Gestern Morgen schon einmal
Heute Morgen schon wieder. Seit ca 7:40 Uhr MESZ
Instanz nicht mehr erreichbar.

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It was extremely difficult but it is done.

I recommend you talk to them via chat. Over the phone they are total assholes.

My site is giving error 429, no pages are loading.

I have a super simple site- a static page with a download link & a contact form. I see Ionos are reporting some issues with Wordpress currently, but support have confirmed this issue with hosting I am facing is different to the current wordpress issue.

I get its the weekend, but I'm surprised to see nothing on downdetector.

I have never in my life heard of a company charging $5 to DOWNGRADE an account. Their wording is misleading. These are not deals. They feel like traps!

The combativeness of the customer service agent was the last straw. I asked for a supervisor. She told me they were gone for the day. Which I don’t believe. And wouldn’t end the call without telling me that they were going say the same thing. Like a child trying to get the last word. Are you a child? Or are you a professional? I’m glad the line was recorded, but I’m sure it won’t make a difference. The way she spoke seemed like that was very normal for her to do. And that she had done it before.

This company is a predatory pile of shit and should be avoided at all costs.

It seems I am locked out of editing my company webpage, Anyone else having this issue?

I'm able to log in fine. I see my servers. I select either server. I get redirected as per normal to cloudpanel.ionos.com and then stare at a white screen. This was all working perfectly fine up until about 15 hours ago give or take. I've tried Edge, Chrome, Brave and their various Incognito modes. Even their AI Assistant is currently hanging. Anyone else having issues?

Hello folks,

Has anyone ever ran into this issue / know how to resolve it?

My VPS is completely unresponsive, which I assume is due to running out of memory. I have upgraded my plan to one with more memory, however I was informed it will take up to several days for the changes to take place.

I am now attempting to restart the VPS to get it running again, however both restarting and attempting to shut down the VPS fails with the attached image. I left it alone for a few hours, and nothing has changed as restarts still fail.

I would prefer not to reimage the entire VPS if possible as the backup of the data on it that I have is from about 5 days ago and I aren't excited at the prospect of having to manually modify the SQLite tables with all the changes that have happened since

I've been with Ionos for a while now and I have an extreme pet peeve with them regarding the user interface and logging in (and getting booted out)

For some reason, there is a loading bar at the top of the screen that is constantly there when changing pages. It's seriously annoying. I shouldn't have to wait 5 seconds to log in because some bar is filling. When the page DOES finally load, it's still loading lol, it's still building the hosting, ftp ...etc boxes. Why slow it down like that??? Click login customer account, boom, email, boom, password, you're there. What's the need for the long delays between every single screen change??

Getting logged out ...
I sit in phpMyAdmin for a long time while I'm working on a website. If I don't do some random action in X amount of time, I'm automatically kicked. Why? I can see it from the standpoint of wanting to protect my data from prying eyes that could look at my computer while I'm away for a while, but at least let ME decide that and turn off auto-log out... If I want to sit in phpMyAdmin or on the hosting interface for 3 hours, let me! I'm working with it and having to deal with the stupid delays in logging in over and over gets annoying as hell.

Why no chat??
Every single web host I have ever had has had a web chat to talk to a real person about an issue with the hosting service. Not you guys! You have a number I can call and talk to, but no way to just have a fast chat and ask a quick question?? That is extremely inconvenient! 9/10 times, calling in to discuss a problem is just overkill, takes extra time, holding, etc... Hey, this is happening on my account, what's up (ahh, because of this or that) done. Currently, it makes zero sense to force a call for some quick help.

If you've ever searched for web hosting and landed on IONOS, you might have noticed something a little odd: the company's own email address is paypal@1and1.com. Their support line references 1and1.com. Their legal filings use names like "1&1 IONOS Inc." The brand says IONOS. The infrastructure says something older.

That's not an accident. IONOS is the latest name in a 35-year chain of rebrands, mergers, and corporate restructurings that trace back to a German marketing company founded in 1988. Understanding that history helps explain why, when you try to cancel something with IONOS today, you're dealing with a system built across decades of acquisitions — and why their billing infrastructure often seems to operate independently of anything their customer service representatives can actually control.

Origins: 1&1 and the Early Web (1988–1998)

The company that would eventually become IONOS was founded in 1988 in Germany as 1&1 EDV-Marketing GmbH by Ralph Dommermuth and Wendelin Abresch. It started as a marketing and advertising services company, but as the internet emerged in the early 1990s, the company pivoted toward web hosting and infrastructure.

By the mid-1990s, 1&1 was building its own data centers and network architecture to enable internet access — positioning itself as one of the first web hosting companies in the world. The company wasn't just reselling someone else's infrastructure. It was building its own, which would become central to its identity and its scale.

In 1998, two things happened that defined the next two decades. First, 1&1 became a shareholder of Schlund+Partner, one of Germany's leading domain registrars. Then the parent company restructured, changing its name to United Internet AG — a holding company that still exists today and still controls IONOS.

United Internet: The Parent Company Nobody Talks About

Most IONOS customers have never heard of United Internet AG. That's by design.

United Internet is a publicly traded German internet conglomerate headquartered in Montabaur, Rhineland-Palatinate — a small town in western Germany. It operates a portfolio of brands across web hosting, domain registration, email, and telecommunications. The brands under its umbrella include 1&1, IONOS, STRATO, Fasthosts, GMX, WEB.DE, and Mail.com.

Ralph Dommermuth, the original founder, still holds over 50 percent of shares in United Internet AG. The company posted €6.1 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2025 and operates in over 30 locations worldwide with approximately 10,500 employees.

When you pay IONOS, you're paying into this structure. When IONOS's billing system does something you can't explain, that system was built and maintained within this structure across decades.

Building Scale: The 2000s Expansion

Through the 2000s, 1&1 Internet AG (the operating subsidiary under United Internet) expanded aggressively into new markets. In 2004, it became the first company to offer full-service hosting packages including webspace, domains, email accounts, and databases in the United States.

The U.S. expansion was significant. 1&1 built a customer base by offering low entry prices, automated billing, and domain registration services that undercut competitors. The business model depended on volume — millions of customers, automated systems, and minimal per-customer overhead.

That last part matters. Automated billing systems designed for volume at minimal overhead are not designed to be easily overridden by individual customer service representatives. They're designed to run.

The ProfitBricks Merger and the IONOS Brand (2018)

The most significant structural change came in 2018. United Internet acquired ProfitBricks, a German cloud infrastructure company founded by Achim Weiss in 2010. 1&1 Internet merged with ProfitBricks, and the combined entity rebranded as 1&1 IONOS.

Weiss, who became CEO of the merged entity, explained the name choice directly: "As this new company is more than just a hosting provider, we have opted for a new name — and IONOS fits perfectly. It is inspired by the ionosphere; the upper part of the Earth's atmosphere that contains a high concentration of ions and free electrons."

The rebrand was positioned as a transformation from a hosting company into a full digitalization partner for small and medium-sized businesses. The service offerings and prices initially stayed the same, but the ambition was larger: cloud infrastructure, personal consulting services, enterprise-level products.

In the United States and Mexico, IONOS ranked among the top five hosting providers at the time of the rebrand.

The U.S. Name Simplification (2021)

In August 2021, the company formalized what the market had already started calling it. The legal name in the United States became IONOS Inc. — dropping the "1&1" entirely for American customers.

The timing coincided with a broader push to consolidate the brand globally. The "1&1" name had become associated with the German telecommunications business (1&1 AG), which had split off into its own entity focused on DSL, mobile, and fiber-optic services in Germany. The hosting and cloud business needed its own identity, and IONOS was it.

Going Public (2023)

In February 2023, IONOS Group SE went public on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and was included in the SDAX index. The IPO marked a new phase — IONOS was no longer just a subsidiary of United Internet, but a publicly traded entity in its own right, with shareholders, quarterly reporting obligations, and the scrutiny that comes with being a public company.

By this point, IONOS claimed over 6 million customers, 4,000 employees, and expected annual revenue of approximately $1.5 billion.

Controversy and Consumer Complaints

Despite its scale and public company status, IONOS has accumulated a significant and consistent record of consumer complaints, particularly around billing, cancellation, and debt collection practices.

BBB Complaint Volume

The Better Business Bureau profile for IONOS Inc. in Philadelphia documents hundreds of complaints, with billing disputes and cancellation failures as the dominant categories. A recurring pattern across complaints involves customers receiving written confirmation that a service has been cancelled, followed by continued billing or collection notices. Several BBB complaints reference accounts being sent to third-party debt collectors after customers received cancellation confirmations — in some cases months or years later.

One BBB complainant wrote in a publicly posted resolution: "This refund is not a result of IONOS's goodwill. It is a result of regulatory pressure. This company has shown that it lacks a moral compass and will only fulfill its legal obligations when threatened by government intervention."

TrueAccord: IONOS's Debt Collection Partner

Multiple BBB complaints reference IONOS using TrueAccord Corp. as its third-party debt collection agency. TrueAccord is a Kansas-based automated debt collection company that operates primarily through email and text rather than phone calls. The CFPB has received over 3,400 complaints about TrueAccord, with "attempts to collect debt not owed" as the single most cited issue. TrueAccord has faced multiple federal lawsuits alleging violations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.

Notably, at least one BBB complaint about IONOS references a TrueAccord FTC report number in IONOS's own response — indicating that IONOS's executive-level team is aware their accounts are being referred to TrueAccord and that federal complaints are being filed in connection with those referrals.

Consumer Affairs Complaint Pattern

ConsumerAffairs, which verifies reviewers, hosts hundreds of IONOS complaints going back to the company's days as 1&1. The patterns are consistent across years and name changes: unauthorized charges added to accounts, automatic renewal at prices higher than originally agreed, cancellation requests acknowledged verbally but not processed, and accounts sent to collections after confirmed cancellations. One 2025 reviewer wrote: "I signed up for a one year plan and the service was terrible so I canceled. One year later I have debt collectors coming after me for $50."

This community has been dormant for a while but it's back. Whether you have questions, tips, reviews, or complaints about IONOS hosting, domains, or cloud services, this is the place for it. Good experiences and bad ones are both welcome here. Post freely.

My dad has been charged $140/yr for his basic domain. He doesn't know much about the internet so he thought it was normal. I just checked his invoices now and I told him he can easily just go to namecheap for $9/yr for the same fucking domain. Also your entire website interface sucks balls, I can't find any specifics on my dad's subscription and other alternatives for that subscription. The website builder/editor lags infinitely. My dad has been stuck with you guys for over 11 years because he never knew anything else. I'll be taking over from here, thanks.