Does Hostgator allow a customer to use 3000 GB bandwidth (Baby blan) in a month?

[kennethus]

hello,
I am just wondering if hostgator really allows a customer to use about 3000 GB bandwidth in a month....I just had a bad experience with hostmonster...which baned me because my account is using too much resource.......my website is hosting many images.....the traffic can be up to 80 GB+ a day........I just signup the hostgator Baby plan....and uploaded some images to my account.......If my account's traffic reachs 80GB+ a day....do you think I am going to be banned just because of the traffic?

Thanks

[Sam]

You won't get suspended for using the bandwidth..

You will be suspended for abusing the Server resources

[kennethus]

Originally Posted by Sam

You won't get suspended for using the bandwidth..

You will be suspended for abusing the Server resources

is hosting image files abusing Server resources?

[GvilleRick]

Depends on the purpose of your image hosting. The Terms of Service states:

Examples of unacceptable material on all Shared, Reseller and Dedicated Servers include:
IRC Bots, Proxy Scripts / Anonymizers, Pirated Software / Warez, image, filedump, or banner-ad services (similar to rapidshare, photobucket, or commercial banner ad rotation),

Generally if you have been suspended for resource abuse (generally using too much of the CPU) in a shared hosting environment you are likely to have problems with another shared hosting account. Sounds like you may need to consider a dedicated server with the amount of traffic you are receiving.

[IronWarrior]

Yeah, am not fully sure what the tos really means by "image"

My best guess is for image sites that show cat pictures or something?

[Goddess Dix]

Originally Posted by kennethus

is hosting image files abusing Server resources?

running a public image hosting service like photobucket, etc. is against tos, but if you have questions about your specific situation, ask sales.

if you have high enough traffic with you image hosting or whatever, you'll most likely be hammering the server, which is an issue here.

[GoGators]

So how do you use your allowable monthly bandwidth allocation without "abusing" server resources. Sounds like a tricky way to say you have 3000 Gb of bandwidth per month allocated to you, but not really. With my plan, I have 6000 Gb allocated to me to use. Breaking down the numbers, that comes down to an average of about 200 Gb per day, or in other words, about 140 Mb per minute (2.3 Mb per second). I'd say that's pretty busy.

So again, the magic question is: How do you use the bandwidth you are paying for without overburdening....I mean "abusing"....the server?

[YukonMaster]

It isn't allocated, it is called overselling. They don't actually set aside 300-1000GB of space for your account, the same with the bandwidth. You would be suspended for resource overusage before using up all your bandwidth.

[GoGators]

Originally Posted by YukonMaster

It isn't allocated, it is called overselling. They don't actually set aside 300-1000GB of space for your account, the same with the bandwidth. You would be suspended for resource overusage before using up all your bandwidth.

Actually it is, according to their TOS. I'm sure most people don't read them, but I sure as hell did given that I've been screwed over enough times by hosting companies. HG's TOS is very well written and pretty darn clear for the most part. The part that's NOT clear, to me anyway, is how you can possibly use your monthly bandwidth allocation without "abusing" server resources. I just don't see how it's possible.

Originally Posted by From the TOS

8.) Bandwidth Usage
You are allocated a monthly bandwidth allowance. This allowance varies depending on the hosting package you purchase. Should your account pass the allocated amount we reserve the right to suspend the account until the start of the next allocation, suspend the account until more bandwidth is purchased at an additional fee, suspend the account until you upgrade to a higher level of package, terminate the account and/or charge you an additional fee for the overages. Unused transfer in one month cannot be carried over to the next month.

[Goddess Dix]

Originally Posted by GoGators

So again, the magic question is: How do you use the bandwidth you are paying for without overburdening....I mean "abusing"....the server?

most likely, you won't be able to use all the bandwith without hammering the server and slowing it down for other shared clients. from what i've seen, though, it's generally the database backens and connections that tax the server, not straight traffic to static sites. but i dont' have any static sites that use that kind of bandwith, either.

the issue being that hg is not going to suspend you for using bandwith available within your package, but if you can't manage to use the bandwith without slowing down the server, that you will be suspended for.

there is an article in the hg blog from brent about the large packages where he's quite upfront about it. he also says that for people that hit the shared too hard, he'll move them to a server with 4 clients per server, charging them less than hg's cost. that's more than i'd do. personally, i think if a site needs that many resources, it should be able to support a dedicated anyway.

[YukonMaster]

Originally Posted by GoGators

Actually it is, according to their TOS. I'm sure most people don't read them, but I sure as hell did given that I've been screwed over enough times by hosting companies. HG's TOS is very well written and pretty darn clear for the most part. The part that's NOT clear, to me anyway, is how you can possibly use your monthly bandwidth allocation without "abusing" server resources. I just don't see how it's possible.

Problem is, you can't allocate unlimited bandwidth. So maybe that isn't exactly what they mean.

[natong]

I wonder too which application website that don't break TOS and transfer 15TB per month?

[jakeruston]

I recommend getting a Dedicated Server if you want to make an image host.

I just wanted to offer word on one way to use your bandwidth without abusing server resources and without violating ToS. This is not official, as this cannot be applied to every site, so you still need to ask someone in sales or better yet, someone in security.

I'll give an example of a company which does not host with us, but that could given the allocations we offer.

Adobe has PhotoShop which as you know is a few hundred MB. Assuming they did host with us, and had only the online ordering part of their site here along with the download of the licensed copies of Photoshop, they could offer it for download, and use up their allotted bandwidth pretty easily in one month. Let's say 6000GB (6 million MB) of bandwidth, and PhotoShop is 300MB for nice round numbers.

That would be 20,000 downloads a month which is 666 1/3 downloads a day. That means that 667 rounded customers per day can download the software, before you figure in the data transfer of images and the actual html/css content of the site. The resource usage wouldn't be too much for the server to handle as far as CPU and memory because of the relatively low amount of visitors, but the bandwidth would be consumed by the end of the month. It's not considered a file dump as they are offering one product of theirs which is on their site, and it is for sale to people who pay only.

As you can see given that most sites don't actually meet all of those requirements it is a bit difficult to hit the bandwidth limit without consuming server resources, because the average site that does get suspended has 20k+ visitors per day, or worse, per hour, which means that php code is being run constantly along with the database being accessed constantly, while not doing much actual file transfer. Image hosting (where anyone can just go and upload images, and then use them on their own site) is specifically forbidden, as per the previously quoted part of the ToS for Unacceptable Material, however if your site is a graphics design business, or a picture company where you have a shopping cart that you sell the pictures through (even if you have hundreds of thousands of pictures in your catalog), you should be fine.

Simply put, if you are not selling the images, or if they are specifically uploaded for use elsewhere, like stock photo sites, picture uploading sites, etc, then HostGator is not the place for your site unless you intend to purchase a Dedicated Server.