I have a personal-use, low-volume site mainly used for experimenting with various LAMP applications for academic and potential enterprise use. The only problem I have ever had has been occasional delays in email processing (POP access from our email clients). Since I am not a business, this has not been critical. I would not make a commercial enterprise dependent on this level of service. General downtime has been virtually nil — outstanding reliability. Customer and technical support have always been surprisingly good for a plan that costs $9.95 per month. Regarding canceling services, I recently canceled a domain registration using 1and1's online tools. It was not difficult. I received a confirmation, which I kept for billing validation purposes. Even for a $5 or $10 plan, some level of user competence is necessary. You must be able to read step-by-step instructions, apply them, and — if calling for help is necessary, be able to frame your issue in clear language and follow along as a technician guides you through a solution. This is standard for the use of any technology. If you are not comfortable operating with web-based guidance and form-based tools, you need to have someone else manage your web presence.
I have no interest in 1and1, other than as a customer. If 1and1 is going downhill, I will soon become aware of it. For now, and the past three plus years, 1and1's service has been incredibly good for the cost. If you've ever had a truly terrible host (and I have), you will recognize the 1and1 is actually pretty darn good.

I have been with 1and1 for a while now, and have recommended them to a lot of people/businesses. Up until a couple months ago, they were absolutely wonderful. No problems ever.
I'm not sure what happened, as you cannot easily get information from them, but now my website is down far too often as well as my companies website (which we rely on completely. When that site is down, I cannot do my job. every minute counts).
I've been trying my best to give them the benifit of the doubt since I have had such wonderful experiences with them in the past, but I am developing a bad taste in my mouth and no longer recommend them.
If you are considering 1and1 because of the price, just remember that old cliche, "you get what you pay for" apparently. Too bad.

Cancellation was ignored, no customer service help in 9 attempts. They kept telling me to go online and cancel, yet I had done this 3 months ago. Chase bank allowed charge and I had to close account payment being drawn from. This is not yet settled.

For a global company 1and1 is not very professional. They have lost all our files that were accumulated on their server for over a year, including the application package and informed us that there is no backup. It took 3 days before someone told us that they have lost all the files and will not be able to bring the site back. The customer support is the worst, they don't know anything, and once you ask them questions they don't want to answer they hang up on you (after you have waited on the line for 45min). Needless to say we are working on taking our business elsewhere.

I don't know how, but 1&1 tells me that I upgraded to a webbuilder plus plan. After just three days of finding out, I cancel the service telling them that I do not want it. The rep tell me that I'll get a refund. No refudn, no confirmation email. They chaged me 3months of billing in advance and after 3 days, they refuse to give me 87days worth of money back. Stay away from them.

I have been a user and recommender of 1and1 for quite a number of years now. I have set up clients with Business hosting plans and never have I had a complaint. I have found their service to be reasonable although they have moved their response system overseas unless you bump to level 2. I have never had problems with down time for email servers and any problems I have ever had with my or my client's web sites has been do to faulty code on my part.

It seems to me that all anyone here wants to do is to lodge a complaint. 1and1 is hosting hundreds of thousands of domains if not millions and there are 89 reviews here. The people like me who have experienced great service from 1and1 don't come in and complain.

Price/value can't be beat. Service is good to excellent and my overall experience has been very positive.

I was their customer for almost a year and I decided to cancel my account due to some reasons:
1. I found a cheaper web hosting
2. 1and1 customer service sucks. They keep you on hold for at least 30 minutes
3. They do not know how to handle customers.

Before transferring to my new web hosting, I cancelled my account about 3 weeks from my next billing cycle. I called their customer support and verified everything that if I cancel now, should I still be able to access my remaining weeks of my account until it expires. And the person said "yes".

But after confirming my cancellation, I wasn't able to access my account and the technical department told me that once you acknowlege your cancellation, your account is still active but I your account is locked. This means that you cannot access your files anymore.

I don't know what's their problem why they need to lock your account. You already have paid for it and there will be no harm if you cancel the account prior to renewal.

So, my advice is, before you cancel your account with 1and1, you have to make sure that you have deleted or backed up all your files prior to cancelling your account with them.

I DO NOT RECOMMEND 1AND1 TO ANYBODY.

1And1 has lost us as a customer!
We suffered our second major outage this year and our site has been down a total of more than 60 hours in both January and February. It is obvious that 1and1 cannot adequately support their systems and customers. The 99.99% guaranteed uptime promise is an absolute lie.
I have had horrible experience with technical support. Waiting on phone hold for 30+ minutes, getting comical feedback from people who have no idea what to do except send an "email to the Admin dept", and pitiful slow response to the resolution of our problems. These are completely unacceptable business practices.
Advice: Pay a little more money and get a reliable service if your business Web presence is important to you at all. Our experience has cost us $$$ in lost business revenue.

Poor Service

On several occasions this company broke my web hosting by doing stupid things like:

Setting file permissions on the server incorrectly so users couldn't view public pages without a username / password.

Switching out software I depend on with no warning, for example changing .NET 1.1 to 2.0 which again broke by website. Actually, they have done this one repeatedly, each time with no notice.

It would be one thing if I did something to break my site and had some downtime. That I could live with. But these guys broke my site and each time it took several days to bring it back up, even though the fix was trivial such as changing file permissions back, or changing configuration back to enable the site to function.

Support is polite, but ignorant and unable to give real information about issues and how to help. It takes many calls to get a problem resolved.

This is clearly a web hosting company that spends its money on advertising.

I strongly discourage anyone from using these guys unless they have basic static HTML pages ... nothing serious like dynamic pages, or databases. Also, be prepared for some serious downtime.