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Shared Web Hosting Limits
By: Webmaster, Sat Sep 5th, 2009
Shared Web Hosting companies often advertise unbelievable amounts of disk storage (300GB?), and bandwidth (unlimited?). However, when you actually start using such amount of content, you will hit many road blocks and your account can often be suspended and eventually terminated, whatever you paid forfeited. Excessive promises are just a bait, you should not believe them blindly. What kind of hard disk is it that 200 websites are on the same machine and each of them is promised 300GB disk space?
Following are the other limits that a web host can apply even though they may not tell you ahead of time:
1. Excessive CPU use on WebServer. For example, on average, your PHP scripts may be expected to use no more than 1% of the total CPU. If you serve gigabytes of pages, you will easily exceed this limit. Thus you can have 300GB of content, but you can’t serve it to anybody easily. Some web hosts will suspend your account until you complain about it. Some of them just block it for few minutes and after that it will be back online again. Ask your PHP Hosting company about CPU limits. They may prohibit some scripts.
2. Excessive CPU use on the MySQL Server. For example, on average, your account may be expected to use no more than 0.3% of the CPU by mysql. If you have alot of data, and you query it often, MySQL has to do alot of work. On top of it, if you do not have correct database indexes or complicated queries, it may cause MySQL to use excessive CPU. That will slow down the whole server, it’s a no-no. They will lock your account.
3. Excessive disk space use for MySQL. Most webhosts do not mention any space limit for your databases. However, if you use 4-5 Gigabyte, they start yelling out loud that you are over the limit. Suddenly, out of the blue, this new limit appears and they will lock your account again.
4. bandwidth - if you have alot of content, and somehow you manage to serve it (without hitting above limits) to many people coming to your website, you will eventually hit a bandwith limit.
5. Some webhosts may throttle (make slow) the FTP access such that you cannot possibly copy and maintain the promised Gigabytes of content in the first place. Especially free web hosting companies may limit how much data you can send via ftp so that people donot abuse their free hosting services.
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