Hi all,

We are an growing band of disgruntled ex-1&1 Internet customers in the Uk, who would be keen to speak with other customers.

We have set up a support site to co-ordinate a group legal campaign, and would appreciate customers or ex-customers with similar experiences to visiit the site www.wasitfree.com and lend your support.

All best,
Chris B.

I read a lot of reviews about 1and1's great uptime...I don't get it! That is NOT my experience.

I have been hosting with 1and1.com for 9 months now and several months ago I noticed the my site was unavailable for short periods in the middle of the day. I became conserned and started monitoring my URL. The first month I monitored 1and1.com posted 97% uptime. What makes that figure even worse is that I am only polling my URL every 30 minutes.

I sent many emails on the subject and they told me that I was wrong and that the problem must be on my end. I know this is not the case because I get complaints about my site being unavailable from people all over the world. What's more, I work for an online database provider...if we are down there is big trouble.

Polling every 30 minutes 1and1.com posted an unimpressive 97.859% uptime with 75 recorded outages between August 11, 2005 and December 31, 2005. I wonder what these numbers would look like if I were polling every 5 minutes?

I have not ever had an issue technical or billing. They are much more simple to use than other hosting services. But with anything you have to have some level of understanding of how to create a web site. Basic bookkeeping is also helpful, I am warned they will be charging me, I get invoices, and I makesure there is money in the account. I have other clients on it and never a problem sure there are limits but it is shared hosting and there should be. I do get tired of the scripted Indian, scripted customer service but that is with everything these days.

I tried the professional evaluation version, and had built up some loyalty toward them due to this. When I started my e-business I also had my business e-mail there because it would have the same domain name.

I wait 15 seconds for each e-mail while staring at "Waiting for webmailcluster.perfora.net..."
Their e-mail web interface is so slow, and often I get a window that says "Internal Server Error!". I've complained and nothing is ever fixed. I am presently looking for a new host, I would not pay for this level of service.

Web statistics are an example. The give you very basic pre-digested pages that don't tell you much. You have to wait for each category to download to get an idea of how many people are seeing your webpage. I eventually gave up and just ftp the raw datafiles and look at them with a text editor. Much more informative than their useless simplified graphical interface.

In both cases, e-mail and web statistics, they open up so many new windows that my task bar shows 8-10 pointless open windows that I have to go and close.

If you need something simple and don't care about support or e-mail, go somewhere else anyway!

I dunno what the people below me are talking about but I have been using 1and1 for almost 6 months now and I am VERY pleased with the kind of service that I get from them. My site is almost never down, and for $2.99 a month (their basic plan) you get a lot for almost nothing.

Their customer support is very reliable and I found them to be much better than other hosts like PureHost and goDaddy.

I recommend 1and1 to anyone.