Thinking of moving to bluehost [Archive]

coan_net

05-13-2009, 06:36 PM

Well for the past 7 years, I've been hosting at Powweb, and I finally hit the final straw.

(vent part first: I have about 33 gig worth of files, all used for websites, and usually around 10 gig of bandwidth a month - once hit 17.99 gig bandwidth, but usually around or under 10 gig. I've been told that I'm in violation of the TOS because of "excessive usage", and if I don't fix it by Friday, they may delete my account. Both phone support & online chat support with Powweb say that my account is OK, yet emails keep coming. And the best part is that it is not because of any particular file type or amount of files... but they won't tell me what, so I'm now left with guessing what I did that might violate the TOS or risk losing my account. Well I think I'm done with them, so I'm now looking at bluehost.... thanks for letting me vent)

Now the question parts:

1. Unlimited space - as long as files are used for the website, then 30gig, 50gig, 100 gig of space used is OK? Is this correct? I have a site that has a lot of pictures that will continue to grow. I'm up to about 33gig, and I can easily see it grow by about 5-10 gig a year.

2. # of files - Is there a limit? I have over 120,000 pictures for my one site (with each picture having a thumbnail, and a middle size picture) - that is just main pictures, not including icons and other files. I want to know if there is a limit, and what it is.

3. Bandwidth - I have a lot of data, but my sites are very specilized (genealogy research of Vermilion County Illinois & surrounding areas) - so you can guess there would not be a lot of traffic. Usually around 10 gig a month, and as said above - up to 18 gig one month. I'm guessing this is WAY under any limit that the "unlimited" offers and should be good there.

4. E-mail. Since it is a shared host, does the email accounts sometimes get put on "spam lists" because other accounts who are on the same host does something bad? And if so, how long normally before bluehost fixes this to get them off the blocked lists? (On Powweb, since it is a shared host, if they accept an account who does bad stuff, EVERYONE on that server gets blocked - real pain - just wondering if something similar happens here.)

5. Website downtime. Anything major?

6. Other thoughts? I'm a lazy person, which is why I've put up with so much from Powweb up until now.... I did not want to move everything. But I'm pretty motivated now, so any other thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions?

Early Out

05-13-2009, 06:57 PM

1. Space: As long as the files are, in fact, used for the website, and are not copyrighted by someone else, there is no limit to the space you use (but see my "note," below).

2. Files: Here, you're going to have a problem. I have heard that BH is now limiting accounts to 50,000 files, and I suspect you're going to see the same kind of limits on other hosts. I haven't seen anything in writing, but I know that some users with a few hundred thousand files have had their accounts terminated. The reason is that, if a file system has to be rebuilt following a failure of some sort, huge numbers of files result in the rebuild process taking days, which a provider of shared hosting just can't tolerate. You should probably look into ways of storing your images in a database (since a database is, as far as the server operating system is concerned, just a single file).

3. Bandwidth is unlimited, but see my "note," below.

4. BH limits outgoing emails to an absolute maximum of 750 per hour, so there are no spammers hosting here. However, some users have their incoming email forwarded to another account, and all the incoming spam gets forwarded with it, which has the effect of making it look as if BH is the source of the spam. As a result, the BH mail servers sometimes do get blacklisted. Then again, this happens to virtually every web host and ISP out there, from time to time. BH has no control over whether ISPs blacklist its mail servers - they do work to get it resolved, but it's usually the customers of the other ISP who get the block removed. In any event, it seems to get resolved quickly on those rare occasions when it occurs.

5. Downtime: better than most.

Note: as with any web host, the promises of things like unlimited space and bandwidth are subject to the usual disclaimer, i.e., if you're doing anything on your account that's degrading service for the other users, you'll get booted off. Given the large amount of storage you want to use, and especially the number of individual files involved, you should probably be looking into a dedicated server or VPS.

You should read the terms of service (http://www.bluehost.com/cgi/info/terms.html), especially sections 7 and 8.

coan_net

05-13-2009, 07:06 PM

... which you bring up another question.

7. How is the database? I know on Powweb, it seems to be very slow when I have something in the mySQL..... which is a reason I never thought about putting all the pictures in a database.

Early Out

05-13-2009, 07:10 PM

Haven't heard any complaints about mySQL (not using it myself, so I have no first-hand knowledge). Your usage of CPU time is limited (http://helpdesk.bluehost.com/index.php/kb/article/000434), however, so you need to make sure your database is indexed properly, and you're not using clumsy "select" statements.

mikeblakemore

05-13-2009, 07:14 PM

coan_net

05-13-2009, 07:23 PM

Thanks for your answers so far. The very low file limit of 50,000 files is something that may sadly keep me off of here - I will contact support and check on this limit to be for sure about it.

Early Out

05-13-2009, 07:26 PM

I only have <130 mailboxes....
With POP email, of course, it's not a problem, since no files are hanging around on the server. I'd never thought about the troubles you run into with IMAP. I imagine you also run into problems with the outgoing email limits (POP or IMAP doesn't matter in that context).

But if you need more than 100 mailboxes, it sounds like you're trying to support a medium-sized business. Bargain shared hosting may not be the best choice for you!

To my mind, BH is a good place for an individual who wants to maintain a website, maybe a forum, maybe a blog, someone who needs a handful of email addresses. It's fine for hosting a site for a small business, a simple sole proprietorship or partnership. It just seems like a poor choice for anything larger than that, and a false economy, to boot. What other service does a business purchase that costs a measly $7 a month? The price alone should be a tip-off that it's probably not robust enough to handle the needs of a larger enterprise.

coan_net

05-13-2009, 07:35 PM

Well chat support just confirmed there there is a 50,000 file limit - wow, that is low.

But at least I know that now before I signed up. Thanks for you help - off to research other hosting sites.

mikeblakemore

05-13-2009, 07:36 PM

Agreed.

I don't mind that the limit is in place. It's just that my email account users have been using roundcube, creating folders, and now all of a sudden I have 14 days to try and move it all elsewhere. It is not easy moving IMAP folders. I would much rather have a set size limit on my account rather than a ridiculous file count limit. I would think some server replication and load balancing would solve their problems, but apparently not...

Early Out

05-13-2009, 07:44 PM

Well chat support just confirmed there there is a 50,000 file limit ....
Interesting to hear that rumor confirmed. Now, if there were just a utility on cPanel somewhere to tell me how many files I've got.... :rolleyes:

mikeblakemore

05-13-2009, 07:51 PM

here are some instructions provided by the abuse dept:

User Quota (Top 50 folders by file count):

You can find a copy of the updated scan a few ways:
1) Log into the hosting account, going to the File Manager. Select the Home Directory, then open the tmp folder.
Please right click on the userquota file and select the View option.
2) Log into your main FTP account and open the tmp folder. You can then download the userquota file to your personal computer.

hope this helps.
I am forwarding all my abuse conversations to Matt the CEO, hopefully he can grant me an extension on the 14 days...

coan_net

05-13-2009, 07:58 PM

Interesting to hear that rumor confirmed. Now, if there were just a utility on cPanel somewhere to tell me how many files I've got.... :rolleyes:

I'm unsure how many files I have, but I know on my genalogy website, I know I have at least 120,000 pictures available for viewing.... which each of those has a thumbnail & a mid-size picture, along with other things - I know I can easily be around 500,000 files for my site.

Putting all that in a database might be a solution, but it is nothing that I have time to figure out right now.

Well at least I found out the limit. I had my credit card in hand debating with myself if I wanted the 2 year, or the cheaper 3 year plan..... so I'm glad I found out that limitation now before I had 1/2 my site moved and then figured out I needed to look elsewhere.

Early Out

05-13-2009, 08:04 PM

Thanks for passing that along (@mikeblakemore). Happily, Excel swallows that file gracefully, giving me an easy way to total it up. 7006 files, so I guess I won't be getting a nastygram any time soon!

mikeblakemore

05-13-2009, 08:08 PM

you can also do this from a shell prompt:

find . -type f | wc -l

make sure you are using the right pipe character as websites usually replace it with the wrong one.

find [dot] [hyphen]type f [pipe] wc [hyphen][el]

felgall

05-13-2009, 08:12 PM

I would much rather have a set size limit on my account rather than a ridiculous file count limit.

Well since the problem area is the per file overhead rather than the size of the files they had to implement the limit in a way that directly relates to the problem that the limit was implemented to fix. The limit was not there at all until they found that there was a problem where one account has too many files.

alligosh

05-14-2009, 02:40 PM

you can also do this from a shell prompt:

find . -type f | wc -l

Please don't do that.

You would not believe the amount of pain (with I/O) this kind of thing can cause all the other customers on the box. Sure, the I/O is now throttled by user, but it is still painful. If you must, you must, but don't just do terrible performance commands to see something that is already provided by a very nice, gentle program.

alligosh

05-14-2009, 02:46 PM

2. Files: Here, you're going to have a problem. I have heard that BH is now limiting accounts to 50,000 files, and I suspect you're going to see the same kind of limits on other hosts. I haven't seen anything in writing, but I know that some users with a few hundred thousand files have had their accounts terminated. The reason is that, if a file system has to be rebuilt following a failure of some sort, huge numbers of files result in the rebuild process taking days, which a provider of shared hosting just can't tolerate. You should probably look into ways of storing your images in a database (since a database is, as far as the server operating system is concerned, just a single file).

Please, also, don't store 120,000 pictures in a database.

This is a really neat idea, and would work if you had all the hardware to yourself and could abuse it to your heart's desire, but in a shared environment, it will cause complete pain, suffering, weeping, wailing, nashing of teeth, etc, to all the rest of the database users. Our MySQL setup is not optimized for 33GB databases, much less for blobs, globs, or whatever you would want to store it in.

Quite frankly, I would suggest a dedicated server for what you are currently serving, or at the very least several hosting accounts to distribute what you are doing across multiple servers. You will probably be happier with the dedicated solution for the level of stuff you are doing, rather than constant shoehorning of your site into smaller bits.

Early Out

05-14-2009, 02:47 PM

...to see something that is already provided by a very nice, gentle program.
The file count needs to be provided on cPanel in a direct, readable form, like space usage and bandwidth usage. Having to download a file and suck it into some other application to get a total is a little too indirect, now that there's a firm, fixed limit on file counts.

Or am I just not seeing where this number is provided?

alligosh

05-14-2009, 02:52 PM

I only have <130 mailboxes, and after deleting all of the spam and trash, I still need to delete 300,000 files to be under 50k.

We are working on an automated archiving utility for email to help customers with this exact issue, but it is not yet done.

I would suggest going into the offending mailboxes and 1) cleaning them up (delete all that spam that most people seem to shuffle aside and never delete) and 2) move everything older than 60 days into it's own folder, and then go intot he file system (ssh or file manager, etc) and tar up the old folders. If emails from them are needed, they can be untarred back to the sidelined folders and searched through, then deleted again. This is basically what the archive utility will do. it makes an archive that is a single large file with all the older stuff in it.

alligosh

05-14-2009, 02:53 PM

The file count needs to be provided on cPanel in a direct, readable form, like space usage and bandwidth usage. Having to download a file and suck it into some other application to get a total is a little too indirect, now that there's a firm, fixed limit on file counts.

Or am I just not seeing where this number is provided?

You are right, it needs to be there, and is on the list, but not yet finished.

mikeblakemore

05-15-2009, 01:40 PM

Ah, we have an actual BlueHost employee here!

If this is such a widespread problem, then don't you think you should delay the account suspensions until we have the tools to properly manage the issue?

Early Out

05-15-2009, 01:58 PM

If this is such a widespread problem, then don't you think you should delay the account suspensions until we have the tools to properly manage the issue?
Right on target.

angrycustomer

06-02-2009, 11:39 AM

I would stay away because of the file limit and I'm currently looking to go somewhere else. Signed up over a year ago w/ the promise they could handle all my files, images of book covers, and its been going fine. Until they changed their policy and are telling me to delete files down to 50,000 with some lame excuse as they are using software that is slow and they don't like the waiting. Thanks a lot for baiting me in, lying, and then covering your butts saying I agreed to policy changes so you can pull this crap on people.

felgall

06-02-2009, 01:13 PM

with some lame excuse as they are using software that is slow and they don't like the waiting.

It isn't a lame excuse and the software they are using is as fast as they can make it. They would just prefer to lose one customer rather than several hundred by ensuring that the one customer's files don't cause the several hundreds customers sites to be down for a much longer period if they ever need to run a restore.

As this is a user to user forum where the readers are those customers whose sites might be delayed in coming back up by your large number of files most readers will be quite happy to see you go elsewhere to slow down someone else's sites rather than ours.

angrycustomer

06-02-2009, 02:32 PM

No you are right. Imagine leaving a job to go somewhere else based upon promises and guarantees of a new company, agreeing to their 'terms', they promise you what you will be compensated for, then when payday comes around, they decide not to pay you but instead divide up your paycheck to the other employees instead of fulfilling their promise to you. That way, everyone else will be happy and it's better to have a shared office happy at the expense of one person.

It all goes back to what they promised and said they would do, being quite clear what the intentions are and making promises that the needs will be met in order for me to switch hosting providers, then deciding to change their mind/policy afterwards disregarding the sales pitch, leaving me in this situation.

Hawaii50

06-02-2009, 02:51 PM

Only thing I can say to this...at one point one main client site was down more than I was comfortable with. However, the last year has been near flawless and if there is an issue, often it is resolved before I even get the call initiated.

Overall, satisfaction has been better than others I have hosted at any price.

Early Out

06-02-2009, 02:54 PM

I would stay away because of the file limit and I'm currently looking to go somewhere else.
I suspect you're going to run into much the same kinds of limits on other shared hosts, and for the same reason. They're all discovering that if they have to rebuild a file system after any kind of failure, it's taking days, instead of hours, because people are starting to store huge numbers of individual files.

If you find a shared host that has no limit on the number of files (inodes), they probably will in the not-too-distant future. Either that, or they're willing to let your site be down for a few days once in a while.

I don't know what the answer is, short of getting a dedicated server (which BH doesn't offer). There's no good way of storing images in a nice big database file, which would solve the problem - it's technically possible, but as I understand it, it produces some horrendous performance problems.

felgall

06-02-2009, 03:37 PM

No you are right. Imagine leaving a job to go somewhere else based upon promises and guarantees of a new company, agreeing to their 'terms', they promise you what you will be compensated for, then when payday comes around, they decide not to pay you but instead divide up your paycheck to the other employees instead of fulfilling their promise to you.

Which isn't the case here since the BlueHost terms of service that you agree to when you sign up allow them to make changes like that.

So for your example job t would be like going to one where the terms state that this is what they will pay you provided that they don't change their minds before payday. If you want to have a guarantee of being paid then you need terms that guarantee payment.

If you want web hosting where the terms will never be changed then you need to find a web host where the terms don't contain a clause allowing them to change those terms when required (and good luck in finding a host where the terms say that).

navsguardar

06-03-2009, 08:17 AM

I'm having an issue with the file limitations as well...

BlueHost says that they offer 2,500 IMAP enabled mailboxes.

If you set up 2,500 mailboxes, and each box receives 20 messages, your account gets disabled.

2,500 x 20 = 50,000 file count limit = your account is disabled.

I only have <130 mailboxes, and after deleting all of the spam and trash, I still need to delete 300,000 files to be under 50k.

argh...

I suggest why don't you make use of Google apps. Just point your MX records to them & make a large number of Gmail accounts at your domain. After all we know Google has space for us all :D

ddwrt

06-04-2009, 09:18 AM

Which isn't the case here since the BlueHost terms of service that you agree to when you sign up allow them to make changes like that.

As it has been pointed out here (http://www.bluehostforum.com/showthread.php?t=12913) Bluehost doesn't respect its own Terms Of Service so I can't imagine how can the customers be asked to do it, both from a legal and from a moral perspective.

What's more after kicking out a lot of people without warning they even changed the paragraph from TOS to read from:

BlueHost will use reasonable efforts to provide you with 7 days advance notice of changes to the Rules that materially and adversely impact your use of the Services. Your continued use of the Services following notice constitutes your acceptance of all changes. If you do not agree to any such changes, your sole and exclusive remedy is to cancel your account as described below.

to current (please observe the clear drop of one of the few obligations they had in the old TOS, to tell you when they change the TOS significantly):

Notwithstanding BlueHost.Com's right to alter these Terms without prior notice, BlueHost.Com may, within its sole discretion and as a courtesy to all affected Subscribers, make an effort to provide Subscribers with 7 days advanced notice of any alteration of these Terms if it appears to BlueHost.Com, in its sole discretion, that said alteration may materially and adversely impact said Subscriber's use of the Services.

This doesn't work; if you say the TOS gives you the right to change the rules and kick out people based on the new rules then it also gives you the obligation to notify them about the new TOS (which did not happened even now).

Now, logic, moral and legal issues aside I see this service as "you get what you get". Maybe it isn't in their best interest to state the policies clearly. Maybe everything is done by different people inside the company and everybody understands it in a different way. But I don't see any real malice here. You get a refund whenever you want if you don't like it. They have the right to kick you out and sometimes are using it. That's all.

webkid90

06-04-2009, 11:57 AM

To my mind, BH is a good place for an individual who wants to maintain a website, maybe a forum, maybe a blog, someone who needs a handful of email addresses.

felgall

06-04-2009, 01:16 PM

As it has been pointed out here (http://www.bluehostforum.com/showthread.php?t=12913) Bluehost doesn't respect its own Terms Of Service.

That reference is of course WRONG since BlueHost does respect their Terms of Service and the only people of the opinion that they don't haven't actually read the ToS (or haven't bothered to re-read it since the last update). Of course the current version is what is relevant to this thread since the subject is about people thinking of moving here where the current ToS would be what would apply and not a past version (and even though it may have at some stage required that they try to give notice to everyone - something totally impractical with way over a million and a half accounts - the changes would not have been subject to everyone actually receiving the notice so BlueHost didn't breach their ToS just because a handful didn't receive the notice that they were dropping the requirement for notice)

The relevant clause is:

Subscribers may view the most current version of these Terms at www.bluehost.com/cgi/terms. Any use of the Services by Subscriber, after changes, modifications, additions or deletions to these Terms are posted on the BlueHost.Com website, shall constitute Subscriber's acceptance of all such changes, additions, modifications or deletions. If a Subscriber does not agree to any such alterations to these Terms, the Subscriber's sole and exclusive remedy is to cancel the Subscriber's account as set forth in Paragraph 3 below.

All other hosting providers ToS will have a similar clause.

ddwrt

06-04-2009, 03:54 PM

That reference is of course WRONG since BlueHost does respect their Terms of Service and the only people of the opinion that they don't haven't actually read the ToS.

I'm sorry but you're wrong, as far as I can tell from the old TOS and from the thread I referenced in my post above (on this very forum: http://www.bluehostforum.com/showthread.php?t=12913 ). This isn't anything new or even really at doubt, after doing my own research I fully agree with what people were saying there: accordingly to their own TOS bluehost had to use reasonable efforts to provide you with 7 days advance notice of changes to the Rules that materially and adversely impact your use of the Services. There were no such efforts and I don't think anybody can claim that a change that kicks out many people at once (and still kicks out today) does not impact your use of the Services.
Breaking the TOS was not in the fact that they changed the TOS but in the fact that they failed to notify the customers as specified in the TOS that was in force at the time and to which the customers agreed (and presumably Bluehost agreed as well).

The fact that even later on they changed the TOS to actually take out the fact that they have to notify the customers doesn't change what happened already, actually this might suggest that somebody recognized the mistake and doesn't want to make it again. Current TOS is much more bulletproof, there is no question here and if you want to discuss some situation that might happen (or is happening) from now on, that's a different discussion. But you can't say that bluehost didn't break their own TOS in 2008 because they were acting accordingly with the TOS from 2009.