My experience with 1and1 has been far from sweet.initially I purchased during the half off sale on dedicated servers. I understood that you get what you pay for and 50$ a month for the first 3 months and 99 after is a great deal to have your own box.
I am by no means a noob when it comes to Linux and quickly transfered some of my domains to give it a good test. Everything went fine and the server was set up in a day or so.
About a week later I noticed that it was running a little sluggish so I figured a reboot was due since I installed a few updates and patches. Then all hell broke loose.
The server would not boot! I can login through their recovery console and check the boot settings and logs, nothing. So I contacted support (in the Philippines). They were happy to help. I expressed that my server would not boot into normal mode and that I needed a tech to take a look. The cs rep asked me to login to the unresponsive server? At that point I understood that the rep had no idea what they were doing.
27 hours later and many calls, emails and lies, I was transfered to the sales department in the US where they resolved my issue in 10 minutes.
I can finally relax I thought, but now it locks up randomly. It can be rebooted but it is still annoying. So I decide to contact support and ask to talk to a knowledgeable tech. Response was that they don't have a phone and I should email them. What? No phone.
Days go by and finally a response from the server techs "we believe that it is a hardware issue and would need to diagnose the server, we would need to take it down for about 2 hours and run some tests". Good I thought, can I pick a specific non-peak time so I can notify my customers of the outage? Response "We can not guarantee any specific time for the diagnostics". Wah? So just sit and wait until it goes down and cross my fingers that it will be the same after. Forget it I will see if I can resolve the issue my self.
No luck set up Nagios, Logwatch and monitored all processes for what was happening. No info in the logs. So I bit the bullet and transfered all my domains to my previous server.
Now there is nothing on there and they can take it down when ever they like. Assumed the normal routine, contact cs get case id and email the server department with no phone. Days go by, 3 phone calls and 8 emails, no contact no ETA nothing.
I am still waiting for a response and it is right to say that if you are considering getting a server form 1and1 make sure it is for non-critical tasks. Because if you happen to get a hardware problem expect it to take weeks to be resolved!
Since I transfered all my domains I have no need to be part of the debacle that is 1and1, I have requested multiple times to cancel my agreement. I believe after all this that I should not have to pay $99 for early termination.
I can't express with enough conviction to stay away from 1and1, in the end it is not worth the the chance of loosing your customers because that don't have the resources to manage theirs.
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