I don’t often do this, write a recommendation to avoid someone’s hosting services, however, this example of incompetence is so strong that I feel I need to say something.

I was helping a client migrate from shared hosting (as in shared with other unconnected businesses) on 1&1 to their own  hosting solution.  We moved the domain to the new solution, leaving name service pointed to the 1&1 hosting, to protect the clients active email boxes, until we could make a careful planned migration of the email, hoping to avoid interruption.

A few weeks in, 1&1 deleted the remaining hosting account.  Yep.

They just deleted their customers digital property, without asking, checking anything, or keeping a back-up.  Worse, they defended the action by saying we should not have moved the name registration, which demonstrates a complete failure to understand basic concepts about how name registration works.  What we did, was basically the same as having a domain registered with Godaddy and hosting it somewhere else.  Millions of accounts are set-up that way.

So, my client lost email service in the middle of the business day, for a whole day while we moved DNS, and lost correspondence.

All 1&1 had to do was check their logs, or name service, to see live data in the account.

Deleting your customer’s property, without contacting anyone or checking anything, then telling the customer they are in the wrong, is just horrible customer care.

I am sorry to have to say; Don’ t host with 1&1, just don’t do it.  Their disrespect for this customer was frightening.