PROS:

• I use 1&1 for buying domains because their price isn't bad (~$8) and they offer privacy on the domains for "free"
• They are very cheap
• They are usable, and I haven't had very many problems that require support

CONS:

• Drupal installs on 1&1 require that you manually tweek the php.ini file to turn register_globals off.
• Customer service has been slow and sub-par.
• You can't manually set the name or password of database users or FTP users (they're all randomly generated).
• Performance of the servers are only mediocre.

Bottom Line: Yes, I would recommend it to a friend... with a warning.

I use 1and1 often.

THE GOOD:
-- 1and1 sites seem to be relatively fast in comparison to other hosts. I've moved sites around and 1and1 always seems to perform great.
-- control panel is intuitive
-- up to date on SQL and PHP
-- Reliable thus far. I've used 1and1 for three years now on sites and hardly goes down. I think I recall 1 or 2 weekends with some delays or downtime in the 3 years.
-- price is great

THE BAD:
-- Requires PHP.ini for both register_global = off and PHP memory limit setting.
-- FTP managing is lame (randomly generated)
-- customer service is offshore.

I have been hosting with them for about two years. I have enjoyed their service, however I think it's kind of bloated. I think there database and FTP system sucks and so does their customer support. Their prices are reasonable though. I would suggest buying your domains from 1&1 and transferring them to another service.

I tried a Sharepoint account with 1and1. It was terrible. Very limited control over Sharepoint configuration.

I tried calling technical support on three different occasions and each call was over 30 minutes of waiting. The techs were not helpful in answering my questions about the hosting plan and Sharepoint. I finally canceled out of frustration.

I use 1and1 for all of my domain registrations and I recommend them to my customers. Why?

• Their normal prices are reasonable (< $10 per year) and you don't need any special promotion to get those prices.
• They don't charge extra for private registrations!
• Registering additional domains is relatively easy.

However, there are a couple of areas where they could use improvement:

• You can't register for more than one year at a time.
• You can't assign your own nameservers until after they've processed the domain registration. This means you have to go back and make this change sometime after you've registered the name, usually about 6 hours later. It would be nice to do this all at the same time.
• Their administrative interface doesn't show the expiration dates for your domains.

I don't recommend them for hosting because I believe I know better hosting companies. However, my wife has a static HTML site hosted on 1and1 and it seems to perform well. I also have a domain hosted there specifically to serve some large files for another site; this also performs acceptably.

Curt

Our site has been down for two days at a very critical time. Their service is totally useless. I am ready for a different hosting company now! My advice now is: stay away.

I have been using 1&1 for nearly 4 years. They have been much more responsive than my previous hosts, but I can see some slippage as they grow.

The offshore support has been iffy. I have gotten good answers in the past, and I have gotten no answers a time or two.

The aforementioned php.ini thing is true. I never used Drupal before 2008, so that was never an issue before. I am currently hosting 5 Drupal sites in the 1&1 Business (Linux) plan, not to mention 10 HTML/PHP based sites.

I have noticed some latency on the sites during certain hours. When administering Drupal, I occassionally have to give up and come back later, especially on the Modules page, as the Server 500 errors can really pile on in that area. I've increased memory in my php.ini sites and I wonder if I've maxed out the available RAM they offer me in those 5 sites, because the latest site doesn't seem to have benefitted from the changes.

All in all, I'm pleased with them. I've noticed fewer than 48 hours of site downtime in 4 years, and about 36 of that was in one single outage, for which they credited my account a month's service fees.