Why you should go with 1and1 web hosting?

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.