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Before I start I want to say This* is not paying me to write this and this is not an advertisement!. I’m doing this mainly to save people some aggravation if your web app somehow takes off.

Unlimited! Yeah, it catches your eye doesn’t it? This is straight from the HostMonster.com web site. Here’s the thing, that’s a complete lie. How do I know? The story goes a little something like this:

Back in summer of ‘08 I made a web app which is now called Deploy*. I finished up the final release version towards the end of the summer when it was picked up on Go2Web20.net (awful domain name, I know) and I thought that was pretty cool. Shortly after if was being blogged about on a few Japanese sites and then a lot more blogs. At it’s peek it was creating 2 projects a second and ended hit over 3,000 uniques in a day. I was excited to say the least.

My web app works by literally generating a directory with all the user’s specified files. This didn’t seem like a big deal considering I had unlimited bandwidth and hard drive space. Then I got this email from HostMonster (cut out the TOS stuff they sent):

It has come to our attention that your site is using an excessive number of files stored on your HostMonster.Com account. This is causing performance problems on your website as well as other customers that are on this server. It can cause our servers to crash and cause additional downtimes especially if the files are stored in one directory.

We have a Target Performance Goal (TPG) for all accounts to have a maximum of 200,000 files on the account. The TPG is not an explicit limitation and is subject to change, depending on the needs and resources demanded of the server.

Please note the 200,000 files

I then responded with:

Could someone tell me what directory is causing all these problems with my “unlimited” amount of disk space? How many files do I need to delete to make my account not deactivated? I’d rather not guess.

I also checked the load time, and all my sites are loading within 500MS of the same speed they were 3 months ago as well as an entire year ago. Not sure how you have come up with slow loading times.

Could you please point me to the TOS where it has your TPG?

They then send this in reply to my other email later that day:

Please disregard any previous e-mails regarding file limits. YOUR ACCOUNT HAS NOT YET BEEN DEACTIVATED, BUT WILL BE IN 14 DAYS IF THIS PROBLEM IS NOT CORRECTED.

Dear Oscar:

It has come to our attention that your site is using an excessive number of files stored on your HostMonster.Com account. This is causing performance problems on your website as well as other customers that are on this server. It can cause our servers to crash and cause additional downtimes especially if the files are stored in one directory.

We have a Target Performance Goal (TPG) for all accounts to have a maximum of 50,000 files on the account. The TPG is not an explicit limitation and is subject to change, depending on the needs and resources demanded of the server.

At this time we ask you that you please streamline your files and store only files necessary for your website. If you need assistance with removing these files or to help troubleshoot the reason for this problem we will be happy to assist you in this process.

Which I respond with:

As I said in my previous email, I need to know for 1 what directories I need to prune and you have changed the limit somehow in a matter of a couple hours from 200,000 files to 50,000 files. And cutting it down from 472,283 to 50,000 is going to be tough, I would like to know what directory it is that is causing all these “problems” on your servers.

the largest directory on my hosted sites is not even 25,000 files so I am not sure what needs to be deleted and how on Earth it got to 400,000+, but if you can please tell me what directory it is I will start deleting files.

Can you please show me in the TOS where this 50,000 files is or where you explicitly set a cap on the amount of files I can host?

Here is the part I love; they send the following email 4 times, and not only that, they tell me they won’t be able to help which they said in both emails above:

Unfortunately due to end-user customization, we wouldn’t be able to tell you specifically where the files are located on your account. These files may exist in any number of places, and we’re not in a position to determine which files are necessary. In reviewing the files on your account, consider checking locations that are often neglected such as your email folders, your error logs, files that blogs/CMS applications cache, system/error logs, and files/installations that are no longer being used.

We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause.

I send an email back saying that I need help locating the files and they send me this EXACT same email again, this is now, the 6th time:

No, I don’t want to know where “unneeded” files are considering all my files are needed, but you could point me to what directory is containing too many files for your system to hold I guess. You obviously know my user directory has 400,000+ files, so you can easily tell me what directories have a large amount of files. I can’t find any directories with anymore than 25,000 files. I’m not sure how I supposedly have over 400,000 files. Also, i know from the past you guys go through files without notice, so you would be able to scan or tell me what directories are causing problems.

They respond with it’s not in our TOS, but this is and send a completely random part that has nothing to do with hard drive space. I then respond one more time with:

How is this possible? You guys shut down my site a few months prior to this for copyright infringement in a private folder only accessible via FTP without my consent so you would not have my username or password. This means you can and have gone into my account searching even when files are not being downloaded since they were only for backups.

Also, you knew I had too many files on my account, which is only a directory in your point of view since this is shared hosting. This would mean you are able to tell the amount of directories in a users account. I just want to know what directory has the most files, just as you did with my account. You were able to detect exactly how many files I had on my account, why can’t you tell how many files I have in my add-on domain directories?

You guys also said you could help with deleting these files in a prior email:
If you need assistance with removing these files or to help troubleshoot the reason for this problem we will be happy to assist you in this process.
So, can you help?

I can not delete files I can not find.

They then responded with that exact same email above but with “As you’ve been told twice already” at the beginning.

– 4 Months Later –

A short time ago I got a email from This* who has been treating me very well about the same thing, but they handle it a tad bit different Notice they tell where AND what:

Performing some routine maintenance we noticed that the inode usage of Project Deploy is rather high, since it appears to store past deployments. Just wondering if you had any plans on perhaps pruning old deployments at all, or whether or not keeping them long term is something that’s required of your project?

I then decided to start deleting some of the files:

I’ve started deleting the files though. In about an hour I believe about 5,000 top level directories will be deleted, so, 30,000 files should be deleted. Is that OK? My FTP client isn’t even counting all the files right

And they say:

Thanks for taking care of that for us. There’s no rush at all, we’re just working on some changes to our backup systems, so the more inode usage we can cut down the better it’ll operate.

Did I hear, There’s no rush at all….

I love This*WebHost to host my sites. They are friendly, no automated emails, make backups for you, and host all of their own servers. They are not resellers.

Moral of the story, unlimited actually means 50,000 and HostMonster is a piece of shit scam.

         

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