Anything better 1and1 for web hosting?

[radhak]

After using 1and1 free for 3 years ('preview' offer), it's time to pay up - end of free ride. Their $2.99 per month is a pretty good offer, with 5GB of webspace and an 'included blog', but wanted to know if there's anything better out there.

I only host family pictures on my page, nothing grand. Would like to host my blog on my own site instead of blogspot.

Have been fine with 1and1's performance, though their customer service is pretty pathetic. A friend's account was hacked to send tons of spam, and he was not given much of a chance to defend himself. His main complaint was that 1and1 stores passwords in the clear text (as evident when you change your password, your old password is displayed in text form), so anybody who gets into their database can mess around with any customer's account.

1and1 never bothered to acknowledge that this is a problem, and that's the one main thing that worries me.

So any alternatives?

[jseklund]

I have used EZPublishing.com in the past and they had excellent customer service. They don't give it away for free, but I think I paid about $7/month for what I needed.

I've seen cheaper places, like $3/month....but I can't speak to the quality/service.

[Holbren]

I played around with the free account and the customer service was bad because you had to email. It was free, didn't expect much. With a paid account you get a phone number and they are good about picking up the phone within a few minutes. For the price, you can't beat them IMO.

I thought the part about using someone's account to send emails was because of an attack at the local computer, didn't realize it was at the server level. I would be surprised that it's easy to hack into their database servers if possible at all. Not that it can't be done but they must have monitoring software or people.

[Black wallnut]

Might be worth your while to check out webhostingtalk.com a forum dedicated to website hosting. Lots of geekspeak but if ya can wade through it there may be some wothwhile information.

[mkel2000]

I will make two recommendations, based on experiences of friends and family with both.

ipowerweb.com offers quite a bit of bandwith and storage with their main account offering. The customer service seems very responsive. A friend, who had opened an account with them three years ago on my recommendation, recently found they were offering new customers 50GB of storage space. His account only gave him 800MB. He called their sales number and within a minute or so, his account had been upgraded to the current levels being offered without any additional cost.

godaddy.com is a large web hosting company. I know several people who have accounts with them, but I don't have specific knowledge of their support experience. Those I know that have them are very pleased, though, with the service they get.

One thing you want to watch out for is someone who is acting as a reseller for one of the larger companies. Most of the time they will not have direct control over the servers, since they are just reselling the larger company's service. Most of the reseller accounts can be "re-branded" with the re-seller's company name, etc., so it's hard to determine many times if you are dealing with a reseller or not. They will probably not provide a phone number that someone will answer for any reason, since it is probably a side job.

Mark

[Jeffrey Schronce]

1and1 has worked great for me. It seems to be working for you and $3 month is reasonible. I am not aware of security issues.
I have found their customer service to be ok. You can do online chats with them and that seems most effective.

[LCHIEN]

1and1 has worked great for me. It seems to be working for you and $3 month is reasonible. I am not aware of security issues.
I have found their customer service to be ok. You can do online chats with them and that seems most effective.

Re: 1and 1.com
$3 per month is very reasonable.
The customer service ratings are all over the place according to
different websites I have visited.
maybe I should take a chance?
Jeff seems to have found it OK.