PhillipDade.com

I currently host the majority of my websites through Fasthosts and have found them to be excellent; both with the service they provide and the top notch support I have received.

In July 2007, I noticed that 1&1 had a special offer of 1 years free registration on .uk domains so I gladly accepted. The service has been excellent and have recently looked into purchasing a hosting package with them. After reading my previous edition of the .Net Magazine (an excellent read, very well recommended), they commented on hosting options. One paragraph mentioned about hosting in the US. This struck a chord and due to my current needs, I researched what 1&1 offer their users in the US compared to the UK. When comparing the two Linux Beginner Packages, the basics vary enormously - See table below.

After discovering this information, I thought it prudent to contact 1&1 in the UK to find out why there are such variations in their packages. A member of staff promptly emailed back with the follow comment. “The marketing competition ins US is very strong and we need to be competitive to stay on the Business. We are only basing our offered features on the marketing competition within the area”.

This is all fair and well, but is it the users fault that there isn’t the competition in the UK and therefore should they be paying the price as a result?

I think I’ll keep my sites with Fasthosts!

These details were obtained from the respective websites (www.1and1.com and www.1and1.co.uk) at 17:00 hrs on the 21st November 2007. The exchange rate is 0.4856 using the Yahoo! Currency Converter at 17:35 on 21st November 2007.