspect of this web
hosting service worthy of mention is its security. 1&1 offers SSL
certificates, which are essential for eCommerce websites. The web host also
employs dual hosting, which means that your site is stored on two separate
servers in different geographic locations (the service uses data centers in
both the U.S. and Europe). This redundancy is important because in the event
that one of the 1&1 data centers is compromised, your website will be supported
on a server at a different location and won't experience any downtime.
4.
Relative
Performance
The one true job a website
hosting server is to deliver your website files as quickly and as reliably as
possible everytime someone asks for them (by typing in your domain name).
Neither I nor my clients have
ever had significant downtime with 1&1. They claim to have independently
verified 99.9% uptime. That’s industry standard, so without monitoring tools,
I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.
The one thing I can measure is
how quickly 1&1 delivers my files to a browser. There are a lot of
variables that go into how fast a website loads, but one of the most important
variables is how fast the server responds after the initial request – otherwise
known as Time To First Byte (TTFB). Here are results of speed tests that I ran
in early January 2014.
Those tests are not amazing, but
they are better than some other major web hosting brands (ie, GoDaddy). So on
performance, like pricing and options, 1&1’s main pro is that they are
really just fine on the basics. The one last positive of 1&1’s performance
is that they do provide plenty of memory to run your website. Below is a
snapshot of the memory provided to WordPress.
Just for reference – WordPress
recommends having 64M of memory to run. Often cheaper web hosts are notorious
for skimping on memory provided, since customers rarely actually check that
setting. 1&1 does come through on that.
1&1 Summary
1&1 is a part of a huge
hosting organisation - and you can really tell. Its website is sprawling, and
there are a range of options for customers in various countries.
The services it offers are
comparable to many other hosting providers, but the sheer number of positive
articles in the technical press suggest that this is a company that’s
well-respected. This alone is enough to boost confidence.
