By Aren Cambre on

Page loads and administrative functions run slow as molasses on my 1and1 Beginner Hosting package ($2.99/mo). E.g., about 3 seconds to just load a home that shows the 4 steps to creating a new site.

Have any of you tried 1and1 and compared it to performance on other hosts or with more expensive 1and1 hosting? Is 1and1 Beginner really that slow, or is Drupal just too big and hairy to expect speed?

Sure, it's cheap, but the slowness is annoying.

⋅ Categories: Drupal 5.x

Comments

US421’s picture

US421 commented

I think it varies. I switched from the 1&1 business package about the same time I upgraded to Drupal 5 and it seemed slow before as well. Right at this minute it is running about the same as my other shared hosts. It could be slower during peak times.

Sorry, creative non-answer here.

Vibrators’s picture

Vibrators commented

I run my site on 1&1 and the speed is great. I think it's luck and how many other sites are on the server with you.

jmarkantes’s picture

jmarkantes commented

I'm working on updating a site to drupal that's been hosted on 1and1 for some time. It's usually very slow. Occasionally get internal server errors. Things came to a crashing halt a few weeks ago, and after finally getting in touch with support things improved. GREATLY. But as the last few weeks have gone by, things are slowing down again.

I'm using the devel module and consistently get 10 seconds or more page execution times. It's excruciating, especially as I'm trying to convince the website owner that this is a good idea.

Other hosts I use (Personalsites.org and Rochen.com) are definitely faster, usually .4-3 second execution times. In general though, anything over 1 second I think is way too slow. Personalsites and Rochen are usually under 1 second, occasionally over.

I haven't looked into 1and1 enough to find out more about their server setup. In general they're not the easiest to work. At some point I'll likely try to convince the website owner to move away from them. And, they outsource their phone support, so email is better for clear communication.

Good luck,
Jason

xjohnson’s picture

xjohnson commented

It's really slow for me as well. I use Drupal to host a podcast from my 1and1.com personal account. It's almost too slow to be usable, but it's okay for what I need.

"You get what you pay for" definitely applies here for the speed.

jd4x4’s picture

jd4x4 commented

Yes. It is sloowww lately. I've been using them for a little over 3 years, and it's never been as slow as it has been over the last 2 or 3 weeks. Prior to that I was a VERY happy camper with their speed. Funny too, because I was on a free first-user Professional Intro package for 3 years & I referred a bunch of web developers to them because they were so good. Now it's expired and just after I got the Business package, it's gotten slow!

However, I seem to have noticed that it's getting better in the last day or so. I've also had ftp problems that I never had before, and when I called they genuinely seemed to be concerned & investigated. They said they were working on some known problems, & gave me a 2 hour fix time, which they actually met.

I'm crossing my fingers, but I saw on their web site that they just (today?) opened a new server farm/central something in Kansas City (I think they used to be in PA), so I'm betting that the switchover has had something to do with these problems.

Like I said, I'm crossing my fingers. They've been excellent for 3 years, I'd hate to leave them but I will if it doesn't get better in a few weeks.

kbahey’s picture

kbahey commented

Check if they have PHP installed as CGI.

Create a file called phpinfo.php in the same directory that index.php is in.
Put in it the following:

phpinfo();

Then point your browser to http://example.com/phpinfo.php and see if PHP is installed as a CGI.

There may be other reasons, such as running MySQL on another server, ...etc.
--
Drupal development and customization: 2bits.com
Personal: Baheyeldin.com

--
Drupal performance tuning and optimization, hosting, development, and consulting: 2bits.com, Inc. and Twitter at: @2bits
Personal blog: Ba

Aren Cambre’s picture

Aren Cambre commented

Yeah, MySQL is on a different server.

kbahey’s picture

kbahey commented

Having the MySQL server on a separate host in and of itself is not a reason for slowness.

Many large sites separate the db server from the Apache/PHP server to get more performance.

However, if the db server is serving many Apache hosts, it could be overloaded, and hence you see the slowness.

Dreamhost does the same thing (separate db host) even for the dedicated server (which they no longer sell), and they are sometimes slow.
--
Drupal development and customization: 2bits.com
Personal: Baheyeldin.com

--
Drupal performance tuning and optimization, hosting, development, and consulting: 2bits.com, Inc. and Twitter at: @2bits
Personal blog: Ba

swimswimswim’s picture

swimswimswim commented

I tried the phpinfo.php test on a Dreamhost server and it stated

Server API CGI/FastCGI

I've been wholly disappointed by the slow speeds of Dreamhost servers. Drupal, Gallery and WordPress are almost always slow when hosted by Dreamhost.

The tradeoff of course is the enormous bandwidth, storage and number of domains allowed by Dreamhost.

Aren Cambre’s picture

Aren Cambre commented

I'm glad you reported that. I am disappointed with 1and1's slowness. However, even though 1and1 is cheaper than Dreamhost, it still has gobs of monthly bandwidth.

carsonadams’s picture

carsonadams commented

I have a dedicated server with 1and1, it seems very slowly lately.. but only for some people who use Rogers cable as their ISP. I looked into the issue and it seems the problem starts around one of the nods leading to their data center...

TRACE ROUTE:
9. te8-1-10g.ar4.nyc1.gblx.net ( 800 ms)
10 schlundandpartnerag.ge-4-0-0.405.gblx.net (900 ms)
13 s174037****. (800 ms)

I wonder what the problem may be...

Carson Adams
www.classicdesign.ca

Aren Cambre’s picture

Aren Cambre commented

I did a couple of tests, and as long as you have almost no modules installed, your site may run acceptably on 1and1.com. But the second you start piling on modules, the site slows to a crawl, especially when you log in as an administrator.

jd4x4’s picture

jd4x4 commented

If your package allows for more than one mySQL database, you might want to try creating a new one and see if switching to that server makes a difference.

I have a genealogy app that I've been playing with, and created two databases for it while experimenting. I just checked and one runs slow while the other is remarkably faster. It's the luck of the draw as to which server you get when you create a database it seems, and it certainly looks like one in my setup has some issues!

lucky65656’s picture

lucky65656 commented

1and1.com has migrated their servers to Kansas. In doing so, they have apparently changed their Microsoft Server..or so I assume, seeing that my MSSQL connection string no longer works (I am using ASP classic)

If anyone knows what I need to change in my connection string, please advise. My site is down till this is resolved, and 1and1.com support has not sent me any information (which is incredibly dissapointing)

My job on the line, for I am one of hundreds of freelancers my company could use ):

Oh - I was told by a sales manager (I've tried every tactic I can to get information) that their now using ISS 6.0 - but I'm assuming he's speaking of the old server. That sounds like what is on typical MS2000 servers. I'm pretty sure the've updated to VISTA.

lucky65656@yahoo.com

Aren Cambre’s picture

Aren Cambre commented

Windows 2000 runs IIS 5.0. IIS 6.0 is the latest and greatest released IIS, and the only Windows server product it runs on is Windows 2003.

Windows Vista is not a server, it's a desktop OS. It has IIS 7.0, anyway, but as with XP and Windows 2000, the IIS on workstation OSes is not capable of running large servers.

SSHGuy’s picture

SSHGuy commented

I never had any speed problems at 1and1 yet. I'm on a business package!

________________
Web Directory

Aren Cambre’s picture

Aren Cambre commented

How long does it take for an average Drupal page to load for you?

tvs_guy’s picture

tvs_guy commented

It is taking SEVERAL seconds to go. Painfully slow. Logged in in general, it's almost acceptable, but I think too slow to impress people.
I set up a forum with SMF that used a different database server than my Drupal's config, but it's not acting any faster. I'm wondering if I'll have to keep trying to create new databases and redirect Drupal until it gets fast--however, this is not an acceptable way to work for the long term.

Mosso.com is looking appealing, but it costs much more. And they don't currently support crontabs. Bummer. For 60USD, 1and1 has semi-dedicated servers, and I'll report back if I have any luck there if I end up trying that.

-=thevisualsense.com=-

Aren Cambre’s picture

Aren Cambre commented

You don't need cron. Just use the poormanscron module.

tvs_guy’s picture

tvs_guy commented

And it's very, very fast. I think I'm running into some PHP memory problems now, so I'll be researching that. There's no hand-holding with their "VPS" service, so it's more complicated to get going. You are actually in control of your own DNS server, as well as setting up hosting accounts within the virtual private server of your own. I had to reboot my system once already--but it's lightning fast when you do have to do such a thing.
-=tvswebserver.com=-

trojan99’s picture

trojan99 commented

me niether, i have a dev package and run a multi site across 3 domains with one of my drupal installs. admin pages are slower to load [2.1 secs] but when im logged as my user account or anon user, i get below 1 sec load times. considering the amount of blocks i have enabled for default anon users, and considering the amount of external calls for google adsense, analytics, dynamic content providers and feeds, sub 1 sec load times for users is more than fine with me. i do have a static 404 page that loads in .1 tho :P

daad’s picture

daad commented

Hi Aren,

Try

http://www.domainsonthego.com

they work great for me...

Good Luck

nightmarepatrol’s picture

nightmarepatrol commented

I have several domains in the 1and1 business (linux) package. Unfortunately I have to share the server with about 800 pharmacy sites now. The connection response time is slower than it should be although once connected it does improve. I can't say if the problems lies in DNS or in their routers and I don't have the interest to investivage. It is however inexpensive for what you get.

- np -

Aren Cambre’s picture

Aren Cambre commented

How can you tell who you're sharing with?

nightmarepatrol’s picture

nightmarepatrol commented

You can go to www.whois.sc and use their domain tools to determine who you share space with. I believe you will also be required to create a free account there.