After almost a month and over a dozen emails to support and billing, my recent hosting problem was finally resolved. No fanfare, or even an email letting me know that it had been taken care of. I just went to one of my problem sites, and no more errors.

Two days before that, I received this email from complaints@1and1.com:

Thank you for contacting us.

As a gesture of goodwill, I have refunded the account regarding this
matter.

If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us.

That’s great, however the statement “I have refunded the account” is not true, because I haven’t received a refund. We’ll see if they follow through, or even return my email inquiry.

The point of this post, though, is to share the email address complaints@1and1.com. I wasn’t aware of it until now. If I had been, I’m sure I’d already be blacklisted.

I just started receiving the the following errors on all my websites hosted on 1&1 internet that have MYSQL databases.

Warning: session_start() [function.session-start]: open(/tmp/sess_x, O_RDWR) failed: Disk quota exceeded (122) in /path/page.php on line 20

The result is that no session is created, so things that require a session don’t work too well.

Since I am nowhere near my allocated storage capacity, I’m not sure why this is occuring, and feel pretty confident that 1&1 support won’t tell me, even if they know. The support people that I’ve talked to so far don’t even have root access to the server, so I hope they fix it sometime soon. The temporary workaround is just to point the session.save_path somewhere else.

Luckily I use 1&1 for development only, as they are not reliable enough to host client websites, so no customers are effected.

Don’t
1. Don’t go strictly on price. The top selling webhosting companies are the cheapest, and the are also the worst. Don’t touch Godaddy or 1&1 Internet with a 10 foot pole!
2. Don’t use “Web Hosting Review” sites. They make their money by signing you up with the companies they push. These companies are usually bad.
3. Don’t get caught up in the side by side feature comparison. Find out what you need, but don’t try to get the best bang for your buck. A bargain can turn into a nightmare if you hook up with the wrong company.

Do
1. Ask your web developer or designer for recommendations, unless they are getting a cut. Do some research to find out if there is an affiliation between them and the company they are recommending, or just ask.
2. Search for problems or complaints connected with the web host, especially where customer service or technical issues are concerned.
3. Search Webmaster forums for recommendations, or post to a forum asking for a recommendation. You will usually get detailed responses based upon experience.

The vast majority of webhosting companies that are selling space on shared servers are HORRIBLE. You really need to do your homework, especially if your staking your business on your website.