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Products and Services: |
9.5 / 10 |
| Reliability: |
10 / 10 |
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| Control Panel: | 9.5 / 10 | |
| Customer Service: | 7.5 / 10 | |
| Price and Value: | 10 / 10 | |
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| Overall Score: |
93% |
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Company Profile: 1&1 Internet is the world's largest web hosting provider and a leading domain name registration company. 1&1 has over 7 million British, German, French, Austrian and US customer contracts and serves more than 6 million domain names at its 30,000 server strong Data Centres. 1&1 Internet is a wholly owned subsidiary of United Internet Group, a public company of some 6,000 employees. 1&1 prides itself on being the one-stop-shop for web solutions and offers a full range of domain names, web hosting, email solutions, e-Shops and dedicated servers. Year Established: 1988 Number of Employees: 2400+ Number of Accounts: 7 Million+
Awards: 1and1 Internet has received numerous awards, most recently being named as the best economical budget web hosting company. 1and1 are also ranked second amongst the top ten global web hosting companies.
Products and Services: 1and1 offer quite a comprehensive range of products, including web hosting, domains, e-shops, servers and e-mail solutions. One thing that does stand out about 1and1 is they offer a 60 day money back guarantee on almost all of their products - so basically you can try before you buy. Web Hosting: 1and1 offers a variety of efficient Linux and Microsoft web hosting solutions. All prices are low and competitive and most packages offer FREE premium software and FREE domain names. At the bottom end of the scale 1and1 offer a beginner package starting at £1.99 per month, featuring 250MB of web space, 20 email accounts and a free 1and1 8 page website builder. At the top end of the scale 1and1 offer a Professional package priced at £24.99 per month, featuring a massive 20GB of web space, free e-shop, 10 domain names and a 30 page website builder. All 1and1 packages feature a free e-shop (not beginner), website builder and a variety of tools to assist in creating your website. The tools are all relatively easy to use, making it effortless to create a professional looking website. The Website Builder allows you to search advertising vouchers, access the traffic-building tools in the 1&1 Marketing Centre and improve your search engine compatibility. If you have no previous website building knowledge and you are looking for a host that provides you with a WYSIWYG site builder then 1and1 is for you. It’s also worth noting all packages also feature free monthly traffic, starting at 3GB for the beginner package up to 200GB for the Professional. Plans:
Domains: All 1and1 shared hosting plans include at least 1 domain name. You won't pay any registration fees! Use your included domain(s) however you choose – register new domains or transfer existing ones. The 1and1 domain registration process proved to be quick and easy. The domain prices are not the cheapest, however sill very competitively priced. Servers: 1and1 offer a variety of virtual and managed servers. The new dedicated server range is available in Linux, Windows and Managed configurations and feature 1&1's 100MB/s data transfer flat rate. Customers can also take advantage of the company's 135GB/s connectivity via its own pan-European backbone. 1&1's server range combines energy-saving AMD processors with high quotas of RAM and hard disk space, together with RAID 1 or RAID 5 technology. The servers are particularly suitable for hosted e-commerce or databases, file or application servers and web development, the company said. 1&1 monitors and provides maintenance services for all servers - boasting a 24/7 customer service desk. The 1&1 Value Server represents an excellent first step into server hosting – putting you in complete control of optimising and allocating reliable web space, and at a very reasonable price of £29 pm. All VPS Server offerings are also very reasonably priced and offer some great features.
If its customer support you are looking for, 1and1 is not the fastest - 30 minutes hold time on their toll free line(s) is normal. Overall the best part about 1and1 is the price. If you can manage the server yourself 1and1 is a perfect option.
E-Commerce Solutions: 1and1 recently revised all of its e-Shop packages and now offers 4 main solutions;
E-Shops can be purchased separately or upgraded; however it’s worth noting all hosting packages (not beginner package) now boast a free e-shop. Obviously the more advanced the hosting package the more advance the e-shop. The e-Shop package itself is a stand-alone ecommerce solution that can be bolted-on to any website. The website pages can be built using the template-driven web builder provided, and any level of user can create a professional looking ecommerce site within minutes. Product lines and individual items for retail are posted very quickly using a drag-and-drop interface. The solutions deliver secure online payment clearing via PayPal, Protx and World-Pay and can handle variable currencies The eBay integration feature allows one to submit items to eBay auctions with nearly every eBay feature available. 1&1 e-Shop users benefit from no charge payable for 1&1's eBay time scheduling. Furthermore, up to three images per item may be submitted to eBay with no charge, and eBay shoppers may buy multiple items from a 1&1 customer e-Shop without additional eBay fees for the merchant. Each 1and1 e-Shop offered a simple setup wizard and a very user-friendly administration panel. We were also able to choose from over 90 different e-Shop templates, however on the downside they vast majority took a while to download. In conclusion the 1&1 e-Shops seem well equipped to handle every aspect of modern ecommerce and provide any level of user with flexible and effective retailing. Email: 1and1 offers a professional mail solution for home or business, housing around 2GB of storage space, dedicated POP3/IMAP accounts and advanced anti-spam and virus scanning software. We were initially impressed at the very low cost (69p per month) and the mailbox space (2GB), however we did experience some minor issues with the service. Initially were unable to send/receive emails, either using POP3 or SMTP or the webmail interface, and many times our email wasn’t accessible. Emails were also often received several hours after they were sent. We did contact customer support and the problems were eventually rectified. 1and1 does offer an online administrative tool which was helpful, however slow and cumbersome at times. It enabled us to create new accounts and set up forwarding, amongst other things. In conclusion the 1&1 mail service could do with a slight overhaul, and from experience seemed a definite let down in comparison to the other great products on offer.
Reliability: Reliability should be one of the most important things to look for in a good web host, and from our experience we found 1&1 to be generally faultless – aside from their email service. 1&1 have a good redundant data centre thus causing very little downtime on their hosting packages. Any website downtime that did occur was usually sorted out within the hour and was fixed with a simple server reboot. On thing you can be sure about with 1&1 is reliability and infrastructure.
Control Panel: 1and1’s custom control panel encompasses all of the expected features and has some nice add-ons that aren’t typically found in control panels. Most of the features, including billing, can be easily managed via the control panel, which has one login.
The control panel allows users to dictate numerous functions such as domain management and mail management. A variety of practical tools are also offered by 1and1 including web site builders, statistical programmes and blogs - all are very user friendly. Getting used to the control panel is not difficult, however if you struggle with any aspect 1&1 offer several in-depth help articles and tutorials. I was able to find answers to the majority of my questions just by referring to these documents. In a nutshell the 1and1 control panel is very user friendly, boasting an easy- to-use icon based navigation system and offering a variety of practical and innovative extras.
Customer Support: 1&1 customer support is available 24/7 through three main channels; email, free phone and via an online help desk. The support offered looks more than adequate - at first glance - however in actual fact it is relatively limited. Almost all of our support tickets were answered with a standard reply which had no bearing on the original question, and any technical advice required needed to be escalated to a higher level of support – which takes time. The average response time by 1and1 was around 4 – 8 hours, which isn’t bad, but with other hosts out there answering tickets and calls within 1 hour this may be an area 1&1 may need to address. On the plus side 1&1 does offer a great FAQ library, containing several helpful articles on you how to perform a variety of basic tasks. In conclusion we found the customer service adequate. We expected a higher standard from such a large reputable company. Price and Value: On the whole 1&1’s prices are very reasonable across the board in comparison to other providers. 1&1 hosting packages offer a lot of space and bandwidth for very little money. Each account including plenty of email accounts, databases, a control panel, a 90 day money back guarantee, and 24/7 support. 1and1 do stipulate a minimum contract term of 6 months on most hosting packages, however this shouldn't put you off, as in today's competitive hosting market the vast majority of hosts do have minimum contract terms ranging from 3 to 24 months. Be sure to read the order and refund terms carefully. 1&1 will try to lock you in for longer if you choose some of their special offers.
Conclusion: 1and1 has proven to be one of the best hosting companies we have worked with so far. Its hosts a powerful control panel with lots of features, inexpensive pricing and useful marketing tools. The company has stated it is their goal to be the first in the market to bring you innovative products at competitive prices without compromising strength and reliability – On the whole, 1&1 looks quite impressive.
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