Recent problems that a client of ours has been having with their hosting service (1and1.com - used to be decent but really fallen by the wayside lately) has reminded me of the importance of your hosts, not only when SEO is at stake, as an outage can really impact your rankings but even more importantly, your email accounts. We rely heavily on emails in business and when it goes down or gets locked out, there’s not a whole lot we can do. That’s why we encourage our clients to use someone to manage it for them and in my experience, it doesn’t have to cost a whole lot more.
For 1and1.com it’s a little too late and I’ll be removing all of our accounts from them, not because of any technical-related issue, but the way they treated us and our client for what I have discovered is a billing error on their end. I’ve since discovered a whole lot of disgruntled 1and1 clients who have had similar issues. So do some research first before you hand over control of your very valuable data.
Paul Fleming is co-founder and VP of Interactive Services for Dinkum Interactive. A trained teacher, Paul has worked in a variety of forms of Internet Marketing but with a focus on SEO. Originally from Australia, he now resides in Philadelphia with his wife and 2 ankle-biters.
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May 16, 2012. Posted under: Blog.
I collected my god-daughter from dance class the other day and we grabbed a “treat” on the way home. Charli is 10, super bright and delightful. As we ate liquid chocolate, she told me about her school assignment where they had to devise a restaurant for kids. Her big idea was that while kids were waiting for their meal, they
Be very careful before you choose a hosting company. I wish to God I had checked out 1and1′s reputation before I signed. Rather than bore you with my long fight with them just ask yourself why their phone is answered by a recording that tells you what to do if you have been contacted by NCO, a collection agency. If they are above board why do they have to send so many accounts to a collection agency? Also Investigative journalist, Kelli Jack, has written 30 articles about this company and has a suit pending against them. Kelli alleges that 1and1 stole her domain name and sold it. Kelli states: “1and1 should be shut down.”
And finally, the Pennsylvania Better Business Bureau and the Washington DC Better Business Bureau has them listed as “Unsatisfactory” Read comments on the BBB why. Read some customer comments on Red Flag.
I had a similar experience. We were using 1and1.com until about 12 months ago. Their internet service kept going down and for extended periods we could not send or receive. The first couple times we figured it was a temporary issue and that they would fix it, but after a few more episodes, we pulled the plug and moved to GoDaddy. They were very reliable, but just recently we started to get some bad experiences there too. They would just bounce an email back to the sender and say it was undeliverable! At least the emails to 1and1 got through eventually, but this was just turning them away at the door. I called GoDaddy to complain, was on the phone for over an hour and there was no good answer. We can’t afford to have our email be down, so we moved all the accounts and our web hosting the next day. We selected FusedNetworks. They have a very good reputation. So far so good, but we can’t be sure they won’t have trouble either. Overall, the best option might be Google’s corporate email service.
We’ve been hearing far too many of these stories of late and this whole NCO collection agency thing even seems to get worse, in fact one may suggest that this is part of their process. I’ve discovered several others who were not contacted about the expiration of their credit cards until their accounts were handed over to NCO who held their accounts hostage until they paid and then there was a further 4 day delay. Quite unbelievable and quite amazing that they can get away with it. Steer clear.
That’s so strange, webhostingtestimonials.com doesn’t mention anything on the web hosting company, BlueHost. It’s been around for a while.
Hmm, would like to see some testimonials about it though…
It may take time and effort to research hosting companies as there are so many around. But using the web to search on potential hosting companies is worth while. Beware of formal reviews as these can be manipulated. It is better just to search using the hosting companies name and see what turns up.
Good luck to all.
George
I too had many problems with godaddy.com as noted by Daniel. I am pulling all my sites from them for the exact same reason. Emails weren’t getting through to me and I would never know since the sender wasn’t sent a bounceback! I also had emails that were not getting to the recipient. Nightmare…and they did not offer sufficient support to convince me to stay. Basically they denied it and never addressed the issue. Now using hostgator.com for 4 months and happy so far. Only problem is they are a bit techy for me and I did need to phone for support in the beginning. But the support is really good.
Welcome to the world of HostGator. We would love to read your review! If you get a chance why not stop by and let us know how things are going for you. If you are not currently a HostGator client and would like to learn more about this awesome hosting company feel free to check out some of the excellent reviews!
We used hostgator for a while and it performed very well plus service was excellent. We now use our own box but can recommend hostgator. A less techy option would be dreamhost who, while not without their own teething/growth problems, have done well by us and have a very easy to use control panel.
“For 1and1.com it’s a little too late and I’ll be removing all of our accounts from them” …we took this decision three years ago, and we are a lot happier now.
thank you for this info. I was planning to make an account on 1and1.com because for the cheap prices they have but now change my mind.
again thanks a lot!
I really love wordpress they are amazing on how their script works.
oh my god! I think I am too late to see this article… Is it okay to purchase domains with them?? I have purchase 2 domains with theme and now I’m worried about what this article says…
anyway thanks for this article…
Simply astounding. Liked this article. Thank you for posting it
thank you for this post