As one of the world’s largest Windows web hosting companies, 1and1 focuses on reliability and innovation to continue their rise to the top of the industry. The company has more than 70,000 servers in various locations around the world, and features some excellent customer support and uptime figures. 1and1 offers a wide range of products from domain names to hosting to website packages. 1and1 is actually one of the oldest web hosting companies – founded in 1988. And they are also one of the more aggressive advertisers with full-page ads in magazines and TV spots. Let’s take a closer look at 1and1 and their Windows hosting.

1and1 Pricing

1and1 Starter Windows is priced at $4.99 per month, and comes with 50 GB of web space, unlimited monthly data transfer, 250 email accounts and 1 MS-SQL database which can be used with WordPress or any other software which requires database access.

1and1 Unlimited Windows is essentially a higher powered version of the Starter package, and provides unlimited web storage space, unlimited monthly data transfer, one free domain name registration and 5 MS-SQL databases. This package is suitable for those individuals who plan on running a number of websites off of the same Windows web hosting plan.

1and1 Business Windows comes in at $4.99 for the first 12 months and $9.99 per month thereafter. This package offers unlimited web space, unlimited monthly data transfer, a free domain name registration, unlimited email accounts and up to 20 MS-SQL databases. Those who are interested can also make use of a free SSL certificate for secure web transmission.

Poor Reputation

Big brand doesn’t always mean a good product. We have seen many complaints about their windows hosting services, there is allusion said “You’ll get what you pay for” or “cheap price, but a lot of headache”.

Performance and Reliability

The one true job a website hosting server is to deliver your website files as quickly and as reliably as possible everytime someone asks for them (by typing in your domain name).

We have read so many negative reviews about their windows hosting service. We have investigated about their service and found someone claim about their poor performance. Here is the results about their speed test in January 2014.

We did the performance comparison between 1and1 and the other UK windows hosting provider HostForLIFE by hosting the same ASP.NET site with the same scripts and the same content. As a conclusion, we found the site hosted with HostForLIFE is nearly 90% faster than 1and1 during the working time, including the database query performance, page generation performance, and page loading speed.

1and1 Customer Service

1and1 offers toll-free technical support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This is an excellent selling feature and one that should probably be standard throughout the Windows web hosting industry. They claimed that they have 24 hours support time, but as a reality, they can’t give this support. From customer experience, we found that customers need to wait 1 week later to answer the customer’s problem. This is very annoying and we found that their clients very frustrated with this condition.

Although you call them, they can’t fix your issue at that time and you need to wait for few days. Their support time is very slow.

1and1 Good Value for Money?

Based on customer experience, we can’t recommend 1and1 as your windows hosting provider. They are cheap, but they can’t solve your problem. If you compare it wisely, it is same like you put your money to garbage. If you’re looking for a reliable UK windows hosting service for personal and small businesses, we recommend you going with HostForLIFE. Since the company entered the web hosting market back in 2008, it has been steadily growing and has been able to maintain its quality throughout while still holding a place among the leaders. They are also reputed to offer their clients great customer care and support along with an undisrupted up time of up to 99.9%. Please just check HostForLIFE review to find more about their services.

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