1&1 Ionos
reviews and complaints

I recently had an experience with IONOS that left me feeling frustrated and disappointed. On June 1, 2022, I decided to purchase a website builder and a domain name from IONOS. I was under the impression that the payment would only be $12.00 for one year and then $5.00 every month. However, to my surprise, IONOS charged me $144.00 instead.

Feeling cheated, I immediately filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Better Business Bureau (BBB). Thankfully, IONOS refunded most of my payment, which was $107.98. However, they informed me via email that they would be taking another payment of $12.00 from my card within 7 days. This left me feeling uneasy, and I filed another complaint with the FTC.

Unfortunately, on June 6, 2022, IONOS once again charged my card for $107.98. They even attempted to charge me an additional $144.00, which resulted in my card having a negative balance. This experience has left me feeling that IONOS is a dishonest and greedy company that lacks professionalism.

Based on my experience, I would not recommend IONOS to anyone. I believe that they are taking advantage of their customers and engaging in corrupt business practices. I encourage others to stay away from IONOS and to file official complaints with consumer agencies if they have had similar experiences. If necessary, legal action should be taken against IONOS to put an end to their unfair contracts and greedy practices. As a customer, I expect to be treated with respect and honesty, and IONOS has failed to deliver on these basic expectations.

I gotta say, I'm pretty skeptical of Ionos, or as they used to be known, 1and1. They're supposed to be selling domain names, but it seems like they're really just out to scam people. Here's what happened to me: I bought a domain name from them, and I got a confirmation email saying that everything was good to go. But then, a year later, I started getting emails saying that my domain name was about to expire and I needed to renew it. I didn't think much of it, since I wanted to keep my domain name, so I just let it renew automatically.

But then, when I checked my bank statement, I saw that Ionos had charged me way more than I expected. It turns out that they had signed me up for hosting services without my permission, and they were charging me for that too. I never asked for hosting, I just wanted a domain name! When I called them to complain, they told me that it was all in the emails they had sent me, but I never saw anything about hosting. They were just trying to pull a fast one on me.

Eventually, I got my money back, but only because I threatened to write a bad review. It's pretty shady that they only gave me my money back because they were afraid of negative publicity. I don't trust Ionos at all, and I wouldn't recommend them to anyone. If you want to buy a domain name, go with Porkbun instead. They're much more trustworthy and they won't try to scam you.

I had my domain with them, and a website. A pushy sales woman called and told me I had to purchase a different package from her, I said I did not have time for the call or sales pitch.she stated it was a requirement of doing business with ions that I listen to the pitch. I said no and hung up. Ionos charged me for the package she was pushing even though I clearly denied, and then when I refused to pay, REFUSED to transfer my domain or release what belonged to me. Now my domain is in collections, expired, and I have to pay a 99 dollar collection fee on top of a reinstatement fee.

Im suing.

I cannot identify charges on my credit card from you. Please let me know what the service is that you are charging me for. I lbelieve it is in error. Shown below are the charges that I question.

2.24.22 - $40.06

3.23.22 - $39.94

4.23.22 - $40.02

5.23.22 - $39.98

6.23.22 - $40.02

7.23.22 - $39.98

8.23.22 - 40.00

9.23.22 - $40.02

10.23.22 - $39.98

11.23.22 - $40.02

12.23.22 - $39.98

I tried their website builder and the first time it was ok until one day I logged in and my cloud content was gone and after speaking with customer support multiple times I was told that there was no record of me having it, I became upset and frustrated. As if I have really been paying for the service for over a year for nothing. So I was done. Yet they keep sending me bills.

Now they are holding my domain hostage and I can't log in or find out what is going on without having to waste another hour or two on hold talking to their customer support that doesn't have a clue. This company is the worst! My domain has not worked in months, so out of sheer desperation I came back and tried again. Only this time became so frustrated immediately during the 30 day money-back guarantee. Only I never got my money back and once again holding my domain hostage. They make it impossible to get in touch. Obviously, I don't want to call and go round in circles with an automated system.

Sir when I purchase your service 12$ deducted from my bank account maybe latter I change my bank details but it show me unsuccessful payment and hold my website. I have prove that I will attach below please check and let me know..

Thanks.

I bought a domain and simple hosting, valid for 1 year 03/2022 - 03/2023. In May 2022 I purchased an extra product, but before completing the purchase I regretted it, I believe my mistake was not canceling properly, I just didn't pay the bill. Because everything was fine, it was an extra product that I didn't pay for, but I didn't use it either, but since then they've been blocking my contract. My domain is still live but I can't do anything, change my sites, access my email, nothing, my contract is blocked. I contact support, they even answered me there a few times, they unlocked the first few times, but now nothing, they don't answer me anymore. I just want to take my domain away from Ionos, which blocked the transfer function as well.

Web Hosting Business (Contract [protected])

We have been a loyal paying customer for over decade with minimum customer service all these years; We have few websites and many other products with 1 and 1 hosting. We never really look at other hosting companies to compare services and quality simply we don't do much on our websites and not making profits websites. However, we have been facing increasing numbers of technical issues but always attempted to solve ourselves without asking their support. The customer support is slow and confusing, at times there are no call backs follow up as we requested. There were however few times they were prompt. Their services are extremely inconsistent. We have had many technical errors namely security breaching (which they offered to buy more additional layers of security products and we purchased them), but still security was not at full capacity; also many other technical errors such as losing our data or over limit of storage. We ended up purchasing more and more products from them. And we have 2 contracts to fulfil these 'over limit storage' errors.

Not until pandemic started, that we pay a little closer attention of what they actually are charging and doing to our accounts on file. and payments.

We also involved our legal advisors on this matter, of overcharging and abusing our payment on file. It is very clear that this matter was their fault and the manager whom we spoke with several times continue to deny and pass the blame to us that we had somehow 'deleted' our account, and they still charge the product while the product did not even exist anymore. The staff accidentaly 'deleted' our data on their hidrive cloud storage when they stop one of our contract renewal. There is a document supporting this fact.

The staff also failed to inform us via email or phone on this action. The staff failed to verbally communicate this action when requested renewal was taken.

We spoke with the management to address this issue but he refused to mutually find a solution; he simply just took us directly to no we can't help you anymore. Not only he was incompetent but he continued to demean customer deliberately and express lack of compassion. He threatened to take us to collection. And he did. For $20. It is apparent this was done out of anger and pure hate. We lost the entire data from the migration from our desktop to their HI DRIVE cloud storage.

Here's the highlights from letter which our legal advisor had written them:

March 2020, she contacted you (her tech support) trying to fix her website that was experiencing many errors. At that time, she realized it was a space issue on the back end of hosting. Your solution was to offer her your new product called HiDrive, cloud storage. At first she rejected it I because it would require space on her internal drive; but after the agent assured her it would not affect her local internal drive she agreed to the install, but only as long it would not be done on her local drive/computer. At that time she had to do many zoom meetings (start of lockdown). The agent installed this product incorrectly. After a couple weeks of calling your tech support she finally got an answer from your upper supervisor level. He assisted her by installing it CORRECTLY, and transfer each file MANUALLY. It took 2 to 3 weeks. On March 2021, she was getting back to work again (after some family health emergency matters) and wanted to log in to this HiDrive; but was not able to do so. She thought it must be a problem with her password, but after a week she contacted tech support, and was told the data was no longer available. Your company suggested it was her fault. Furthermore, we are informed that you apparently continued to bill her for the drive. Presently, you have locked her out of her entire account due to the HiDrive issue. This is completely unacceptable. There is no legal basis for blocking her access to her account, and the account must be unlocked immediately. The aforementioned facts clearly demonstrate that your company’s actions constitute breach of contract. In every contract there is an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing by each party not to do anything which will deprive the other parties of the benefit of the contract. Sutherland v. Barclays American/Mortgage Corp., 53 Cal. App. 4th 299, 314, 61 Cal. Rptr. 2d 614 (1997). A party to a contract breaches the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing by interfering with or failing to cooperate with the plaintiff in the performance of the contract.

I hope this explains clearly this company is run by incompetent management and poor delivery service. We are a long loyal paying customer who never wanted any hostility, we opened our mouth to ask the management for our lost over hundreds of GB data maybe more on that HIDRIVE and he took us to collection... for $20. And lock our account completely from signing in. Very poor service. Unfortunately, as a long paying customer we had to leave the company and go with someone who can deliver professional service. We do not recommend this company at all for anyone looking for hosting and other related products and services.

They sneak in support services to your invoice. Then when say upgrade your php to be current... They still keep charging you for said "support" service... Until you dig deep into the website to figure out how to turn off a service you did not request or opt in to.

If a series is smart enough to charge you when they believe you need a thing. It is smart enough not to charge you when you don't need it.

It's a simple scam. Add stuff and require you to watch, complain and remove every time... And they profit until you catch them.

i bought 3 hosting about 2/4 months ago and some days ago they sent me a invoice which is totally not realted to me and now in my dashboard there shows a new contract just opened and there's nothing in it , i contacted support a lot of times regarding it but not a single proper support from them they reply 1 email in 2/3 days ,

irritiating ,if this doesnt get's solved asap i will be forced to go in a legal way

Be wary of ionos: I set up a domain for £1.20 and shortly after had a phone call offering Web designer. I was told I might as well have it as its free for 6 months. I did not agree to this and they set it up anyway.. and also another section. I rang to cancel this and complain and was told I agreed... now the 6 months are up and I'm now having to pay £36 per month at least, sometimes £54 until it can be cancelled in November.. I have never used either parts and I'm disgusted in this company

We tried to setup a new dedicated server (the most powerfull offered by IONOS - 4XL). It took nearly a day just ot activate the new server!

Then we asked how to create a clone of the existing server (same machine and operating system) on the newly created one. After squeezing all the knowledge out the support with few phone calls we were told it would have been only possible through the backup system (no way to do it by importing the ISO image). Good.

Given the procedure was risky as the interface does not spell out the action associated with the cliccking of the restore button, we asked support to be sure the procedure was correct. The reply was: we do not know how it works as the backup service is not ours but is a third party service. Right, I pay IONOS for a service they do not know how it works.

Bottom line: it took nearly a day to activate a new server (it should take 20 minutes). On top of that we were not able yet to ensure that the procedure of restoring would work on the new server and not on the runing one!

Still hanging around.

Very good support service! Probably the best we ever esperienced.

I agreed to a 1.20 monthly fee for my charity, ionos did not tell me that they started taking 30 pound per month for the last two years.

When Ionos contacted myself via a telephone call I stated that I did not want to up my subscription as I was not running my charity due to the pandemic therefore I would not be happy paying more than 1.20 per month just to leave the website up, the gentleman agreed this was ok and that was the last contact I had from them.

Upon checking through my direct debits I noticed that I was paying the 1.20 plus another direct debit for 30 pound which I had not agreed to.

This has been coming out of my account t for the last 2 years.

I want a refund of the amount hit the last 2 years as I stated on the phone at the time, that I did not want to up my subscription

I have a Instant Domain contract with Ionos paid in full and due to expire in June 2022... Somehow they created another contract for Website.. charged my $7/month and when I called to cancel and get a refund they played around and didn't help me. So, I disputed the charges and now they LOCKED both contracts. I am furious. How can they lock a contract that is paid in full? That is a breach of contract and is causing problems.

I payed for a domain after a month my car was lost and i didnt had acces to it so my domain was closed. Since the they are sending me letters threatening me with sueing and put me to pay a 180euro bill for no reason

its been over 10 days that im waiting for ionos to connect my external domain to the hosting package. after many chats i had with support they came up that all is correct and they will have some supervisor to look into it with high priority.

the high priority time has passed all the dns of the domain are correct its monday im a programmer and i cant start to work on my clients website or even create emails for him.

so now again i have to waste my time to talk with support. we all know that to connect a external domain to the host it doesent take more than 1 second.

i dont understand!

"The external domain is being set up on our systems. Register the IONOS name server with your domain registrar so that the domain can be reached.

It may take some time for the name server changes to be entered in our systems. We therefore check the status of the facility once an hour. However, if you do not want to wait that long, you can check the current status manually at any time."

10 days and more!

why? how can i trust your company for a dedicated server or a vps?

how is your company going to pay me my hours of loosing with this silly problem?

I had a bill I forgot about. Had to pay by PayPal, paid the bill. Was told service would be restored in 24-72 hours. It have been 2 weeks.

On with support and hold for a total of 4 hours. Being switched to different people and a supervisor who promised she would call me back in one hour.

Still waiting for the phone call, it has been three day's as of 01/24/2022.

1&1 was great until they we purchased by IONOS. Now there customer service sucks. They shut down my website and I cannot even move it.

So I am out of business until this gets fixed. No telling how much money I have lost.

I wonder If I sent them a bill it would get paid. Now I have to find another hosting company and pay more money to move my domains.

Also, DONOT use GoDaddy they are the same since they were bought out. They charge for everything.

My contract got locked on the first day I got this DNS service, I couldn't even bind my website to it. I contacted live chat and they totally redirected me 3 times. Now it's been 2 weeks without any response from the last e-mail. On the first e-mail they told me that cancelled contracts get a refund but I didn't get a refund. Basically they scammed me at this point. I never got a meaningful response about what I need to do to get it back either.

I have emailed to say that my company has been struck off earlier this year and I no longer need the webservice. They are still taking £30 per month out of my account.
This needs to stop and I need a refund.
I have actually never used the web hosting in the 1.5 years I have been paying as I started the business in Feb 2020 then covid happened.

Cardigan Road
Leeds LS6 3AG
[protected]@gmail.com

30 July 2021

Ionos
Aqua Sulis Ho
Slough
SL1 3SA

Sir/Madam

Ionos Webhosting: recurring payments/future-dated payments

Your Company confirmed my order for a domain and website on 13.11.20. My home address was 22 Briar Road, St Albans, AL4 9TL. The business name was AIU Consulting and the following details were emailed to my, then, Email address: [protected]@gmail.com:

account no. [protected]
product name: Web Hosting Pro
six months: free
£7 per month thereafter
contract term: 12 months
contract renews: automatically

I paid a one time set up fee of £1, but changed my mind about setting up the business and cancelled the free package, using the onsite tools provided by Ionos for this purpose. I had to provide a reason for canceIling and from the options confirmed that I was too busy to put any time into setting up a business.

On 14 March I received a confirmation Email into my [protected]@gmail.com address from Ionos Billing, confirming that my account was cancelled and giving the date 12 November 2021 as the 'deactivation date'. Using the onsite tools, I had deactivated all automatic renewals and terminated all elements within the package - including domain name - to ensure that there was no loophole for the extraction of further monies.

I had no intentions of returning to this business idea again and channelled the continuing Ionos Emails into a folder that remained unread.

On 28 May this year, however, Ionos debited £8.40 from my account. It had set up a stealth direct debit, which I had missed, because I do not make payments by this means. When I checked the folder set aside for Ionos emails, I found notices there confirming that it had set up a direct debit and that this payment would be debited from my account every month. There is no justification for the money extraction: I cancelled the account and the renewal before the elapse of six months and never logged in again; I have no intentions of ever doing so.

I explained to my bank that Ionos had set up a stealth Direct Debit and it agreed to claim this money back from Ionos under the Direct Debit scheme and refund it to me.

I hoped that this would be the end of the matter. But Ionos has continued forwarding Emails demanding payment for an account that is closed. It is now using menace to extract payments to which it is not entitled and warns that I will be referred to a debt collecting agency if I don not make the payments it is demanding.

Having now taken time that I can ill afford to make it clear to Ionos that it does not have the right to continue these fraudulent activities, I must ask it to desist from harassing me for payments. Please be aware that if these continue, I will have no choice but to take more time away from priority matters in order to report you to trading standards for fraud.

Paula L Fay

Not capable of providing a service. I cancelled in May and I still have problems with these idiots. Stealing from me, illegal account that was not opened by me and not capable of transferring my domain.

Can't transfer my domain and fraud. See the last email to them below:
I want this unauthorized account closed. If you fail to comply with the request and close this immediately I will take legal action against your company as this is Fraud.

Transfer my domain to me and remove ALL my details from your database.

I WANT ALL OF THIS DONE WHITIN 24HRS. FAILURE TO COMPLY WILL LEAD TO YOUR COMPANY BEING LISTED FOR FRAUD.

TAKE THIS MATTER VERY seriously. As every department I have listed is cc'd in this email I know every department receives the email. Take this to your management and make sure this is escalated to the relevant staff. I am not following up on this and I am not emailing and explaining this again. DO YOUR JOBS. I AM NOT DOING IT FOR YOU UNLESS YOU HAVE ME ON PAYROL.

IT IS YOUR JOB AND COMPANY THAT IS ON THE LINE AND IN THE WRONG. FIX YOUR MESS OR I WILL MAKE SURE THAT EVERYONE IS AWARE OF HOW YOU RUN YOUR COMPANY AND FRAUDULENT CONTRACTS THAT GET ACTIVATED AND BILLED WITHOUT CONTRACTS.

YOU HAVE 24HRS TO CORRECT THIS. IN THE MEAN TIME PEOPLE WILL KNOW ABOUT THIS AND I WILL UPDATE THE OUTCOME. I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS NOW.

The transfer of domain was made from the people what was made my website to
Me, this should take maximum 48h, is past 1 week and yet the I&I didn't made the transfer of domain, my business is shut down, I don't have access to my website, I'm loosing a lot of money, for a week and IONOS yet don't have an answer to me, I don't know what I should do, nobody will give me an answer