This hosting review focuses on the 1&1 Beginner plan from http://1and1.com.

The Plan…
The 1&1 Beginner plan we selected over at 1and1.com includes 5 GB of storage, 250 GB of bandwidth, 10 MySQL databases, and allows you to host 1 domain. Unfortunately, prior to signup you are not told exactly what versions of MySQL, PHP, etc are running on the servers. The plan bills at a bottom dollar price of $2.24 – however the only payment option available is a six month billing cycle, brining your total due at purchase to $13.44

The sign up…
The sign up with 1&1.com was interesting. After selecting the plan to be reviewed, checkout is just a click away. Once in checkout you are presented with an ‘Important Add-on’ – Norton Antivirus. Adverts during checkout are nothing if not annoying – the one thing about 1&1.com was theirs was well blended so as to not be overly distracting.

During the account signup you can either purchase a domain name (1and1.com offers .com TLDs for just $5.99) or to transfer an existing domain. After you’ve sorted your domain options, you are asked to enter your billing information.

Payment is offered via Visa, Master Card, Discover and American Express. It should be noted that in addition to the hosting charge a $6.00 fee is charged and then refunded to the card – the refund process can take several days however.

The setup…
Within moments of checkout a standardized welcome email arrived with the requisite account information and hosting details. Nice and speedy.

The uptime…
The 1&1.com site does not appear to make any sort of claim regarding uptime. The review site was up 100% of the time it was hosted with 1&1.com. During the testing period the site experienced some sever timeouts during peak hours. Rather odd considering the rather low (comparatively) number of sites hosted on the server – 448 at the time of this writing.

The support…
Support from 1and1.com is atrocious. Email support is promptly responded to via auto responder announcing that they will reply with 24-48 hours. At which point they responded to all of our initial support requests with incredibly useless information. Only after exchanging emails for 3-4 days did a support rep finally let us know what the name servers would so we could point our domain to 1&1.com hosting.

Phone support is no better. Both support calls were met with “We’re sorry all our circuits are busy right now.”

The cancellation…
Cancellation was easy enough, and can be completed within just a few clicks in the account management area.

The bottom line…
The uptime with 1and1.com was satisfactory, and they offer $5.99 domains. That however, is all the good I can say about them. Their support staff is inept, and the support response time is nothing but atrocious. Avoid 1and1.com for shared hosting at all costs.

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