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Who is 1&1 Hosting?

It supports multiple forms of hosting, which includes Shared hosting, managed hosting, VPS hosting and many others.

1&1 provides few other distinctive features along with its hosting platform. If you are looking for feature-rich and affordable hosting options, then here is one where you can find these.

Like every other hosting platform, 1&1 has few pros and few cons.

Let me run you through a detailed review of 1&1 hosting platform based on my personal experience of using it.

PROS:

There are some added advantages of using 1&1 hosting. I would first discuss the pros of using 1&1.

Few of these are-

1. Speed and Performance:

In terms of speed 1&1 is not very bad, recently I had conducted speed test where I compared with Godaddy.

Here are the screenshots of speed test:

Godaddy:

VS.

1&1 Hosting:

Above speed test results which clearly indicates that 1&1 hosting slightly leads over GoDaddy.

You can host your website for just $0.99 /month with 1&1 hosting, while with Godaddy the cost will be $2.49/mo.

Is this not fair to choose 1and1 over Godaddy?

See 1&1 hosting’s full plans here…

2. Security and Reliability:

Well, this is a good news for users, since basic security features have been included as part of the plan. While a lot of hosting platforms charge these separately, 1&1 has ensured to include these features even for the basic plan.

As part of added security features, 1&1 includes free SSL with every plan. Point to be noted, a lot of hosting platforms charge separately for SSL.

SiteLock is included as part of the Pro plan, while for others this is optional and can be added at any point in time.

Worthwhile noting is their inclusion of Webspace and database backups irrespective of the plan you chose. This is combined with data recovery in all plans.

DDoS protection to protect websites from hackers and cybercriminals is part of every plan.

To ensure your data is secure and always accessible, they provide redundant network connectivity serving up to 300 Gbits/s.

Also included is geo-redundancy to ensure your data has secure backup across geographically different location. This is to ensure you face the lowest downtime. 1&1 offers a great approach to ensure security and reliability.

3. Plans and Pricing:

I found that 1&1 has well-segregated plans with competitive pricing. As part of the plan 1&1 has 3 different plans- Basic, Plus and Pro. Each plan is affordable as compared to several other hosting options.

Features	Basic	Unlimited Plus	Unlimited Pro
Storage	100 GB	Unlimited	Unlimited
Bandwidth	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Panel	cPanel	cPanel	cPanel
Number of Sites	1	Unlimited	Unlimited
E-mail Accounts	500	Unlimited	Unlimited
Databases	25 DB	Unlimited DB	Unlimited DB
Price	$0.99/mo	$4.99/mo	$8.99/mo

The plans cater to low resource requirement to high-end websites.

The plans are cheap if chosen for a period of 12 months. Beyond this, the renewals are at $7.99 per month for the starting plan. Still, I would say, the pricing is almost at par with the other hosting platforms.

Apart from shared hosting options, 1&1 also provides Managed Cloud Hosting, WordPress hosting, Dedicated server hosting, VPS hosting, Cloud server hosting.

Cloud Hosting Plans

Plans	Space	RAM	CPU	Price
Cloud Server M	50 GB	1 GB	1 vCore	$9.99 /month
Cloud Server L	80 GB	2 GB	2 vCores	$19.99 /month
Cloud Server XL	120 GB	4 GB	2 vCores	$29.99 /month
Cloud Server XXL	160 GB	8 GB	4 vCores	$49.99 /month
Cloud Server 3XL	240 GB	16 GB	8 vCores	$129.99 /month
Cloud Server 4XL	360 GB	32 GB	12 vCores	$249.99 /month
Cloud Server 5XL	500 GB	48 GB	16 vCores	$349.99 /month

VPS Hosting Plans

Plans	Space	RAM	CPU	Price
Cloud S	30 GB SSD	512 MB	1 vCore	$4.99 /month
Cloud M	50 GB SSD	1 GB	1 vCore	$4.99 /month
Cloud L	80 GB SSD	2 GB	2 vCores	$9.99 /month
Cloud XL	120 GB SSD	4 GB	2 vCores	$19.99 /month
Cloud XXL	160 GB SSD	8 GB	4 vCores	$29.99 /month

Dedicated Server Plans

Plans	Space	RAM	CPU	Price
L4i	1,000 GB	12 GB	4 Cores x 3.1 GHz	$59.99 /month
L-16	1,000 GB	16 GB	4 Cores x 3.5 GHz	$49.99 /month
XL-32	2,000 GB	32 GB	4 Cores x 3.8 Ghz	$79.99 /month
XL-64	2,000 GB	64 GB	4 Cores x 3.8 GHz	$109.99 /month
X8i	4,000 GB	64 GB	8 Cores x 2.4 GHz	$224.99 /month
X10i	6,000 GB	128 GB	10 Cores	$299.99 /month
A8i	1,000 GB	8 GB	8 Cores x 2.4 GHz	3 months FREE
A8i SSD	240 GB	8 GB	8 Cores x 2.4 GHz	$29.99 /month
XL6	1,000 GB	16 GB	6 Cores x 2.8 GHz	3 months FREE
X4i	1,500 GB	16 GB	4 Cores x 3.5 GHz	$59.99 /month
XL8	1,000 GB	16 GB	8 Cores x 2.6 GHz	3 months FREE
XL12i	2,000 GB	32 GB	6 Cores x 2.5GHz	$149.99 /month

Similarly, managed Cloud hosting starts at $14.99 per month, while dedicated server hosting starts at $59.99 per month. With varied hosting options, 1&1 plans are flexible as well as affordable at the same time.

4. 1&1 Features:

When it’s about features there are a lot of things you get with 1&1. One differentiator is the fact that most of the add-ons are part of the plan.

Each plan accommodates a good memory with the starting plan providing 2.5 Gb RAM which is sufficient for dynamic web projects which are run on a small scale. The highest plan supports 9 GB of RAM.

Email Accounts are part of the plan and you do not have to pay anything additional. Each account supports 2 GB Email storage.

The domain is free for first 12 months. Commonly used domain extensions such as (com, net, org, info, biz, website, club, me) are included for free.

Higher end plan includes Unlimited Storage, unlimited websites, unlimited Databases and unlimited email accounts.

The plans offer different hardware support as listed below-

• Basic – Provides 2.5 GB RAM with 1.25 which is always guaranteed. Can handle approximately 300 processes per minute and is equivalent to about 100 visitors per minute. The basic plan supports 20 FTP/SFTP accounts
• Plus – Provides 6 GB RAM of which 3 GB is always guaranteed. Can handle approximately 600 processes per minute and is equivalent to about 200 visitors per minute. Plus, the plan supports Unlimited FTP/SFTP accounts.
• Pro – Provides 9 GB RAM of which 4.5 GB always guaranteed. Can handle approximately 900 processes per minute and is equivalent to about 300 visitors per minute. Pro plan supports Unlimited FTP/SFTP accounts.
  All plans include cPanel and website builder. Support for SSH, WebDAV and are IPv6 ready.

Overall, 1&1 has well-blended features with essential features incorporated into the plan. There are no surprise added costs for these plans.

5. Apps and Scripts:

This is yet another pro which is equally important when you look for additional third-party app support.

At a basic level, 1&1 provides easy access to several apps. It supports over 70 one-click installations of apps. These do not carry any extra charges.

Few of the apps included are- WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento, TYPO3 and many more. There are several HTML code snippets readily available for popular widgets.

With 1&1, you do not have to sit back and develop or change code snippets.

1&1 supports NetObjects Fusion 2015 which is used for creating web pages.

Another aspect is that it provides an easy to use Webspace explorer which can be easily accessed via a browser. This also provides support for PHP 5.6, 7.0, 7.1 and 7.2. The PHP versions can be upgraded at any point in time.

Database supported is MySQL 5 which provides 1GB each. Zend which is a component oriented framework for PHP is also included as part of all the plans.

Other scripting languages supported include- Perl, Python, and Ruby. Also supported are SSI and Cron Manager for Cron Jobs.

6. Customer Support:

Well, 1&1 does not have a live chat option, something which most hosting platforms offer. Still, I would like to highlight their customer support, owing to the additional support they offer on their website.

1&1 includes 24/7 customer service support. They can be reached through a hotline number. Apart from this, there are other services included such as help center and community support.

The support is also provided in the form of FAQs and dedicated popular categories section. It is extremely simple to use and browse through these extensive resources.

7. Money-Back Guarantee:

Money-back guarantee is an important aspect of any hosting platform. This allows users to first try all the features before committing to any specific plan.

Every plan included in 1&1 has a 30- day money back guarantee.

8. Email Hosting:

Every plan in 1&1 includes email hosting. The basic plan supports 500 email accounts. All other plans have support for unlimited email accounts.

Per email account storage available is 2 GB. Supports email forwarding and includes webmail 2.0 to manage and access emails.

This also includes anti-phishing and anti-spam protection to protect against spam and fake websites.

1&1 is amongst the few websites which include email hosting as part of even the basic plan and additionally provides essential email hosting features embedded into the plan.

CONS:

Now, that I have discussed all the pros, let me now speak about few cons over here.

1. Live-Chat Option:

I have already mentioned about the customer support in the pros of 1&1. However, customer support would have been even better and effective, if they had a live chat option.

1&1 has good customer support but does not have a live chat option. Live chat option is yet another easier way to reach customer support.

This is one point which makes them weak as compared to several other hosting platforms available out there in the market.

2. Higher renewals:

I did mention about their plans and pricing earlier. The pricing is extremely cheap for first-time users.

So basically, first-time plans are cheaper as compared to renewals. So for any plan you choose, the first 12 months are at a lower pricing.

I would not straight away add this as a con since a lot of hosting platforms use this strategy. However, yes I would like to highlight this point since it is also a deciding factor before you choose a hosting platform.

CONCLUSION:

1&1 has a fairly affordable pricing as compared to several other hosting options. Though renewals are priced higher than first time usage, still the pricing is affordable with the basic plan having a renewal of $7.99 per month.

This is also beneficial since a lot of added security features are part of the plan which otherwise in several hosting platforms is charged separately.

Its extensive feature list which is included as part of the plan makes this a strong competitor in the market.

The website builder is easy to use with multilingual support, photo editor and an extensive image library with a range of varied templates that are mobile responsive.

This is a good option in case you need fairly good support for third-party apps since 1&1 supports the one-click installation of several apps. Overall, a good option to try this out for small to medium sized websites.

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