A few weeks ago a new customer signed up and ordered a hosting account. At first I was a bit sceptical because the current host appeared to be damn happy to get rid of the customer but he was just hosting a small, legal, low bandwidth site with a mailing list. I moved his Cpanel account to my server and woop. The server went down. Looking at top I realized around 5 Exim processes running at maximum CPU usage. So I did contact the client and told him it looks like his mailing list is broken and asked if he could delete this list and create a new one and ask his users to resubscribe. He did and it went fine for a week. Then the same problem came back. It is just a small mailing list with less than 500 subscribers and only getting around 50 to 100 emails per day but every time someone sends an email the load goes to like 20 and that is on a PIV HT server with 1 GB of RAM. I thought maybe it is a problem with mailman or exim on that server so I moved it to 3 other servers but the same problem on all servers...

My terms say that the user has to use his account in a way that does not use large amount of processing power.

Should I just kick the user and refund his payment ? What would you do ? I can't leave him on that server because I do not want to slow down my other customers. I thought about hosting him on an own VPS but then I would pay 5 times more than he is paying me.

Recommending him a dedicated server is not an option because I know he can`t afford that.

It's simple, if he is costing you more than he pays it's your loss. Tell him the truth and offer him realistic pricing for his need.

Get him to pay some more for a VPS or refund his money and tell him he has to move on. I used to hate telling customers this but in the end you can't operate at such a loss, not to mention the impact its having on other server users.

Operating at a loss is something you can't afford sometimes, but the main thing is his activities should not affect the rest of the clients. If yes, rather refund him then risk other clients' web sites being down.

Recommend an outsourced mailing list solution as an option (as an example). He will run into the same problems at the next host anyway. To turn this client into someone who recommends your services - work with him. You might not make money out of him but if he feels like that you tried to help and spend some time on this issue WITH him, he might come back and host a different site or recommends friends because he now knows that you offer excellent customer service. ;)

Originally posted by thomas.smith Should I just kick the user and refund his payment ?

Refund his payment? Why?
You should offer him a dedicated server or VPS or his account will be cancelled. But don't give him a refund. After all, he is the one that has broken the agreement and he is the one that is using too much of the servers resources.

ouch id hate to be hosted by u joelmoss

Originally posted by randomguy
ouch id hate to be hosted by u joelmoss

well think about it. If your AUP says that you have the right to refuse service or stop service to a client if they use excessive amounts of server resources, or if they use so much that other clients are affected, then you have the right to do so without providing a refund. It is the offending cutomer who has broken the AUP/agreement, which means that they are not qualifies for a refund.

We only give refunds for problems caused by us.

The more refunds you give, the more money you lose. And if they are leaving anyway, there is not much point in trying to be extra nice. Be courtious yes, but remember that they broke the rules, not you.

It all comes down to what you would rather:

a) Keep the client, but possibly lose many other because of the server load.
b) Lose one client, but keep the server stable and keep all the others and still have space for more.

Personally, I'd go for b) ;)

This is always a hard decision for me, I hate having to be in situation were I basically have to tell a customer that they either have to upgrade or move on to another host.

It is your choice of course, but personally I would try for c) Convincing him to upgrade to his own dedicated server. He may not be willing because of cost, but that is what he needs. A VPS would not help much, unless if he doesn't mind the low performance.

Failling that, I will go for b) and help him (as much as possible) to choose another host that specializes in mass mailling. The load problem is not surprising. From what you wrote, it seems like he is sending out between 25,000 to 50,000 emails per day, at up to 500 emails per shot. One incoming mail results in 500 outgoing mails. You can do the math.

Just ous of curiosity, how much bandwidth/disk does he use?

*nods* It's a matter of math and mail volume. What this client is running is far beyond the realm of a shared hosting account... he's running dedicated server activities. If he wants to do dedicated server volume, he should expect to pay dedicated server fees.

And no, I would not refund him either. Surely there are TOS's explaining how many e-mails are allowed per day, most hosts do not allow more than 1,000-2,000 a day, and batched at small rates at that... this would be blowing those TOS's out of the water and that is not your responsibility, that's the client's own doing.

The math is not rocket science, he too can multiply 500 subscribers x 50 transactions (incoming e-mails) = 25,000 messages per day.

:D Bailey

Ask him to move to his own server and pay extra fee. or explain to him that his site should be suspended from the server.

Originally posted by will7

a) Keep the client, but possibly lose many other because of the server load.
b) Lose one client, but keep the server stable and keep all the others and still have space for more.


I would change b) to the following:

"b) Lose one client, possibly get some negative PR on the forums and web hosting review sites , but keep the server stable and keep all the others and still have space for more."

Customers who are likely to signup for a shared hosting plan with a huge forum or mailing list are also more likely to be arrogant and unreasonable people (compared to your average hosting customer).

Something from our experience: a customer who had his account terminated for violating our TOS (spamming) "googled" our company and anonymously posted highly negative reviews everywhere he could. ("their servers are down all the time", "their support does not respond" etc...). It sucks, but a refund would have probably saved us a lot of headache.


Good communication is very important when dealing with 'CPU abusers'. You need to politely explain the concept of shared hosting and why it is necessary to upgrade the account to VPS/dedicated.

I'd tell him to pack his "bytes" and please either upgrade to a VPS or to find a new host. Defininatly give him a refund though. It would be concidered borderline unethical to not.

If the client can not pay for a server then it does not leave you really any other choices. If you keep the client then other clients will be effected by this, and you can lose them as clients. Explain to the client what is going on, and that if they want to stay with you that they have to upgrade or they need to choose another web host. Also give a refund if they do leave.