Roberto Blake Media Blog: 2014

Sunday, December 14, 2014

Sunday, March 2, 2014

1and1 File Limit Cap For Unlimited Web Hosting

So apparently 1and1 "Unlimited Hosting" through one of their shared accounts has an interesting limitation. While they claim you can have unlimited storage they are referring to the size of your collective files, yet the set a very interesting limit, they limit the actual number of files you can have on your web server.

Yes that's right there is a file limit cap, and it is 262,144.
Now if you are thinking that a person can't reach that limit without abusing the server here are some fun facts to enlighten you.

Wordpress Caching on a high traffic site will crush this limit at some point due to the shear number of temporary files it creates.
Each and every time you modify or resize an image in the wordpress editor it is generating a completely new image file.
Every time your site stores a backup of the database on the web server it is another file being created.
If you have wordpress site with multiple authors creating daily content and uploading images, that is dozens of files being created everyday.
If you are photographer uploading photos of your photo sessions for clients, that is hundreds of images, sometimes thousands in a month.

1and1's answer to this is to upgrade to a Dedicated Server, and someone who doesn't know any better would do just that. Here is the thing though, there a very few actual qualifiers for having a dedicated server, and number of files you have is not one of them.....

Here are the only real reasons to bother with a Dedicated Server:

High level of traffic and bandwidth. And I mean very high, I have a few sites and combined they may get a few thousand views a day and it does nothing to the performance of the sites so you'd need thousands of hits an hour to begin worrying about this.
Hosting huge multimedia files such as thousands upon thousands of 24MP images or HD Video Files.
Running resource intensive web applications with many users connected at the same time, like hosting a game server or financial application.
Getting a Dedicated IP Address and SSL for Ecommerce and Online Transactions
You need the added Security
You Need 500GB or more of storage

Unless you meet these criteria, getting a Dedicated Server is a waste of money.
That being said I will likely upgrade my service when I feel I need something more, probably to a VPS since that is cheaper and still fits my needs. But the file limit is just a bad joke and a tactic to upsell.

Hosting in my opinion is online real estate and in truth almost any company you are going to be with at an everyday consumer level may as well be a slumlord. That being said this is not sour grapes on the "you get what you pay for bit".

I'm paying for what I'm actually using and less than what has been advertised. So my expectations here are not unreasonable.

On top of that I'm a savvy user with a lot of experience on the hosting side and I know that a file limit is something that only makes to two groups of people programmers/admins and sales managers. The poor customer service person I was talking to had no idea that there was even a file limit and couldn't find any documentation on it.

I wasn't upset with him as it is not his fault. I got a bit annoyed when he suggested I get a Dedicated Server, for the reasons above. All hosting companies love to push customers to Dedicated Servers, and if your pockets are deep enough and you don't know any better, they may just be able to do that.

I guess I'm just naive enough to still be convinced its possible to run a successful business without false advertising or selling customers things they don't need instead of solutions they do.