My current web hosting service does not provide me with much storage. I’d like a couple hundred gigabytes. Looking around, I see several plans that have “unlimited storage”. There has to be some catch there, right? Otherwise I could just use the site for backing up my data.
Any recommends for a web host that has lots of storage but is still reasonably inexpensive?
Usually, there’s a policy dictating the type of usage, and I’ve seen such policies that specifically forbid using it for backups. There will be small print. Find it before you sign.
I was in the hosting business several years ago, and there was an adage among those of us who opposed deceptive marketing claims: “There are no unlimited-capacity hard drives, so there is no such thing as unlimited storage.”
As Mangetout said, you’ll often find in the Terms of Service documents that use of a web account for offsite backup purposes is forbidden. They can offer “unlimited storage” because no web site really requires a whole lot. Those that are on the extreme high end will run into problems with restrictions or charges on transfer totals, vague limits on “CPU usage”, policies against streaming video, etc.
As for backup, these days there are several reputable dedicated backup service that do offer “unlimited” storage for around $50 or $60 a year. They can get away with this because they’re storing for that price only some number of compressed backup sets from a single one of your computers, so while there aren’t hard limits there is a practical limit to how much space any one account could conceivably require.
I have had good luck with godaddy. My previous service, Hostexcellence, started complaining when I exceeded 20% of the storage I paid for, saying that was too much compared to other users.
Somehow, if I pay for X bytes, I should be able to store X bytes, but Hostexcellence wouldn’t buy that. When I went to godaddy, I made very sure they would live up to their promise, and for 2 years, they have.
Also some hosting companies seem to object if you use them for “storage”, like backup, instead of web pages, as Mangetout says. I can’t see why – data is data – but Hostexcellence threatened to cut me off if they suspected I was parking non-web data in my area. Again, godaddy doesn’t care.
Godaddy is cheap. The only complaint I have about them is they are constantly nickel & dimeing me to death to offers of services for just a few dollars a month, upgrades, enhancements, etc. I think they are mostly worthless, and no godaddy salesman every gave me a hard time.
So I store 150GB of data with godaddy. They give me “unlimited” email storage, which amounts to another 30GB or so, without complaints so far.
Thank you all for the great information. I am not looking at using space as backup, I was just wondering how they could offer unlimited storage. I had never read the TOSs before and it is indeed enlightening. I think that my particular usage might violate some of them, and better to find out now.
I just did some rough calculations. I have the fastest speed my cable company offers for residential customers, 5Kb/sec upload, or a little less in real practice. If I continuously uploaded all the data on my computer, it would take about 5 weeks to upload 1TB, and since I have about 9TB in the system, it would take 45 weeks, or most of a year, to send.
In a year, if current trends continue, the price of storage will have halved, and the next 9TB can be stored for a lot less.
I’d say that any company offering unlimited storage will be just fine even if they have a lot of customers like me, just as long as the affordable transmission speeds don’t increase too fast.
Say what? Do you mean 5 Mb/s (5 megabits per second, i.e. 5 million bits, 625,000 bytes, or ~610 KiB)?
OP, I’d be grateful if you would PM me. Or simply send an email to the address in my public profile, referencing this thread title.
TIA
They may have told you that they don’t care, and it may in fact be their current policy that they’re not enforcing a restriction against it. But you should be aware that it is specifically disallowed under their current terms of service, so should they choose to enforce that clause you would be in violation if you’re using a GoDaddy hosting account for backup.
From http://www.godaddy.com/agreements/ShowDoc.aspx?pageid=hosting_sa
“You shall not use the Service in any way, in Go Daddy’s sole discretion, that shall impair the functioning or operation of Go Daddy’s Services or equipment. Specifically by way of example and not as a limitation, You shall not use the Services as: (i) a repository or instrument for placing or storing archived files;”
Having been in the business, I’d be very surprised to find any hosting provider that does not have a similar clause. Upon reading your post I went to check on GoDaddy’s terms – which I wasn’t familiar with – confident that I’d find this kind of policy to be in place. It’s completely routine for the industry.
They care because although they tell you it’s unlimited, they want it to be limited - by the practical needs of the web front end that is calling for the data.
As bleibtreu said upthread - most websites don’t have phenomenally large space requirements, so offering ‘unlimited webspace’ is like offering unlimited coffee refills at a restaurant - they know there is only so much you can reasonably drink, and within this scope, it’s a cheap thing to offer.
If they offer unlimited space with no conditions, then there are fewer constraints on how much you end up consuming, and how fast that will grow - and that is something that could potentially become quite unprofitable, quite fast.
Correct. Why does that sound wrong? Are you aware that most providers only advertise the download speed, but their upload speed is typically only one-tenth as much? What is your connection like (if it’s residential)?
Charter advertises 25mb/sec max (that’s 25 megabits per second), but that’s down. It’s only 5 up. That’s a better ratio than their other packages, which are 10:1, not 5:1. Our town hall has 5Mb/sec down, 512Kb up, and that’s a commercial account.
As far as Godaddy’s policies, my account pays for 150GB of storage, and X bandwidth (I forget the number). It’s not unlimited, but I use most of the 150GB. It would be difficult for anyone to prove that the data stored there is for backup purposes instead of something else.
However, Godaddy offers an “unlimited” email storage feature for a few dollars extra a year, and I have subscribed to that. I’m aware that it would be impossible for it to really be unlimited, but I do take advantage of the space to save old emails and attachments, which serve as a backup. Unlike backups at home, it is data that’s accessible elsewhere. Again, how could anyone prove that I was using it as a backup instead of just saving old emails for reference?
When I call for tech support, no one at Godaddy has ever complained that I was abusing the system. In contrast, Hostexcellence was constantly sending emails threatening to cut me off if I exceeded 20% of what I paid for, and that is just unreasonable.
Really? I would have thought it would be fairly trivial. They know how the data got there, what formats it comprises, and where, if anywhere, it is used from, and by what means it is requested.
But anyway, even if they can’t catch you at it, that’s not the same as saying they don’t care.
So is a WMV file, listed in a HTML file, a backup or not?
More than one techie has said everything is hunky-dory.
One file would be hard to work with, but if you have ten thousand files, indexed in HTML files, none of which HTML files are ever accessed by the world at large, then it starts to look like you’re not running a website, but an archive.
There will be more subtlety to it than that, but everything that happens to your files/webspace is (or at least can be) logged somewhere, and designing a query to pick out the accounts that look as though they may be in breach is simple, even if those results require scrutiny by a human before any action is taken.
But the policy doesn’t. The random techie on the phone almost certainly doesn’t have the authority to alter policy. They’re telling you what you can currently get away with, not what the service officially permits.
I’m not your mother, and I’m not trying to lecture you - but there is a distinction to be made here between services that officially accommodate unlimited-method use of ‘unlimited storage’, and those that merely don’t bother to enforce their policies which restrict it.
Maybe it won’t ever come to a head, but maybe it will - there’s no guarantee that this slack enforcement of policy will persist into the future - for example, if they experience a downturn in new business, at the same time as continued growth in storage consumption, it’s possible that someone will be tasked with finding savings - and the policy linked to by bleibtreu does already exert their right to carry out forensic examination of your account/data/usage.
I have thousands of files, some of which are referenced in other files, some of which are not. Some are accessed by others, some by a select few, some by none. I guarantee that if a human needs to spend many hours analyzing this, it is going to be more expensive than anything else they do for me.
And if they don’t like it, there are thousands of other companies hungering for my business. And since both storage and bandwidth cost trends are down, they will have less and less interest in what I do with what I buy. All I’m asking is if I pay for and are promised X, I should get X. Hostexcellence didn’t feel that way, so I left. Godaddy agrees with me, so I’m with them.
Besides, any hosting service should be glad if few files are accessed frequently. That keeps their traffic down!
If the pattern of usage of the files is practically the same as that of the files comprising a website, then it’s not really an archive, but instead, just a peculiar kind of website.
But if the data is being used differently, then that’s going to be measurable (probably just by query, without a lot of human analysis).
That’s great, but let’s not forget what is the topic of this thread - recommendations for web hosting with specific features. Whilst you appear to be receiving the sort of services the OP is asking about at the moment, those services are not self-described that way, and so as a recommendation, it may not be one that works out for someone else.
No, they don’t. Certain members of their staff have neglected to disagree with you. That’s not the same thing at all. Sorry to keep hammering this point, but it’s important in the context of the topic of this thread.
I’m sure what they’d all really love is for us to buy the services, then never use them at all, but I think it’s reasonable to assume that if their terms and conditions say they don’t like a certain kind of activity, they mean it.
I came to Godaddy at the suggestion of a trusted friend who has been in the computer business for as long as I have – decades – and who had extensive experience as an ISP, computer shop owner, network consultant and much more. She had mostly good things to say about Godaddy. She suggested them precisely for the reasons the OP wants a service like that, and so far my experience matches hers. I’m sure there are other good companies, but this one seems to be ideal for both me and the OP. And Bobby McGee.
So this is a strong recommendation from at least two computer professionals. YMMV.
You still seem to be missing the point. I don’t have the slightest reason to doubt that they’re a good, professional, competent hosting company - but the OP isn’t only looking for recommendations of that nature, and should not be assured they offer a specific service that their policies explicitly deny.
I may have missed this above but…check what they are offering you for bandwidth. The large storage may look attractive, but the “catch” could be that they don’t allow a lot of activity per month. My site used to have something like 10GB per month and I was OK with that initially, until traffic started going up and then I got hit with a mammoth surcharge per GB. I then went and negotiated a new plan with a higher budget for bandwidth.
I have “unlimited” bandwidth (so they say), and in November, used 128GB. I don’t remember what the guaranteed value was when I first signed on, but I was using only about 5% of the max allocation. Godaddy has never complained.
Just in case you overlooked the actual OP, here it is
I think I answered that question perfectly. My hosting company provides me with exactly that. If sh1bu1 can find something closer to perfect, he is welcome to it. Do you, Mangetout, have a better company to offer?