By alexandreracine on

Even if I did not a good experience with 1and1 overall, I'll try to do this evaluation as neutral as possible.

I have been with 1and1 for a couple of months, first for the domain names, and after I try the hosting solution.

The good.

-The domain names are cheap. It is easy to setup and there is mostly all options you can think of.
-The hosting have changed these past days. 9,99$ for 100GB? That looks good, but... is there someone who can confirm this? I know that they recently bouth another company, mabe this is what it is all about.
-90 days money back guarantee, but look in the ugly.
-You can use modrewrite, read the faq and their website :)

By the way, 1and1 and GoDaddy are the two biggest competitors in the domain name hosting area.

The bad.

-My favorite answer is when you send them an email you get this :"Thank you for your recent e-mail. We expect to answer your email within the next 12 to 24 hours." And trust me, they do take that much time. This company is in UK, so, sometime, when the Americas are up, they are sleeping and vice versa.
-They don't use cpanel. So if you want to take all your stats from, let's say awstats, and transfert them to them, you can't. They have their own pannel.
-They subsystem is weird. Your ftp username won't be joe@yourdomain.com, it will be 345456567@dynipstuff.net . And it is like this for everything.

The ugly.

-When you get the email back, "from the bad", everything seems to be cut and paste answers. And they are redirecting you to some faqs. Mabe this can work for some questions, it's not the case everytime.
-90 money back guarantee, but... you have to stay sharp. If you make some mistakes you are a goner. Putting it simply, I wanted to remove my hosting package and go back to my domain name package. So the billing departement show me the faq (of course) to the cancelling procedure. That procedure, is not easy to use when you want to cancel "hosting" services and can't find the word "hosting" anywhere. Finally with their guidance, I ended up cancelling everything. Now my websites did not worked anymore, so I asked them to cancel back, or rollback, and nothing could be done. Except if I wanted to pay 80$ and fax them my dental, my passport and more.

The thing is, when you are with them, you are really a number. In conclusion, as long as you don't have any problem and send them money, everything will be find, other paths leads to other avenues.

Here is the last message they sent to me. The 80$ changed to 6$ per domain by magic and they seems to be at the mercy of their billing systems not willing to battle for humanity.

"Thank you for contacting us.

I understand your frustration and your plight.
I know that you wish to move your domains into a new package.
You would need to sign up for a new package and initialize the transfers.

However, there is an internal transfer fee for doing this.
The internal transfer fee is 5.99 per domain.
This fee cannot be lifted.
This is part of our automated billing system.
Also, this is a standard practice of our billing department.

I am sorry and I can only apologize for any inconvenience suffered.
Thanks.

If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us.

Sincerely,
[Name Removed]
Technical Support
1&1 Internet"

Comments

Timotheos’s picture

Timotheos commented

Good
- Their set up makes it very easy for a multisite drupal installation
- They run both PHP4 and PHP5. Very cool for those who care ;-)

Bad
- MySQL is on a different server.
- My Drupal sites on 1and1 load a lot slower then one I have with hostpc.

wdrupal’s picture

wdrupal commented

My Drupal sites on 1and1 load a lot slower

Drupal was painfully slow when I had it on 1and1. Also be sure to read about their database size limits. I think it is 100MB limit per database. I recommend avoiding them for Drupal (or any kind of hosting).

The web stats are terrible also.

uzbekjon’s picture

uzbekjon commented

What about PHP memory limit problem?

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Sites for uzbek and Uzbekistan:
Uzbek Lyrics Database
Uzbekistan Forum

sk33lz’s picture

sk33lz commented

I actually sat on the phone for a while with their tech support, which I can also agree is not the best most times, but actually got an answer this time!

The tech instructed me in fairly broken English that I can make my own php.ini files that I can put into my sites root directory, or any other directory in those sites to call certain functions that their default php.ini does not. I am guessing this is to save memory on sites that do not need as much, so smart call on their part. I don't know what the maximum is, but I have put this in my php.ini and have seen good results. I also have it set for 256mb on another site, I am not sure if it is working, but it is in there :)

register_globals=off
memory_limit = 128M ; Maximum amount of memory a script may consume (8MB)

Hope that helps!
Sk33lz

Drupalmao!
Fractal Art
Free Flash Games

Systems Engineer at Zivtech

dawgbite’s picture

dawgbite commented

I, too, had the same problem, except the tech I spoke to put the php.ini file in my directory. However he used "register_globals off" instead of "register_globals=off" which solved my installation problem. Thanks Sk33lz!

trojan99’s picture

trojan99 commented

1 and 1 has been my host for 3 years now. their support used to be instantaneous, but that has changed. there was a time i could call, and be speaking to a tech in seconds. that time doesnt exist anymore :(

however, in the 3 years i have been a customer, i have watched my $20.00 a month dev package raise from 3 gigs space and 10 gigs traffic, to 150 gigs space and 1500gigs traffic, at no extra charge. they dont use cpanel, and ive used both cpanel and 1and1's proprietary panel, and i prefer 1 and1. it takes some getting used to, but it works.

the dynamic content they offer is fantastic, and comes with the package. that means instant news, sports, ect..without yet another external dependancy. drag and drop the .js into ur page and bam, done.

u failed to mention they also support php3. write a check_info.php3 page and u'll see.

the weak spot is dns records are a bit retarded. they offer only the very basic of changes, and its a bit cryptic. propogating modded dns that you made a mistake on is ... irritating.

blogs are coming soon. i dont know if they mean to offer blog hosting, or just single account holder blogs. be nice to be able to offer my visitors a blog, and i have been seriously thinking on it for a while now. based on the other site additions they offer, like forums, galleries, forms, ect.., it stands to reason that its going to be a blog hosting addition, and not a single blog, but there is no documentation yet.

100db's at 100mb each. that will last you a while. in my dev package, i can have 200 tld's and 600 subdomains.

but what you didnt mention is that they dont support [natively] session.save_handler user. its set at default to [i]files[/i]and the cache is set at nocache. these settings, as you all might know, are kinda helpful for drupal. and the reason i just signed up for this forum. i cant wait a day to find out if i can adjust those settings, as the global settings match the account settings for my php5 :( but thats antoher topic, and not a hijack of urs.

bottom line, 1and1 is serious value for your dollar. or euro. domain parking and affiliate links are included too. webbuilder is included for both dynamic and static sites with a 20 page limitation, but if ur using a site builder, i dont think ur going to have a site larger than that at first anyway. u can upgrade for like 9 bucks tho and get unlimited pages.

wdrupal’s picture

wdrupal commented

100db's at 100mb each.

When I signed up it was 3 database limit.

How do you manage with those 1and1 web stats?

trojan99’s picture

trojan99 commented

yeah, lots has changed with 1and1. the cstmr service i was bitching about above, well, i ended up eating crow on that when i called them to inquire about the php.ini issue, which ended up being a non-issue, but anyway, i got thru in like 30 seconds to a live person!! whoo-hoo!

when i first signed up, i forget what the db limit was, but i know it was 10mb max for each. i have the dev package on managed linux hosting. i dont know the db limitations for other packages. but its 20 a month to get that level of service [100x100] . i even get a ssl cert with that. even the 3 dollar package is pretty damned good.

the web stats aint all that bad, and you can always choose to look at the raw logs and convert them into whatever format you can use best, as traditional logs are hard to read, [i use notepad++ now, and it makes the logs readable and searchable, thus avoiding conversions] but it became another non-issue once google allowed me to use analytics. now i find drupal, and web stats are everywhere i look, LOL.

vibinc’s picture

vibinc commented

A friend of mine, who works more on the technical end of the web development world turned me on to Drupal as a solution for a couple of projects that I'm working on. I'm a designer more than a coder, though I have been designing, off and on (mostly off) since the mid 90's. I recently moved everything over to 1and1, and based on the comments in this thread I feel fairly confident that it will work pretty well.

My concern is that, because I am a noob to Drupal, and dynamic content management in general, that I'm going to have some trouble getting this going. Luckily, I have about a 2 month window to get this thing really up and running, so at least I don't have a time crunch.

If you can offer any advise, or common pitfalls with installing and implementing Drupal on a 1and1 linux server I would really appreciate your input.

I have been reading the forums for the past two days and have gained some valuable information, as well as some confidence in my ability, as a noob to Drupal, to be able to "make it go" as it were, but any information specific to a 1and1 install, as opposed to other services would be helpful.

Thanks in advance.

-v

nightmarepatrol’s picture

nightmarepatrol commented

The install on 1&1 is pretty easy. The first thing you do is go into they database admin panel and request a new database be initialized. If you plan on having multiple sites it would be advisable to take advantage of naming them on the database panel too (it's an option, it's usefull, use it) After you click okay you will be presented with the dbserver name, the dbname, the dbo name and the password. Then edit your settings.php file locally on your systems and plug in the values you got back from the database creation panel. Next go grab a drink, have a bite to eat or a smoke or whatevery you do kill a some time because you won't have a database immediately. I have found about 15-20 minutes is the norm for the ones that I have created.

After your break, come back and begin the process of FTP'ing your drupal install to 1&1. Open up a browser, and there you have it.

It's a pretty brain-dead install for the most part.

In response to come of the other posts here, I am kind of neutral about 1&1. Good bandwidth, good pricing, but jeez could they make things a little faster? I haven't bothered to try and figure ouy where the bottleneck is. Its seems to be either the web server or the database server and I'm leaning towards the database servers. My new quest is going to be to find a host that puts the databases on the same box as the webserver to speed things up. Of course I want all this for the same of or a beter price. I have found a few options that I am going to pursue. Perhaps I need to start a thread on who actually puts their databases on the same box. Maybe someone will respond, who knows?

Tmax-1’s picture

Tmax-1 commented

hi,

can you please tell me more about multisite with 1&1?
what are the steps as i'm new at this sorry.

Thanks!!

theplaz’s picture

theplaz commented

5% CPU usage for 5 sec also sucks if you try to thumbnail photos over a MB. They just fail because they take too long.

-ThePlaz
(http://theplaz.com)

Anatsim’s picture

Anatsim commented

Can I know your domain name to test server's performance ?
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GP4S
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Anatsim’s picture

Anatsim commented

I just test 2 sites under 1&1: one with DB and another without. NOT BAD in compare with other large space providers.
My results can be viewed for the next 2 days at:

http://scp.netmechanic.com/reports/free/358/0451/03-023614.htm (audibleblog.de with DB)
Performance Summary
Event Your Server's Average NetMechanicAverage Percentile
Host Ping 30000.00 millisec 15063.00 millisec 0
DNS Look Up 0.01 sec 0.33 sec 75
Connect Time 0.13 sec 0.69 sec 57
Download Time (10k file) 0.95 sec 1.15 sec 27
Timeouts 0 -

http://scp.netmechanic.com/reports/free/358/0451/19-023617.htm (4allfree.com w/o DB, i.e. much quicker)
Performance Summary
Event Your Server's Average NetMechanicAverage Percentile
Host Ping 30000.00 millisec 15063.00 millisec 0
DNS Look Up 0.00 sec 0.33 sec 85
Connect Time 0.05 sec 0.69 sec 80
Download Time (10k file) 0.15 sec 1.15 sec 50
Timeouts 0 -

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GP4S
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Spacoli’s picture

Spacoli commented

I run several sites on 1and1. My experience with them has been pretty good. Their main selling point for me was the low price, and the amount of space they include for that price. The customer service is not as good as the other host I use (oneworldhosting). The one thing that really has annoyed me is that they don't allow me to run MySQL databases for banner ad generation and tracking - specifically PHPAdsNew. Apparantly none of their plans support it. Newest site I'm running on 1and1 is www.insidecamps.com. The site isn't the fastest, but it's more due to the code than the host.

Anatsim’s picture

Anatsim commented

Test results for www.insidecamps.com is here for next 2 days :
http://scp.netmechanic.com/reports/free/359/0757/30-027022.htm

Not bad, just too few domains under business account (due to SSH) !

Report For: www.insidecamps.com
Date: Tue 26 Dec
Time: 8:00 - 15:00 USA Eastern Time
Server Type: Apache/1.3.33

Overall Rating: Fair

Performance Summary
Event Your Server's
Average NetMechanic
Average Percentile
Host Ping 30000.00 millisec 15212.82 millisec 0
DNS Look Up 0.01 sec 0.33 sec 75
Connect Time 0.05 sec 0.69 sec 80
Download Time (10k file) 0.49 sec 1.15 sec 37
Timeouts 0 -

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GP4S
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Spacoli’s picture

Spacoli commented

Thanks. Can't say I know what all of those numbers mean, but it's interesting though. That site was actually created using a third-party PHP rating and review script as the basis. That was before I knew about Drupal. If I was to do it over again, I think I would build the site using Drupal.

FirstDayStory’s picture

FirstDayStory commented

We use 1&1 for some of our servers at www.firstdaystory.com

While all in all, I have to give them a thumbs up, I do have a couple issues.....

My main problem with 1&1 is also their stats. I'm also not completely satisfied with their customer service. YES, its true that you can reach someone in minutes. But that person sometimes knows nothing, and whats worse, only sometimes can find out for you!

Anyway, the real reason I'm writing is because their stats have been mentioned. Someone even briefly mentioned that you can access the logs. This is true - and in fact, we hook the logs into AWSTATS without a problem. We actually found a good tutorial back in the day that takes you thru this step by step:

http://1024k.de/awstats/1and1/tutorial.html

We just got a new dedicated machine at 1&1 last month, and as of then, the above tutorial still worked.

Hope that helps you guys.

Best,

Larry

tgcondor’s picture

tgcondor commented

Thank you for a tutorial well-written. It worked for me flawlessly.

If you you have many domains hosted under a single account, and consequently generate many awstats.*.conf files, and you want to generate stats from earlier log entries for ALL the config files, then you could follow the section "V. Importing old data" from the tutorial, or you could follow the steps below:

  1. Merge all the log entries into a single file:
    /path/to/tools/logresolvemerge.pl /path/to/logs/access.log.*.gz > /path/to/temp.log
  2. Import events from the merged log file for each of the config files: 
    for i in `ls -1 awstats.*.conf | sed 's/awstats.//' | sed 's/.conf//'`; do
    echo $i;
    /path/to/cgi-bin/awstats.pl -config=$i -LogFile=/path/to/temp.log -update;
done

    This bash script automatically iterates over the config files and update the stats.

Tip 1: create a config file called awstats.all-sites.conf with any SiteDomain value and HostAliases = "REGEX[.*]". This way you will have an additional stats page that summarizes all your hosted domains on this account.

Tip 2: to allow updating of stats from the browser for all sites, rather than editing each config file one at a time, you could run the follwoing Perl command:

perl -wpi -e 's/^AllowToUpdateStatsFromBrowser=0/AllowToUpdateStatsFromBrowser=1/' *.conf

A similar command can be used for mass-updating of a setting in all the config files (I have about a dozen of them).

TAA

icemantaz’s picture

icemantaz commented

i am based in the uk, and thought id compare two 1and1 sites

this is the US site for 1and1 and if you look they have a 5000gb transfer limit over 100mbit

http://order.1and1.com/xml/order/ServerManaged;jsessionid=76C30A6EDF8528...

BUT

if you look at the UK version of the site then you get UNLIMITED traffic with 100mbit connection.

http://order.1and1.co.uk/xml/order/ServerRoot;jsessionid=B47C857BC19DA6D...

ajevans85’s picture

ajevans85 commented

I will not be using 1and1 hosting for any sites again.

I built a small cms for a friends dog grooming business. It's a small 6 page site but the content can be edited eaisly by the owner. It also has a gallery so images of the dogs and staff can be uploaded to give it a more friendly look and to show people their pets are in good hands. As it's a small site in a niche area it only sees in the region 1 to 10 hits a day.

With the site being so small I recommended 1and1 based on the price. At first all worked well... till I get a phonecall saying image uploads no longer work. I narrowed the problem down to uploads being over about 500kb failing, looking on here it is to do with the cpu time for resizing.

Ringing tech support I get absolutely no where. I get through to a call center god knows where and end up speaking with someone with very poor broken english who insits it is the software (drupal) at fault. Even after stating:

  • The site previously worked
  • Their has been no code change since going live
  • A database dump and recreating the instalation on a in house dev box runs without any trouble
  • I use the same platform for sites much much larger than this with various other hosts without this problem

I now have my friend who i did the site for (which was a freebie anyway) on at me about it not working. When we first signed up I think it was a twelf month contract so she'll be out of pocket if we moves hosts.

It would be nice if 1and1 acknoledged the problems, ecpecialy when I say I have read (and give links) to people with similar problems and stating it was down to cpu time, but no i get told it's a problem with the software.

sk33lz’s picture

sk33lz commented

I have 2 of the sites below running on 1and1 servers and I upload files both through Drupal and straight through FTP where most files exceed 1MB. I don't understand your theory of 500kb max. Maybe the resolution of the images were too big for upload and resizing? Do you use imagecache? I know that I cannot just upload a picture from my digital camera to my website. I have to resize the image in gimp or something to 2048 or 1024 before uploading to my photo gallery. I am certain there is a limit on imagecache's image resolutions and possibly file sizes as well. Perhaps that was your issue instead.

Sk33lz

Drupalmao!
Fractal Art
Free Flash Games

Systems Engineer at Zivtech

ajevans85’s picture

ajevans85 commented

The 500kb max is for images which are automatically resized using image cache. I don't have a need to upload normal files to my site, however a zip file for example wouldn't need processing (requiring cpu time) so I doub't i would have a problem uploading regular 500kb+ files.

The original photo's being uploaded where not that big to start with resolution wise, most about 1mb or less. However as the size was bigger than my requirements these still small images needed re-sizing. The little cpu time required to size a small photo wasn't provided by 1&1 and resulted in server 500 errors.

On a plus point the site has now been migrated over to http://www.tsohost.co.uk . It's using the exact same code base / db dump from 1&1 and is working without any problems at all. The support for tsohost seem so much better than 1&1, I get more control over the package as it uses CPanel. Best point from my friends/customer point of few, it's half the price of 1&1's supposedly pro business package, it works, and if we need to contact support we don't get diverted to india with some numpty reading off a sheet of paper who cannot go off script.

manish0109’s picture

manish0109 commented

I have bought a domain itechfreak from 1and1, Everytime I receive alert from Web CEO they complain about low DNS time, my website's DNS look up time is 450 ms. According to Web CEO, average DNS look up time is 140ms.

I dint have any issues with their support yet, but yes performance is really a big issue.

Regards,
Manish
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