1and1 Introduction

If you are a business owner and you have always put off the task of starting a website that your customers can use to gain information about your company, now is as good a time to start as any. The first thing that you need to do is look for a good web hosting provider. There are many companies offering this type of service today, and one of them is 1and1.com. Here, we will take a look at how reliable 1and1 is as a web hosting company, how much the price of the packages that they offer are and how they fare in terms of customer support, control panel and overall rating for the service. Let us start with the basic information about 1and1. The company behind 1and1 is 1&1 Internet, Ltd. and the business started 12 years ago. They are considered as the largest web hosting company in the world. You can just imagine how big a company 1&1 Internet, Ltd. is based on the number of new customers signing up for their services everyday: 2,500.

Reliability

Next, let us take a look at just how reliable 1and1 is as a web hosting company. They wouldn’t emerge to be the top company of their kind in the entire world if they do not offer reliable web hosting services. And the best way to determine the reliability of a web hosting company is by getting information about their data center. The highlight of the services offered by 1and1 is the Data Center IV that they have. The company employs four data centers worldwide which meets the high-security, speed and safety demands of the millions of websites that they host. The uptime guarantee offered by 1and1 is 99.99%, which means that your website will hardly ever be down. This is made possible with the backup system that they have which includes generators, multiple hard drives, dual routers and real redundancy for their high-end servers. Optimum speed and maximum security are the other assurance that you can have of just how reliable 1and1 is as a web hosting company.

Price Value

If you are taking advantage of a package offered by the world’s best web hosting company, does it mean that you have to pay an arm and a leg for the service? Not necessarily. In this section, we will take a look at the powerful dedicated hosting solutions offered by 1and1. The good thing about taking advantage of the dedicated servers packages that they offer is that you will get the flexibility of a dedicated server at really affordable prices. Currently, 1and1 has a 50% off promo for the first six months (please check on the official website for the updated prices and ongoing promotions). There are two dedicated server packages available: Linux VPS and Windows VPS. For Linux VPS, you can take advantage of up to 1 GB guaranteed RAM and up to 1 GB burstable RAM. The package also includes Cent OS5, Plesk 9, Root Access and a dedicated IP address. On the other hand, the Windows VPS package includes up to 2 GB of guaranteed RAM. The dedicated server package runs on a Windows 2003 Server and it also includes Plesk 9, remote desktop access and a dedicated IP address.

Control Panel

Unlike other web hosting companies which allow their customers to use the cPanel control panel which is popular and easy to use, 1and1 uses the unique 1&1 Control Panel. Is this a benefit or a disadvantage? With the 1&1 control panel, you will be able to perform the following tasks: easily update your personal data; manage the e-mail addresses under your account; view and configure your domain names and reach all your programs and applications. What sets this control panel apart from the cPanel control panel, for example, is that it is browser-based. This means that you can tinker with the website, update and modify the content from anywhere. Even though the 1&1 Control Panel is not the control panel of choice, website administrators will still be able to maximize the potential of their website because of the many tasks that they can complete using this unique control panel.

Customer Support

1and1 has a comprehensive FAQ or Frequently Asked Questions section on their website. This is where you can gain access to the basic questions that you have about the services offered by 1and1. How about the channels that you can use to get in touch with 1and1 in case you have specific, service-related questions? They do have a sales information hotline, an Unlimited Express Support which offers 24/7 support over the phone and billing support by phone is also available. There is no live chat support available but you can get in touch with the company via e-mail round the clock.

Summary

As you can see, 1and1 offers a package that will suit the needs of everybody – including those who are just starting out in building a website, hobbyists, small business sites, large business sites and web developers. When you combine this with the fact that 1and1 is one of the largest and best web hosting services provider on the Internet today – there is no doubt that you will never go wrong when taking advantage of any of the packages that they offer.