I have a few potential clients asking me to host their adult sites. I know many hosts won't take this type of business. What I want to know is, why is this? What are the drawbacks to hosting adult sites?

You cant offer them a 20 GB plan for 12,99 $ because they will use all the bandwidht = you cant expect that a porn site will use bandwidht as a normal user (they buy 5 gb but never use more than a gig )

There are a few reasons why some hosts choose not to accept adult oriented customers. For one, they generally take up a lot of server resources. They also take up a quite a bit of bandwidth and a lot of hosts oversell there bandwidth which in turn would prove to be a big problem. Those are the reasons why we do not accept them through our normal site. We are in the process of setting up a completely separate hosting service specializing in high bandwidth / resource intensive sites. Another reason would be personal moral issues that the owners of the host may have against pornography and adult related material.

Thats what I think anyways.

Very good points. When do you guys make exceptions then?

If you don't host porn sites, then you'll never make exceptions...

that's my opinion!;)

Also, some of your customer will be mad if they know that your host in the same server porn sites.

I heard somewhere here that will usually be hacking attempts from people trying to get free porn. If someone emails and asks if you do adult sites, and you want to do it, just tell the price per gig of bandwidth is XX. Raise it so you can make some money.

Originally posted by Jedito
Also, some of your customer will be mad if they know that your host in the same server porn sites.

True. Even though a host may not have ethical or moral problems with hosting porn, their customers might. I have a number of customers who would not have come on board if I hosted porn sites at all.

Hosting porn sites does make you more vulnerable to hack attempts, as people will inevitably try to get past any payment systems in place.
From our experience, customers hosting adult content also tend to employ resource-intensive scripts more frequently, too, which can impinge on the server's load / memory usage.

Originally posted by alchiba


True. Even though a host may not have ethical or moral problems with hosting porn, their customers might. I have a number of customers who would not have come on board if I hosted porn sites at all.

Yeah some people are just idiots.

Originally posted by alchiba
Even though a host may not have ethical or moral problems with hosting porn, their customers might. I have a number of customers who would not have come on board if I hosted porn sites at all. Sometimes, though, people feel that way not for moral reasons of the "pornography is evil" variety, but for objections of the "spam is evil" type. Porn sites tend to be heavy spammers, both in email and of search engines. Some people feel that's the more objectionable side of the online porn business.

From a host's point of view, those could also be reasons not to host porn sites: both the potential that you're taking on a client who might spam (and of course not all porn site operators do; it's a generality) and cause the related headaches for you, and that you might not want to support an industry that as a group causes many problems for internet administrators.

Personally I am not what you call a big fan of the porn industry but on the flip side I am not against a movie having a little bit of 'skin shots' in it either.

So if you wish to enter this type some of the things to consider would be;

(a) The Hackers. You would have to have a higher level of server security to help prevent them and also a tighter TOS to protect yourself if someone gets in and starts messing around.

(b) The spaming issue. Would host under a different name and server to protect your non adult business image and business.

(c) Adult operators that display child porn (pics of anyone under 18) and remember a picture of a person that is over 18 but is displayed in a fashion that protrays that person is under 18 is legal consider child porn even though the person is of legal age.

(d) Must CC processers will not touch you due to higher levels of chargebacks. You will have to go with one of the specialty process for this but expect to loss around 20% of the price in fees and even more if there is a charge back.

(e) Displaying nudity in non password protected areas can be of some legal concern if proper warnings are not there and even then personally I would not do it. I am a firm believer that such pictures are for those of legal age only, what 15 or 16 year old is going to say darn I am not of legal age to look at a picture of a woman's ____ and ____ I better click the exit now button.

(f) You and everyone that works for you better be of legal age!

Well that is some of things to think of.

Wow, this is a great topic. Learned a lot, thanks!

Originally posted by Jedito
Also, some of your customer will be mad if they know that your host in the same server porn sites.



appearance is everything, porn sites are generally looked down on and that would also pass on to the host. Imagine if you checked your ip and discovered porn sites also resolved to it, what would your customers think?

Originally posted by George
appearance is everything, porn sites are generally looked down on and that would also pass on to the host. Imagine if you checked your ip and discovered porn sites also resolved to it, what would your customers think?

Excellent points guys! I'm glad I asked it. :D

Adult sites tend to send a lot of spam email also, so you'll spend additional time answering complaints. It's a waste of time for a web host.

Could the host be liable for any illegal images posted? Child porn, incest, rape, etc?

Just the headaches alone in dealing with the FBI probably isn't worth it to many hosts. And it would be up to you to police the material, I would think...

While all the above reasons not to host are valid from a business stand point, my reasons extend far beyond that. Just not the way I want to make money. I want to be comfortable and sleep well in running my business. Therefore, there are just certain things I will not host...and porn is one of them...because if I host it, it is no different than if I was running the site...I'm still making money from it.

You have to draw your own personal line where you feel appropriate.

I would not host adult websites no matter what. You will have a bad reputation and you will feel immoral, unless you like the websites.

i see no problem with hosting adult sites... y'all want refer people who come to your sites looking for adult hosting to me? :)

Why do people feel porn is immoral? I just don't get it. It's created by consenting adults and paid for by consenting adults. Unless there's spam, child porn, or other illegal stuff, I find nothing wrong with it.

In fact I think mainstream tv is often times worse than porn. Channel 13 news (in LA) often have specials about "what teens are up to these days" and all they show are teens in skimpy outfits. They're condemming it but yet are using all the flesh to generate viewership. That type of hypocrisy is despicable.

And then there's FOX and their :sickface:"world's scariest chases"...

One other thing to think about..

If you are hosting multiple sites under one IP address web filtering software such as Websense may filter a non-porn site sharing an IP with a porn site.

Hello

I have a customer that has three websites. Two of them are match maker (Find your wife etc. ) and the other is a forum about marriage and will run either vBulletin or phpBB.

Are these considered adult sites (as they are adult related?)

What kind of websites are called adult sites exactly?

Mac

In this case "adult" means "adult only," in that the site is only suitable for viewing by adults.

Match making and marriage doesn't sound like it needs a "You are only allowed to enter if you are over 18" disclaimer, so it wouldn't be considered Adult.

I would not even dream about putting a porn site on any of the servers!

This is nothing to do with reputation at all... We have a series of business clients hosted on our servers, porn sites are no place for a hosting company that supports the Small to Medium Sized Enterprise industry (sme's). full stop!

You either professional in all manners or dont be professional at all...

Is the reason hosts dont run warez sites because there upset and there moral kicks in and says how about all the millions that the industry is loosing cause of warez etc. NO its not because of this. Its because of bandwidth and server over load!

The exact same reason most hosts dont allow porn sites!

My suggestion for serious hosts is follow the business to business methods!

Kind regards,

I dont host warez because its against the law in the USA.

When people ask us if we'll host an adult site, we always give them our special price for that:

$599/month, six month contract, with first and last month paid in advance. Plus the cost of the dedicated server and bandwidth.

No one's wanted to pay that, yet. I guess they're not serious about hosting with us. :)

Basically billing them for a completey managed solution, because there is going to be a lot of admin required.

They're more likely to cause security problems, legal problems, resource problems, you name it.

I wonder how adult hosts manage it. I'm guessing, not well.

My Reasons for Not hosting porn sites:

1) Most porn sites basically steal pictures from each other and by not hosting any, saves you from cease/desist orders from other companies (legal law firms).

2) Source of Spam, now when people trace route, etc, they will always come back to the host, not the porn site's webmaster.

Morally Wrong ? Oh yea, some people take porn sites offensive!

Originally posted by venomx

Yeah some people are just idiots.

What the heck do you mean by this? People are idiots if they have limits and boundaries in their life?

Dan

I have no problems with adult related sites.

If you wish to host adult related websites - why can't you create another business?

Say you have "123 company" create "XYZ company" for the adult arm.... and run them seprately... (so if people did do ip look ups it would point to the xyz company..)

run porn sites? Expect your tech's/admins to become 25% less efficient. If porn can be streamed from your own office, on your own servers, expect techs to watch it, and that can just lead to undesirable activity. When i worked at NetINC the head admin sat around watching porn 12/7 heh. And if you host porn, it'd be kinda difficult to say "no porn in the office", i mean you've got it in your servers, and if they run across a problem on a porn server, what do they do? leave it till you get there? :D.....

Kinda funny, but it's semi true, your techs will watch the porn and become less effient usually :\

hehe I good point. Also the best solution is to have an adult hosting site on a different server and keep that for adult hosting only.