I've had problems with 1and1 shared hosting plans in the past. The site would be down for hours at random times. You are not given root access (see compliant above), and the server your hosted on is shared with hundreds of other people so bandwidth can fluctuate at any given time. I've since dropped them and now use
www.Ezzi.net . Its not cheap but you can expect 100% uptime and great technical support. Even better, its hosted in America and not overseas like my server at 1and1 was. To use ezzi, you pretty much have to be extremely savy in linux as you are given nothing else but a ssh connection to build your server.
If you're looking for host with lots of extras try
www.siteground.com . They'll help you setup a forum, CMS program or whatnot. You can even purchase a domain through them and have it linked to your account pretty easily. I would only recommend them to beginners to web hosting. Plans are dirt cheap too compared to other hosters.