 Review by palmer_j_r 
UPDATED: 180 days ago
member for 8.2 years, 1043 visits, last login: 39 days ago
 Chicago,Cook,IL
 Contract price not specified.
 "Cheap"
 "Cheap"
 "They were once great, but all the glossy ads don't mean good service.."
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**I know longer use 1&1**
I started out with 1&1 in early 2004. Wooed by low prices to register domains, I moved tuttibuonfinearts.com and registered jpecomputing.com with them. Initial setup was okay, I think I waited about a day for the domains to come online. I initially disliked that I could not have more than 1 database. I have quite a few php/mysql applets running and wanted seperate databases to organize it all. Also you couldn't do much back then in terms of managing the database directly. I ended up using MySQL admin to accomplish that. (note - they have recently allowed more databases - 49 - for a total of 50 and for about a year or so they've been offering MySQL admin directly on their site)
I lived with it. Then about 3 months later it came time for my domain charges for another quarter. I had forgotten to change the credit card details as my expiration # changed. They did send me an invoice, and I neglected to change the details. So.. about 6 days later from receiving the invoice I get an email that says that my card was declined and that I should check my cc details to be sure they were correct. I went in, changed the expiry date and submitted. Now, in the email it stated that I had 11 days to make the changes or they would deactivate my domain. I entered the details, they put a soft hold on the card. I had plenty of funds to cover so why did they deactivate the domains?
So after some hefty hunting around, I finally found the contact #, I had indvertently called the tech support number. So I asked him to transfer me to billing. It was 9 pm, my domains were down. Billing was not available he said. Okay, can you at least turn on the domains until billing could fix the issue? No sir. In fact, my domains stayed down for 3 days. I was frustrated, ticked, you name it. But, I was locked in no way to get outa this one. Plus, one of my clients (who, I am lucky did not even notice that his domain was down) was loosing potential art buyers.. Once the problem was cleared up service ran smooth, no problems..
Then a few months later, spam started spewing in like nobodies business. I decided to go check out the control panel after mentioning to a friend of mine who also had 1&1 of all this. He said you could enable spam filters and a virus protection as well. Did that. Problem slowed down for quite awhile, until about the later half of 2005. The spam filters might as well have just been off. Luckily I was able to take the information off the subject line ie. verbage indicating the message was spam to create mail filters in outlook to just delete the junk. (as of today January 17th, 2005 - I've set up a mail forward for each of my addy's to GMAIL.. their spam blocker is much more efficient.)
Also later half of 2005 I decided to check out 1&1's Microsoft Exchange Hosting. The same friend mentioned before said Exchange can help me manage mail/address book/calendar info across many computers. Gave it a try. Was kinda bummed.. The service did what it was suppose to, but I had no easy way to transfer my two major email addresses to it. They put the MS Exchange package seperate from the rest of my domains. Apparently if you want ms exchange to handle your existing email accounts you need to pay another fee to have them transfer it over. Blah. I used it for a little while, but it wasn't worth not being able to have it handle my primary accounts. Around the middle of December I received my invoice for the next three months and so I decided that I would go ahead and use the cancellation feature to get rid of the domain. Surprise, you can't cancel immediately.. you have to choose between a month or until the contract ends. And no refunds! So with that, they then tried to bill my credit card. Well, my fault, I didn't have any funds available on the card I was using and they once again sent a letter advising me the debit was declined and that I should check my CC details. This was on January 3rd. SO, I went in and put through a card that I knew I had funds on, saw the soft hold, replied back to their email to say all was well and said okay, things are cool. My MS Exchange account was still active (until the cancellation goes through) like I said, things are cool.
On January 16th, ALL OF MY DOMAINS were LOCKED.. even the domains that were allready paid up!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I was ticked to say the least.
I called up tech support, not wanting to believe it was a billing issue. And, sure enough, Paul (from India) told me billing put a note on my account to have me call them. But, guess what? Billing is not open until 9 am!!! and this was 10 pm.. NOW, 3 more of my clients were without their websites and I prayed they wouldn't all start calling me.
So, I responded again to the email from January 3rd, making sure to include my first response that the CC details were updated and professionally tore them a new one!
I advised that unless it was stated in their lengthy T&C's that a billing issue on one package automatically causes everything to be shut down, I wanted my service back up IMMEDIATELY..
Sure enough, when I woke up this morning, all my domains were back in operation, including the MS Exchange account.
In hind sight, next time I go looking for a host I will not be swayed by cheap prices. Buyer Beware I guess.
Followup comments:  Turbocpe
Premium
join:2001-12-22
IA
 ·Iowa Network Servi..
| 1and1.com's email system quote:
Then a few months later, spam started spewing in like nobodies business. I decided to go check out the control panel after mentioning to a friend of mine who also had 1&1 of all this. He said you could enable spam filters and a virus protection as well. Did that. Problem slowed down for quite awhile, until about the later half of 2005. The spam filters might as well have just been off.
Been having the same experience. Turned on their "spam filtering" option. As you said, might as well not be on, as it perhaps catches *maybe* 1 email for every 10 spam email messages or so that I started to receive, and that is on the highest setting.
Their email service in general, in my case, has been quite poor in the years I've been a customer. Too bad, since that is the main issue I have with 1and1.com | |
|  | beachbouy
join:2001-12-08
Nags Head, NC
| Re: 1and1.com's email system I've been using 1&1 servers since they began providing service in the U.S. I don't have much to complain about. They are a low-cost service, and as such, don't provide top-tier service. If you want top-tier service, pay for a top-tier hosting service. It's that simple. For what they cost, I feel that 1&1 does a decent job, through and through. That's not to say that I haven't had my issues with them. I've had my moments of frustration, just as you have. But, in the final analysis, you get what you pay for. With 1&1, you probably get a better deal than with most of their low-cost competitors.
~Z | |
| | | Turbocpe
Premium
join:2001-12-22
IA
·Iowa Network Servi..
edit:
January 18th, @01:39PM
| Re: 1and1.com's email system said by beachbouy :I've been using 1&1 servers since they began providing service in the U.S. I don't have much to complain about. They are a low-cost service, and as such, don't provide top-tier service. If you want top-tier service, pay for a top-tier hosting service. It's that simple. For what they cost, I feel that 1&1 does a decent job, through and through. That's not to say that I haven't had my issues with them. I've had my moments of frustration, just as you have. But, in the final analysis, you get what you pay for. With 1&1, you probably get a better deal than with most of their low-cost competitors. ~Z I'm paying for one of their premium packages, not the entry-level package, and as such, that is the level of service I expect (of course occasional issues occur from time to time and that is to be expected). It's that simple. Aside from their email issues, I had been pleased with the uptime and reliability, but email issues are kind of important. | |
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