http://www.oneandone.co.uk

Apparently a European host service, with a large amount of domains. I saw their advert in PC Pro and I am thinking of taking up their offer.

P.S. I'm a bit of a Web Hosting newbie.

If anyone has had any experience with this company I'd like to hear your comments. Thanks :)

Rumours have it there customer reviews are fake. But they do have a large amount of mulla behind them since they have big 4 page adverts in the .net magazine.

I emailed them asking questions and they don't seem to read my email when they reply. The reply is just for me but doesn't really answer what I asked.

Also they say you can't downgrade you package once you upgrade it which seems a bit strange, that was in one of their email replies.

Also How can they afford to give out The software, some is free but Netobject Fusion 5 isn't free (as far as I know) and the latest version I think.

Is Netobjects Fusion 5 good for web site design (as a WYSIWYG)?

_G_,

Sounds like you're just getting 'canned' answers to your email. Some hosts just copy and paste a prewritten answer that trys to cover most things within a certain issue. Anyone with an grain of intelligence can spot these, yet they still do it... it's usually when they outsource their support services, though some are just plain ass lazy :)

Not being able to downgrade isn't that strange, but a host should put in the effort to downgrade an account if a customer find they don't require the space or resources they *thought* they'd use. It's a good way to lock people into accounts that cost more while using less server resources - borderline sneaky in my opinion.

With regards to Net Objects Fusion, I haven't used on online version of it, but I did use it briefly years ago (version 2 I think). It wrote the worst html I have ever seen, taking huge amounts of lines to write something simple. It bloated pages three or four times as large as they needed to be, just in code alone. I hear it hasn't improved a whole lot.

Greg Moore

[Edited by akashik on 02-22-2001 at 02:13 PM]

I realize that's a little off-topic from the original post, but if _G_'s response from them is correct it may reflect somewhat on their customer care.

Greg Moore

Many thanks for your replies.

I did actually question them on one product and they sent back an e-mail basically saying what I assumed was correct (the ultimate "generic" answer !).

Regarding their basic "Web Forwarding" product, they state costs as £10/year and this includes the naming authority fees, which I thought was around $35/year (£21), so how come. do they have a discount cheme or something ?

DO NOT TRUST THEM!!!!!!!!!

Oooo look what i've got in my copy of Internet.Works, a brochure for One and One. Lets read the small print!
Arrr! All the customers featured are actually under-paid cheesy models who think web hosting is a job in zoo!

What's this though? FREE DOMAIN NAME REGISTRATION!!!
Yepee lets get a .co.uk for only £5 (NIC FEE)!
(Flicking back to the T and C's)
Oh look, they place bigger advert frames on your domain the UK2.net!!! (FINALLY SOMEONE WORSE THAN UK2!!)

Their cheap 'pretty packaged' hosting actually ends up costing more than a quality host and a quality host does not send an autoresponder 'Thank you for sending us an email, if we ever get around to reading it we will answer you within 7 days!!) (QUOTE MAY NOT BE FACTUAL!).

Why should my company apply to be nominet member when we can get domains for the same discounted prices at One and One? I'm sure our clients really want a half page frame full of XXX ads all over their company or personal site.

Thanks for letting me release my anger about them!!

Regards,
Robert Kerry
Co-director of 2ninety Limited
http://2ninety.com

sounds like a good example of you get what you pay for :)

Seriously, and this may sound trite, sometimes it really is worth paying that little bit extra for hosting. The return, generally speaking, is a higher level of support regardless of 'features' offered. Most (though not all) super cheap web deals are going to cost a lot more beyond a small financial saving. A week to get an answer is disgusting. If you have a problem with your website you expect to have an answer within hours if not less. It's great to offer hosting at next to nothing, but it's not sustainable. It has to fall over somewhere, and if it's not the whole business disappearing, it's going to be non-existant support.

Greg Moore

"Also How can they afford to give out The software, some is free but Netobject Fusion 5 isn't free (as far as I know) and the latest version I think.

Is Netobjects Fusion 5 good for web site design (as a WYSIWYG)?" by _G_

btw: how can I make quotations?

In Germany we have some big providers (strato.de, puretec.de, loomes.de) they are all almost the same, very cheap domain and hosting prices, unlimited traffic (it really is), and very bad support.

BUT you get a CD full of full versions of software like the newest versions of Norton Antivirus, NetObjects, WebGraphicsOptimizer, FTP-Programs, Webdesign-Programs and much more.

They have registered millions of .DE (German) domain names in a very short time (.DE are the most registered domains names after .COM, more popular then .NET ..., it´s almost as bad to get a goodlooking .DE domain as it is with .COM). Because they offer domains for a few dollars a year, and also cheap .COM.NET.ORG domains including webspace.

Big US webhosting providers are buying parts of these companies right now (read it just a few days ago), because they are growing so fast.

But I don´t know how they can offer everybody who is registering a domain for 25 cents a month the domain, webspace, unlimited traffic and all the full version software. If they get Norton etc. a bunch of new customers and make them the standard antivirus program in germany ... it´s just marketing...
They have hundred thousand of customers, 100 of servers and administrators, the main servers are 2 Sun5000 (I don´t know sun servers very well, but something with 5000) with a whole bunch of hard drives and processors...

You get advertising in almost every computer/networking/home pc/games magazine.

The only way to get customers is either dedicated/co-located webhosting or if you also offer CGI, design and service, which they don´t offer.