Resource Usage Policy

What's this all about?

The 'shared server' hosting environment is the hosting solution for our web hosting and reseller hosting plans. A server's resources, such as RAM (memory) and CPU (processor), amongst other things, are shared amongst all users on the server. We ensure that the server has plenty of capacity to meet the day-to-day needs of the vast majority of web sites, ensuring also that the demands for resources are met even at peak times. Given that resources are shared amongst all users, this also makes it possible for web sites to use too many resources to the detriment of other customers hosted on the same server. This can happen for many reasons, but the most common causes are due to poor coding, compromised accounts or a very abnormal huge influx of visitors to the site. Allowing sites to utilise more than their fair share of resources could lead to a poor quality of service for the remaining clients on the server.
We have drafted this policy to outline what we consider to be excessive usage of server resources, and to also exclude certain types of content and eliminate bad practices which almost always cause resource over-utilisation. This policy stands in addition to our terms of service. The vast majority of sites won't even come close to these limits, and those that do will almost certainly be adversely affecting the service other clients on the server are receiving.

How are these policies enforced?

We have developed a number of automated systems which enforce the bulk our resource usage policy. These systems trigger alerts when accounts hit a "soft" limit - these are mild violations of the resource usage policy that, whilst excessive, have not yet caused any significant reduction in server performance. Typically we will then notify you of the problem, and you'll have a period of time to fix the problem - typically between 2 and 10 days depending on the severity. This might be by rewriting parts of your site to be coded more efficiently, or if that's not possible we can talk about alternative hosting solutions where you can have dedicated resources - such as on our cloud hosting platform or on a dedicated server. If a site hits our "hard" limit, the server will automatically kill the process causing the problem to prevent the server being brought to a grinding halt, and may also suspend the web site in line with our terms of service. This action will only be taken in extreme cases where the violation could have caused service failure or a severe degradation of service - where possible we will work with you to resolve any issues without interrupting your service.
These policies are in place to protect 99.9% of our customers from the tiny fraction of sites that cause performance issues. We want you to enjoy the best possible hosting experience for your site - that is to say fast, and with the maximum possible uptime. The only way to do this fairly is to ensure that all users abide by the same set of principles, so no individuals can become a 'resource hog' to the detriment of others.

The Policies

Unsolicited Email / SPAM

Unsolicited email / SPAM carries not only a financial burden, but can also severly damage our reputation as a spam-free network. This damage can prevent legitimate email from being delivered via our network or servers. We therefore maintain a zero-tolerance anti-spamming policy. We prohibit the sending of SPAM or any unsolicited commercial email, being sent either over our network OR over any network if the email advertises or mentions in any way a site hosted on our network.
We do not permit email to be sent from 'bought' lists, you may only send email to lists that you yourself have collected. We are made aware of bought lists as they almost always contain spam trap email accounts, which are monitored by spam prevention groups.
In addition to the sending of bulk email, we prohibit account holders from cross-posting messages on a large number of newsgroups, websites or forums, and/or posting obscene or threatening messages whilst using or referring to an email address or website URL hosted on our network.
If you violate this policy then your account will be subject to a thorough investigation, and may be terminated without notice. Any damages will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

Content Restrictions

Adult Content

We do not permit pornography, including adult oriented pictures, videos, links to adult sites or sites containing content of a sexually explicit nature, including in written text, or which retail sex-related merchandising.

Backups & Storage Archives

Hosting accounts are to be used for the purposes of hosting web sites - they are not to be used to back up content from remote computers or as a general purpose file storage system.

Chat Software

We do not permit real time chat software to be installed on your hosting account, except any that are available for installation from the control panel.

Web Applications

All third party web applications that you install must be kept up-to-date. Failure to keep third party applications up-to-date leaves them open to vulnerabilities, which can lead to the server being exploited. It is your responsibility to regularly check for updates to applications - we would suggest doing this once per month. Any applications which are being actively exploited will be automatically quarantined and we will contact you to advise you of the situation. If you decide to take no action, quarantined files will be automatically deleted after 14 days.

General

The following are strictly prohibited:

Banner rotation services & link exchanges.
Bit torrent or other peer-to-peer applications, trackers and clients.
Offering of free or paid image, file, document or data storage.
Offering free hosting or email services.
Online RPGs, hate sites, sites that promote hacking, SPAM, warez content or other illegal activities.
Material that infringes any rights (including Intellectual Property Rights) of any third party.
Operating a public download mirror.
Running a gaming server.
Running a proxy server or anonymizer, either publicly accessible or password protected.
Web spiders and indexers.
IRC Egg Drops & Related Programs.
UltimateBBS, Ikonboard, YaBB, YabbSE.
Shell, SSH, Telnet Scripts and all alternatiives.
formmail.pl, formmail.php, formmail.cgi OR alternative names for the same script, except the secure version available for install from the Control Panel.
Any script using a large flat file database.

Resource Usage Restrictions

Apache Connections

No more than 50 simultaneous Apache connections are permitted from any one source.

Cron Jobs

All cron jobs should not execute more frequently than once ever 10 minutes.
All cron jobs must be 'niced' to 15 or greater (add nice -n 15 to the cron job).

Databases

Accounts are restricted to 15 concurrent MySQL connections.
Databases cannot exceed 2GB in size.
Database queries cannot exceed 3,000 per hour.
Database changes (insert/update/delete) should not exceed 1,000 queries per hour.
Databases may not be accessed by externally hosted sites, except for the purposes of administering the database.

Emails

Attachments larger than 15MB in size should not be sent by email.
Email Boxes must be no larger than 2GB each. Old mail can archived/deleted to remain below this limit.
No more than 60 POP connections are permitted per hour.
No more than 500 SMTP connections are permitted per hour.
Outbound emails should not be sent to more than 50 recipients at any one time.
If you need to send mail to more than 50 recipients, mailing list software should be used. Any such software should be capable of throttling email sending to a maximum of 1 email every 5 seconds. Mailing software without this functionality is not permitted.
Mailing lists can have a maximum of 2,000 recipients. Users requiring mailing lists larger than 2,000 subscribers will require a cloud hosting solution or a dedicated server.
Any mailing list over 1,000 recipients can only be sent between 3AM and 7AM UTC weekdays, or any time at the weekend.
Any emails sent to a mailing list must contain an unsubscribe link to an automated email removal system. This system must not be behind password protection.

Files & Folders

Accounts may not exceed more than 100,000 inodes. Every file or folder in your hosting account uses up one inode.
Accounts exceeding more 50,000 inodes may be removed from our backup system. Databases will continue to be backed up.
A folder cannot contain more than 5,000 immediate child files or folders, but excluding files within child folders.

Processes

Any processes attributed to or initiated by your user account must not:

Consume more than 20MB RAM.
Consume more than 30 seconds of CPU time.
Create core dumps.
Execute a script or binary that forks in a way to create a fork bomb, or spawn subprocesses.
Run in the background.
Listen to a network port.
Open more than 64 files.
Run more than 50 simultaneous processes.

Memory & CPU Usage

On an hourly average, an account may not:

Consume more than 512MB RAM.
Consume more than 15% CPU Time.