All good things must come to an end I suppose. Back in 2003 (possibly earlier), I got an invite from a friend to check out 2 years worth of free hosting with 1and1.com. With my Earthlink account long gone and after trying my friends indy hosting for awhile I decided to get serious about my hosting and URL needs. When it comes to owning various properties, namely domain names, I like everything in one neat spot. First I wanted to give this hosting service a test spin. After a few months I liked them enough to transfer my two domains to 1and1.com and set up camp there for awhile.

Over the past several years I have been a fiercely loyal customer, referring my friends, family and clients to 1and1.com. And sometimes a person reaches a point where they can’t see the flaws in their own evangelism and for me that has come at a very slow pace. Too slow perhaps. I guess the erosion began when I started using other development mediums with my web ninja friend. He used WebFaction for all his development when he became fed up with DreamHost. He got me to sign up with WebFaction for a project we were working on but for some reason I found the user experience something to be desired and it was a little too geeky for even me. But for the sake of Django development we needed a host that could serve that up and 1and1.com just wasn’t there yet. Lets fast forward…

So it’s 2009 and we’re chugging along with projects and by this time we’re clearly focused on the CMS, over flash sites and we’re all about functionality and delivering that to our clients. I’m still using 1and1.com doing manual installs of WordPress, which at the time was no big deal for me. But I kept wondering, “where’s Python and¬†Django support, when will they add 1-click installs for WordPress, what about Drupal, Joomla, Plone and Rails, to name a few? Then it occurred to me – they as a company don’t give a shit. I’m serious. They don’t. They care about making money.¬†I’ve filled out their surveys (more than once), made suggestions (several times), tried to communicate to them that there is a growing community of web designers and developers who need real services like the ones I mentioned but still nothing.

It all came crashing down on Sunday. Typically I can get a manual install of WordPress happening pretty quickly but not that day. All I got was obstacle after obstacle, basically because their server was funked up and I thought it was something else ‚Äì and so went the goose chase down the rabbit hole. It was during this chase that I realized, pretty much everything they offer on their service is some sort of proprietary machination of their own devise. It was then I decided on a whim that I’m going to migrate both of my accounts and all of my measly 30+ domains to BlueHost. I read the reviews on them, I looked at their offerings and it looked great. Compare that to 1and1 reviews and any host looks better than 1and1.

Why am I writing this? Because unlike 1and1 I do care about my customers and you the reader should know this! I will make it my mission to take all my clients who currently host with them, to another host Рa host that stays up-to-date with current technology and is actually involved with offering REAL services to their customers growing needs. If you are with 1and1 I encourage you  to do the same because for what you pay you could get better service for the same price. Fire up that FTP client and start your new year with a new hosting home! Now is the time!

UPDATE:
I just got off the phone with a “technical support” person and asked them specifically if they plan on supporting the design and development community or offering 1-click installs. Their robot-like response said it all, “not at this time”. You know what to do…