I've been asking here and on some other boards about a good budget Webhost. I've had WeinBar.com recommended and was planning to go with them.

However, looking at their hosting packages, I notice that they charge for going above their data transfer limit. For example, their Bronze Plan has a monthly limit of 6GB and then charges $3 for each additional 1GB transferred within a month.

I expect 6GB/month to be more than enough. My site will be 12MB, hobby-oriented and aimed at just a few hundred viewers. But what if many more people than I anticipate suddenly start going to the site? I don't mind paying for transfers of up to 10GB, 15GB or even 20GB within a month, but any transfer volumes above that can start hurting me. Instead of having to worry about this all the time, I'd rather have a host that stops transferring data above a certain amount and just gives, say, a 503 error for the rest of the month.

I haven't contacted WeinBar yet, but does anybody know if they can simply stop transferring data above a certain amount?

If not, can anybody recommend a host comparable to WeinBar than can set an absolute cap on data transfer?

Thanks,
'tog'

Originally posted by toggle
I've been asking here and on some other boards about a good budget Webhost. I've had WeinBar.com recommended and was planning to go with them.

However, looking at their hosting packages, I notice that they charge for going above their data transfer limit. For example, their Bronze Plan has a monthly limit of 6GB and then charges $3 for each additional 1GB transferred within a month.

I expect 6GB/month to be more than enough. My site will be 12MB, hobby-oriented and aimed at just a few hundred viewers. But what if many more people than I anticipate suddenly start going to the site? I don't mind paying for transfers of up to 10GB, 15GB or even 20GB within a month, but any transfer volumes above that can start hurting me. Instead of having to worry about this all the time, I'd rather have a host that stops transferring data above a certain amount and just gives, say, a 503 error for the rest of the month.

I haven't contacted WeinBar yet, but does anybody know if they can simply stop transferring data above a certain amount?

If not, can anybody recommend a host comparable to WeinBar than can set an absolute cap on data transfer?

Thanks,
'tog'


I would suggest that you write up what you need in the way of hosting resources (disk space, bandwidth, overage charges, etc.) then shop your spec around to several of the hosts and see what you wind up with.

There are tools that will notify the user when they have reached a certain alarm limit. Any Alabanza-based host can offer an icon on the control panel that will allow users to set predefined limits (N.B.: we offer accounts on Alabanza servers). I'm not sure if cPanel, offered by many hosts, has this same sort of functionality, as we don't have the server at Site5 up yet to take a look and test (or add a simple script that will notify once x MB of transfer is reached). I believe, although once again I am not sure since we don't have our hands on that type of server yet, that cPanel or WHM offers a way for the host to shut down an account if a particular threshold is reached. Best bet? Put together a list of hosts that offer the specs you need for the account itself, and then send out an email to them asking if they have something in place that will allow you to keep tabs on your transfer in some way.

When I was a virtual hosting customer I always worried a little about this too. You'll be surprised at just how far 6 gigs a month goes though. I have a hobby site with some large-sized pictures and a few audio and video files--it's a about 35 megs altogether. It gets 400-500 unique visitors a day. It uses only about 1.5 gigs per month in traffic.

It's possible a host could disable your site after X amount of traffic, but I don't know if many are set up for this. What you should do is keep an eye on what your stats are doing, so you know about how much you're using. If you see three weeks into the month that you're close to your limit, just put up a single "Closed until next month" page. There are other strategies for bandwidth management, but my advice is *don't worry*, you're very likely going to be fine.

Hi Annette, been very long time, will say that. I doubt you remeber me, but I knew very little about hosting/form coding, but you helped my out very much, thank you.



Back to the post:

I have it on my cpanel, and it is very easy to see how much everything is

You are worrying too much at this point. 6 Gb is a boatload of transfer and the steps (upgrade packages) are reasonable and nicely priced. If you start using 20 gig or more, there is a possibility that the site will be using too much of the resources of the server, and... well, this is far off in the future. You should be fine for quite a bit.