Strong Company, Great Selection
Location: Chesterbrook, PA
Year in Business: 15
1and1 Internet is one of the oldest and most financially secure web hosting providers in the world. In addition, its “eShops” plans offer a great selection of e-commerce solutions for small businesses. Affordable, easy-to-use and reliable, eShops provide all of the critical components needed to operate a successful online store. While many cheaper hosts claim to provide e-commerce capabilities, very few have the depth of an eShop.
A shopping cart is included with almost any hosting plan, but eShops provide a comprehensive commerce package that also includes over 30 design templates, offline payment acceptance, multiple shipping methods, Froogle integration (now Google Product Search), sales and website tracking, and free marketing credits for Microsoft adCenter, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Google Adwords.
More advanced eShop packages allow you to increase the shipping options, support more products, create accounts for customers, automatically generate invoices, process PayPal orders and much more. The eShop “Developer” plan is loaded with features and quite frankly, if you are serious about selling online, its $50/month price tag is peanuts.
1and1 keeps customer service simple with 24/7 phone and e-mail support. We’ve dealt with them on several occasions and found the service to be good overall. Some representatives are more experienced than others, but this is typical for most hosting companies. There are a large number of technicians on staff, which is particularly important for supporting customers with online stores.
Secure, strong, and loaded. When you combine 1and1’s helpful customer support with its feature-rich plans and solid corporate infrastructure, you’ve got one of the better choices for e-commerce hosting.
Price & Plans
1and1 offers 3 eShop plans with the following prices:
Business - $9.99/month
Professional - $29.99/month
Developer - $49.99/month.
All plans have short billing cycles of 3-6 months so you aren’t stuck with a long-term contract.
The basic plan is a good way to get your feet wet or to support a business with a small e-commerce component. However, you should migrate to one of the more advanced options to maximize online sales. After all, even at the Developer level, you’re only paying $1.64/day, about the same cost as a cup of coffee.
Features
See table (left) for a list of key features and benefits for the Business plan (unless otherwise noted). For a complete list of features for all plans
visit 1and1 – be sure to click the “more” links on the plan comparison table to see the complete offering.
Service
Phone and e-mail support is available 24/7. It is complemented by a very large FAQ library that you can browse or search to help yourself.
Space
The Business plan provides 50 megabytes of storage; small business sites are usually 20 megabytes (MB) or less, so there is plenty of space for most customers. If you need more room, the Professional plan provides 300 MB and the Developer plan almost a full gigabyte.
Bandwidth
10 gigabytes (GB) per month is available on the Business plan and this will comfortably support most websites. If your site has very high traffic (several million page views per month or more) or is very image intensive, consider upgrading to one of the advanced plans which provide 30 - 60 GB of bandwidth per month.
Security
Unlike most cheap hosts, 1and1 actually owns 2 of its data centers in addition to managing three others. In fact, if you visit the “About Us” section of the 1and1 website, there is a really cool 3-D virtual tour of its data center in Kansas City. It summarizes the key characteristics of the facility including security features. For instance, in the network rooms (where data is transferred from the servers to the Internet) there are redundant firewalls which prevent external intrusion. These types of precautions keep your website and data safe.
Reliability
1and1 also takes extensive measures in its data centers to ensure a high level of reliability, which results in an average 99.99% uptime for its customers. For example, in the loading and storage areas where new equipment is received, the rooms are environmentally controlled to minimize dust, microbes and chemical vapors that could ultimately impede performance.
Ease of Use
We’ve used the 1and1 hosting control panel and it’s very clean and intuitive, allowing you to easily manage domains, e-mail and all the essentials. It looks very similar to your computer “desktop” with simple icons for each category.
Freebies
Each eShop plan comes with a free domain and free domain privacy. In addition, all eShops come with free online marketing credits that increase with each plan’s size. The total value of these free bonus items is almost $150 on the Business plan alone.
Guarantees
All accounts come with a 90 day money-back guarantee (one of the longest out there). If you are unhappy with the service for any reason, just ask for a full refund. We know firsthand how much easier it is to make a purchase with a solid guarantee behind you.
Discounts
1and1 is renowned for cheap domains. We’ve got quite a bit of experience in the domain industry and $5.99/year is one of the best prices out there; in fact, it’s difficult to get a price this low, even on bulk purchases.