I registered a domain name there - just to secure it, but I wasn't ready to design my website. Now I've finally written my content and hired a web designer. She's nearly done with the design and about to give it to her programmer. Her programmer said to tell me that they've had customers with very bad experiences with 1and 1 hosting. He forwarded a google search that contained endless horror stories.

Now I'm scared - and overwhelmed. Should I switch companies before I actually put my site on 1and1? And if I need to switch first, how do I do that? My domain name is registered with them and one of the horror stories is that they dont' let you take your domain name - they fight you on it - and continue to bill you and don't really accept that you terminate the contract with them.

I also know that if you do a google search on almost anything, there are lots of horror stories and complaints. I had thought that I'd heard fairly good things about them before - but maybe those web reviews were not impartial.

Any feedback and advice from people.

Thanks for any help.

Lynn.

Don't ever register your domain through your host. It's a pain in the behind if you want to transfer it. I always recommend to people that you use a plain old domain registrar like gkg.net or godaddy.net (I prefer gkg.net myself). You can then point the domain to wherever you eventually host the site.

Lesson two would be, do your research when getting a webhost. There are lots of bad ones out there. And plenty of good ones. The problem is finding "real" reviews of hosts (a lot of the review sites have fake reviews on them). I use www.webhostingtalk.com as a resource a lot, and search there on any potential hosts that I'm considering -- you generally get the straight scoop from people posting there.

Lesson three: you get what you pay for. $2.00 a month web hosting is...well, frankly, a joke. That's probably why they get generally poor reviews. To get decent service, customer support, etc., you really need to be paying somewhere in the $8.00 - $15.00 a month range for shared hosting for a basic site, IMO.

As for what to do now -- personally, I would try to move away from this host. I did a search on 1and1.com on the forum I mentioned above, and they seemed to be a pretty mixed bag as far as reviews. You can definitely do better than that. There is NO reason they should fight you on letting you take your domain with you -- you just need to be very upfront, and don't take any crap from them.

On the other hand, if you don't want to deal with the mess of trying to move, you can try them for a while, and see how it goes. Some people do seem to like them just fine. Maybe you'll be one of the lucky ones!

When I first registered my domain name, a non-profit that I'm President of was getting its website done and registered on 1and1. We thought the webdesigner knew his stuff (had come recommended by a Board member), but as the design process went on, I realized that he wasn't very knowledgable. Meanwhile, we'd registered the organization and I registered my domain. I recall doing some checking about hosting companies then, but I did not realize then that many review sites were not "real." I learned that since.

Thanks for the information. I'll be wiser in the future.

Lynn.

Anyway, for now, I spoke with the programmer and he also has a hosting business (so he wasn't the most impartial in advicing me against 1and1). But he checked that my domain names were registered to me (and not 1and1) and he felt it would be okay to start with them - and we could move the site later if we had to.