Yahoo Offers All-You-Can-Eat Storage and Bandwidth

Lucas123 writes "Yahoo this week opened up a new monthly Web Hosting service for small and medium sized businesses that allows unlimited hosted storage capacity and bandwidth for $11.95 a month. Yahoo had been charging $12 a month for 5GB of disk space and 200GB of bandwidth; $20 a month for 10GB disk space and 400GB of bandwidth; and $40 for 20GB disk space and 500GB bandwidth.."

Comments

Re:The Quota Super-sizing Trend

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this just a marketing gimmick; a bright shiny "UNLIMITED" bauble to dangle in front of small business folk?

I'll let you judge, let's take one of those supersized shared hosts, which offers up to 750GB of disk space. In the ToS however, I find an interesting clause that says, paraphrasing: "750GB, but no more than 5GB archives, no more than 5GB of media files, no more than 5GB of data files or programs, no more than 5GB for SQL data dumps".

So, I went to chat with the support, and ask, what the hell I'm going to use then those 750GB for? Names and domains replaced, since, no need to single out either one of them (they're all the same anyway). Here's our conversation:

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Support Guy1: Hello

Support Guy1: Welcome to XXXXXXX Hosting Services!

ME: Hello, please clarify your ToS: "NO more than 5,000 MB of a Linux shared hosting account can be allocated to Executable files and all other files which are the result of compiling a program. These include but are not limited to .exe, .pdf, .psd files."

ME: PDF and PSD files are not compiled programs

Support Guy1: yes they are not but they are considered as applications

ME: why does XXXXXXX put limitations on the meaning of the bytes I use on my eventual account

Support Guy1: Could you please hold on a second so that I can transfer you to one of our experienced senior sales assistants for better assistance :)

ME: ok

This chat session has been transfered to Support Guy2 [sales]

Support Guy2: Hello

ME: hello, can you please explain the rationale behind XXXXXXX putting limitations on the meaning of the bytes I use on my eventual account

Support Guy2: Well of course - on our shared hosting accounts there are a lot of users and in order to maintain optimal performance we have to limit some of the file types stored on the server.

ME: can you explain how does it differ performance-wise to store 5MB of an mpeg and 5MB of an SQL file.

Support Guy2: Well the limits are far wider than 5 MB - they are actually 5 GB - so you can store 5 Gigs MPEGs total :)

Support Guy2: in regards to the SQL files - you can have as big file as you wish, as long as it does not load the server :)

ME: I realize, it's an example :) make it X MB of mpeg and X MB of SQL

ME: if I don't serve those files, would that section of the ToS apply to me

Support Guy2: Well if you do not use those kind of files, you should disregard this line in the TOS, since it does not apply for you :)

Support Guy2: May I just ask what do you plan to host?

ME: can I quote you on this, if I store 6GB of mpegs for example, and not serve them, and I find my account suspended

Support Guy2: Well I fear we have missed each other in the line... You cannot have more than 5 GB total multimedia files on the shared hosting account. In case you have 6, you should find an alternative solution like a VPS or a dedicated server.

ME: but you offer 750GB of storage, can you please supply one example what do your customers use 750GB for, if not for media files, archives, executables, dumps and data files

Support Guy2: Well you can have combinations of files plus other file types that are not limited like txt files.

ME: I can have 750GB of txt files?

Support Guy2: We do not apply a direct limitation on the txt files, but still may I ask you what do you plan to host on our servers? Like what kind of website do you plan to have and how large would it be so that I can help you with the most optimal plan :)

ME: I don't see limitations on the kind of site I can host in the ToS

ME: except for pornography,