One of the basic but most important expenses for your website is your web host. The web host stores the files that run your website, and runs them when they're accessed. Usually hosts also provides some additional services, like email and domain settings.Your choice of hosts is important - you need reliability, so your website can always be accessed, you need tech support when there's problems, and you need the right amount of space for your money.
1and1.com has great prices and the worst customer service I've dealt with of any host I've worked with.
The first thing I do when I need help is check out the FAQs. The 1and1 FAQs essentially make up a glossary. No useful information to help resolve problems, just information to let you know that "Website Address" refers to your website address, or you can click on "Set up FTP users" to set up FTP users.
They now have a toll-free number you can call, I've had to call it twice. Both times I was on hold for a long time to be told, "We'll have to send a message over to another department and we can e-mail you if and when we hear back. We have no idea how many days it will take for this to be fixed."
Recently 1and1 migrated from PHP 4 to PHP 5, which is great - except that they also changed some fundamental PHP permission settings and never told their customers they would do this.
I've never had a site on 1and1 go offline, so if you just need online filespace, say, to do backups, I recommend 1and1. For a live website, go somewhere else.
