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

Hmmm.

[FredFredrickson]

Interesting to see a big company like Yahoo try their hand at the "unlimited" marketing game. Anybody who's had experience in the past with any company who offers "unlimited" knows better- Anybody remember Comcast "unlimited" broadband?

Bunches of online hosting companies offer "unlimited" services with as much space or bandwidth as you need- and all these companies have a disclaimer in their TOS that explains they can't use more than .0001% of their resources. Turns out you can have 500 gb of files, but coincidentally it takes just enough cpu to copy the file that they kick you off. Or some hosting companies go ahead and say it in the TOS- you can't have more than 1% of the alotted bandwidth, other than that it's unlimited!

Eventually, yes, they get brought down. Law suits, investigations, what have you. They will eventually add their limits to the fine print, just like everybody before them. The catch? Everybody with the host will suffer horrible service up till the day the limit is defined, and after that, it probably won't get much better. That is, if you're not already kicked off their service for using too much of the unlimited service. Anybody not completely disgusted with the service at this point will most likely be offended that their freedom is being taken away and may leave out of protest alone.

You'd think Yahoo would learn better than start a huge marketing campaign on a service they can't possibly keep profitable. Think about it- Yahoo Music Unlimited just closed! It was a nice idea, except it wasn't making them money! This is a huge PR disaster waiting to happen.

Let's just take them up on the offer and get rid of them. Somebody call Google and explain to them there's a new host that will host Google's search engine for $12. We'll see how long Yahoo stays unlimited.

Where's CmdrTaco?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey Slashdot admins, are you moving over to Yahoo? I bet that'd cut back on your hosting costs by quite a bit. That'd also be a great test of how truly unlimited it is.

Unlimited is easy.... when you redefine unlimited.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not unlimited at all.... they just redefine unlimited.

http://us.rd.yahoo.com/smallbusiness/Lwebhosting/home/bb/*http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/webhosting/unlimited/

It's a gimmick

[Dekortage]

Most small business sites will never use even 100gb of data. We offer shared hosting at ~$15/month for 200GB disk, 2tb bandwidth, and of our customers who use it, most could downgrade to cheaper accounts ($8? $4.50?) without a problem**. Yahoo knows this about its own customers, too, so this is likely a gimmick to give the impression of a "deal" while knowing most people won't actually consume much. Also note this quote from Yahoo's unlimited email FAQ: "The purpose of unlimited storage isn't to provide an online storage warehouse. Usage that suggests this approach gets flagged by Yahoo! Business Email's anti-abuse controls." Or, elsewhere in the help system:

So what does "unlimited" mean, really?

Disk space:
You can now create as large a site as you like (you won't face an upper limit, or "ceiling"), but we will place some constraints on how fast you can grow. In other words, you can add as much content as you want, but maybe not all at once. The vast majority of our customers' sites grow at rates well within our rules, however, and will not be impacted by this constraint.

Data transfer:
In most cases, if you use our service appropriately, visitors to your web site will be able to download and view as much content from your site as they like. However, in certain circumstances, our server processing power, server memory, or anti-abuse controls could limit downloads from your site.

You can also upload as much as content as you like each month, subject only to the rules that control how fast your site can grow (see above).

OK. What exactly is that speed of growth?

(**Yes, I realize that some Arrow Bay customers are reading this. Check your disk and bandwidth usage: if it's always significantly under what you're paying for, consider downgrading to the next package for your next billing cycle. Seriously.)

Re:"Unlimited" my ass

[Anonymous Custard]

Dear Yahoo,

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it does.

Dear elrous0

You keep misquoting that movie. I do not think it means what you think it banana.

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:

------------

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,