Exclusive 1and1 Hosting Interview
May 4, 2008
Stumble it!This is an exclusive interview with the Online Marketing Director of 1&1. But before continuing I would like to announce that 1&1 will send 2 copies of Microsoft FrontPage to make a mini contest and you can be the winner, will be an easy contest. I will thanks Jesse Bouman, Benjamin Schloss (Online Marketing Coordinator of 1&1) & Joshua the Online Marketing Director of 1&1 for giving the time for this interview and the special gifts that will be awarded to 2 lucky winners in Googlelady (stay tunned!).
- Q. How long has 1&1 been in hosting industry?
A: 1&1 was originally founded in 1988 in Germany and primarily focused on providing internet access. In 1998, 1&1’s parent company, United Internet, became one of the first web companies to go public and began to offer web hosting shortly thereafter. Fortunately, we were one of the few tech companies that survived the now infamous “dot com crash”. - Q. There are many problems in the hosting industry, when a company offers a big amount of disk space and bandwidth with a low cost… When a site has a lot of traffic, the hosting company suspend their account because of “high load of cpu process” what do you have to say about this regard 1and1?
A: In general, I warn consumers to beware of companies that say ‘unlimited bandwidth and storage’. This is a physical impossibility and a myth that some companies continue to spread.
The overloading of shared CPU processes can happen even if a site does not have huge traffic volumes – a poorly coded or hacked website can even cause this to happen. It is true that the problem can become worse with more site visitors. On the systems side, it could be difficult to know if a site has been compromised or hacked, so system admins will sometimes make the to temporarily suspended an account. Normally, our policy is to just move the site to an auxiliary server rather than just take it down. We just don’t want such a problem to affect the many other sites that reside on the same server. Often a simple upgrade of the account to another hosting plan, VPS or dedicated server can help alleviate this problem and can help you get your site back up.
- Q. I have been researching many 1and1 hosting customers’ opinions, and there are many negative ones. What you would like to say about this issue?
A: If you check any large brand name in any industry, you will see more complaints than you do for smaller companies. It is no different in the hosting industry.
I think that most negative statements online occurred in the first couple years after 1&1 launched in the U.S. Unfortunately on the web, these things stick around for a long time, even long after the issues have been corrected. I started with 1&1 in 2004, not long after they entered the U.S. market. I definitely felt like we were experiencing some ‘growing pains’ due to the incredible and overwhelming demand for our products. Since that time I have seen 1&1 make great leaps in accommodating the expectations of the American market. I know many people in 1&1 are continuously striving to adapt our products and processes to be able to increase customer satisfaction.
I guess it makes sense that larger companies can have more complaints. However, I must say that no hosting company can grow to over 7 million customers, 10 million domains, 48,000+ web servers, and over 5 million active websites if they were doing everything wrong. The thing to remember is that happy customers simply are not as vocal online. I firmly believe that 1&1 has infinitely more happy customers than unhappy ones.
Unfortunately for consumers, many ‘review sites’, blogs and forums that allow public comments can be easily skewed a financial interest in talking bad about some companies - and not others. Random site visitors usually won’t catch this and may believe that comments written by fake customers, competitors, or affiliates represent an unbiased truth.
- Q. In this post: ( 1and1 Coupons ) you can see there are two people said that 1&1 has issues like “Customer support” and “Double charging their credit cards”. What you can say about this?
A: Although I don’t really want my email address to be made public, you are welcome to forward specific cases to me to see if I can help out. I can’t always promise I can resolve a specific issue, but I do promise to try!
Customer Support is the Achilles heel of the entire hosting industry. When you get a brilliant tech to help you, they are your angel. When you don’t get one, or can’t get the help you need, you are justifiably frustrated. I know that no company has 100% perfect support.
If they were to tell you this, it would be disingenuous. In some ways we are an out of the box solution provider. This means that we may not always have the flexibility that some might expect. I know we take network security, account and site security very serious, which some of the other 20,000 + hosts may not always do, this can sometimes be frustrating, but it’s really for the common good.
As far as “double-billing”, this is extremely weird and I would suspect a rare occurrence. I’m skeptical of such generalized claims. It certainly is NOT a standard business practice at 1&1. If it ever had occurred, it seems like an easy thing to correct for our billing team. I think more people are likely to be unhappy with billing practices when they do not keep their contact and billing information up to date, and thus fall into trouble as a result of not following through with their own financial responsibilities.
- Q. I have seen that our reader can now buy an .info domain name for $0.99 at 1and1.com. Could you tell Googlelady’s readers more about it? When it will expire?
A: The current $0.99 info domain offer is running at least until the end of May 2008. I am pretty sure that it will be popular enough to be extended until the end of June. While .info domains are not as popular as .com domain names, they are still valuable. And at this price, everyone can buy them without spending a lot of money.
Good .com names are becoming somewhat hard to obtain. If you own other TLDs (top level domains), I would recommend you secure the .info form of your domains as well, to prevent someone else from using it. The .info names can also make great domains for specialized marketing campaigns, micro sites and landing pages.
A couple cool features of all 1&1 domains are that they come with:
Free Private Registration – to protect your identity and help you avoid “whois spam”.
Free 5 page WYSIWYG simple site builder + and email accountThis current special .info offer does NOT require you to be an existing customer, and does NOT require you to buy some other product. The price is for your first year of registration, and after that returns to our standard pricing, which right now is just $6.99.
- Q. Why do you think 1&1 is special comparing with other hosting companies?
A: I like the fact that we offer so many things to our clients which other hosting companies charge for. 1&1 is definitely an aggressive pricing and feature leader. Even the customers of other web hosts benefit from our strong competition in the hosting industry. This is because all web hosts are now forced to try to offer their customer more for less – precisely because of large hosts like 1&1. I also like the staying power of a company like 1&1; small companies seem to often be positioning themselves for buyouts. If you are in a company that is bought out, about to be bought out, or that is failing, be careful…
- Q. Nowadays, many people want to start their own blog. Do you think 1&1 is the best choice? Why?
A: I think so, but truthfully, I am a bit biased. We are compatible with full version installs of WordPress, and fairly sure we will work for other PHP/MySQL blog tools like B2Evolution and TypePad.
While it is a paired-down version of WordPress, 1&1 offers the 1&1 Blog for complete newbies, who only have very modest needs for their blog. Anyone can install it in 5 minutes, but if you plan to grow or want many modules or customization, I recommend that you install a full version of WordPress.
Another thing some bloggers might like at 1&1 are the free pay per click search engine vouchers we give our hosting clients. If you get a $19.99 month 1&1 Developer account for your blog, this would give you a few hundred dollars worth of basically free traffic from the search engines.
- Q. The Popularity of Social Networking is growing and many bloggers are getting traffic from there. Sometimes, when a story of a blogger goes to the main page of Digg or other social networking sites, their blog hosting account goes down. Do you think that bloggers having an account with 1&1 can handle the “Digg homepage”? (Digg.com or Stumbleupon).
A: Wow, interesting question. I have never heard of 1&1 sites going down because of being massively “dugg” – but I suppose it is possible. I know our plans have significant bandwidth allotments, and cheap bandwidth overage fees, but I think a massive amount of Digg traffic could be a problem for any host to handle.
- Q. To end this interview, Can you tell Googlelady’s readers about the contest currently being run by 1&1?
A: Sure! We have a really fun affiliate sales contest going on until the end of May. We are known for large affiliate contests; like last year’s trip for our top 3 affiliates to see our boat in the America’s Cup race in Valencia, Spain.
This year we wanted a more egalitarian competition where just about anyone could have a chance at winning. So we came up with a sweepstake prize drawing. 1&1 Affiliates can get an entry into the prize drawing by making ten hosting sales, a target that most affiliates can reach relatively easily if they try. The prizes include: 7 day vacation for two to Jamaica, a large screen TV, a new laptop, iPhone, and a few other cool items.
Of course like all affiliate programs, there are some basic conditions, but we think that even small affiliates deserve attention, so we hope this contest will generate both great commissions for them and some very happy prize winners.Your readers can find out more specific details at: http://www.1and1contest.com
I really appreciate the opportunity to speak to you and your readers. I know some will try us and some will not, but I respect you and your audience and wanted to take the time to provide an ‘insider’s’ perspective of 1&1. I wish you and your readers much online success and prosperity!
If you are one of those 1&1 customers that you have been double billed without any reason or have any other BIG & Important issue to be solved email me and I will try my best to try to contact those great guys and see if they can help. But be aware that there are no PROMISES. If you liked this post please subscribe to my RSS
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May 4th, 2008 at 11:38 am
Please - again, as expected from 1&1, no real replies. Why is the support based in the Philippines? Why is their staff not technically trained? Why are they rude and send generic, irrelevant replies?
He says that double-billing is extremely rare - it happened to me last year, for 8 domains. Unacceptable.
1&1 is one of those companies that, when something goes wrong, and they have messed up, do not know how to say “Sorry, completely our fault. We’ll fix it. This is what happened…”
The many negative comments on the web about 1&1 are there not because their “competitors” have posted them, or because they are “old”, but because 1&1 do not care about keeping their customers happy - which is very sad.
May 4th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Alex, did you read my last comment on this post?
http://www.googlelady.com/869/11-coupons-1and1-promotions-2008/
May 4th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
If you are in the UK be aware that there servers are hosted in Germany. It could be a disadvantaged if you want to be listed in Google UK. As for their support, I have mostly found it okayish - they always get back to you when you contact them by email, although we have had a couple of emails which I couldn’t make head or tail of.
May 5th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Hi Alex,
If you had an issue with double-billing which was not resolved, please, please send Googlelady the account # which had the problem (she will forward it to me), and I will speak personally with our billing team. As I mentioned in the interview, this is not standard practice and if some kind of glitch occurred, it should be easy to resolve. With over 10 million domains registered at 1&1, I can say that your issue is certainly not typical.
As to the Phillipines support question, we own the call center - it is not outsourced to a 3rd party (like some companies do.) They are trained, but only in 1st level basic suport issues -which are by far the most common. There is a convenience of the timezone which allows us better coverage for both US (west coast) and international customers.
I do not know if we always take the time to explain what happened. I think what is far more important and practical is to focus on fixing an issue and making sure it doesn’t happen again. To generalize that we simply do not care about customers is a GROSS misrepresentation. Some companies do not even have phone support. Like other large hosts, we invest heavily in our support systems and in growing our reps knowledge and skill. Do mistakes sometimes happen? Sure, this is true of any host. Is there room for improvement - always! This is also true of any host.
It is not worth arguing about whether negative comments are mostly old and possible biased. I have watched the trends for 4 years, and we obviously have a difference of opinion. I know we have come a long way since entering the US, I also know that happy customers far far out number unhappy ones - you just don’t hear from the happy ones as much online - thus the online court of public opinon will alwaays be skewed. If you think review sites are 100% unbiased, I don’t know what I could say to convince you otherwise.
Everyone is certainly welcome to their opinion. My purpose in granting the interview to Googlelady, was not to still up bad emotions and flaming, but rather to just present another viewpoint. I personally like the what this site is trying to present to its readers, and wanted to help - even if some people choose other hosts.
Alex, although I may not always have time to post responses here, and work in another department, I hope I can help resolve any issues you might still have.
May 5th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
@Joshua thanks for taking the time to response to this post
@Alex, what do you need more the Online marketing director commented here and bring you help on you issues. Waiting your email.
June 14th, 2008 at 3:07 am
What a delusional view on the world. I’m a regular guy. I bought names from 1and1 and had immediate and LONG LASTING pain from it. I call it planned incompetence and it runs from the lowly telephone rep all the way up to management and probably to executive management.
It is just plain insulting to call the NUMEROUS and EXHAUSTIVE comments from THOUSANDS of those effected “financially skewed” and is in lock and step with the rest of the company’s apparent apathetic attitude toward customer service. Oh how I wish I could send this executive to collection for his depleted service to his customers.
Please don’t insult us by a) pretending that you are surprised by the negative tidal wave, b) that you are going to “talk” to your staff, and c) that your staff will change one damn bit.
September 8th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
1and1.con: I completely agree with you in every respect.
Also, another frustratingly annoying issue, is 1and1 doesn’t allow you to purchase dedicated server/hosting packages as an International customer. With offices in Dublin, and a house in Germany, I am still not allowed (by 1and1) to have a dedicated server in Europe. My company has 10 million customers. And we need to expand into Europe, however 1and1 has not to this date after 100 emails explained WHY I cannot subscribe to their services from North America. Every one of their competitors is more than willing to sell you their services. 1and1 doesn’t want business I suppose. They are making it VERY difficult to be a customer. All I want is to be a customer. I give up. I’ll take my 40 dedicated server order to another company.