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  1. #1

    Question How do hosts offer unlimited email without overwhelming their servers?

    How do companies offering really low prices ($5-8/mo) and virtually unlimited resources do it? By virtually unlimited, I mean ones that offer 1,000 mailboxes up to 100GB each.

    I have been hosting for 10+ years, and I've always found anything even remotely unlimited is a plan to overload the server given enough time (1-3 years). I always hear "it's volume" or "websites rarely take much space unless you are violating the T&C." But my experience has constantly seen email as the worst offender. A website receiving 100 hits this month is normally paired with several mailboxes using 10GB and 10k+ files each checking by IMAP on regular intervals. With enough devices, particularly misbehaving ones, the server begins spending most of it's time doing disk seeks, which is usually observable with slow web page loads or worse. In a cluster, this can waste a lot of SAN bandwidth once the email volume exceeds the server's available cache (in RAM).

    I've seen some hosts (major ones) handle this by saying you get unlimited mailboxes, but each account can only be 100MB. I've seen others that advertise no such limit except a vague T&C clause that says you have to operate within limits that don't impact other users. Again I've seen ones that have an inode limit displayed after you sign in, which marketing carefully never mentions. Marketing never explains any of this, of course. The only business model that really makes sense to me is per-mailbox pricing, like Gmail or Office 365 for Business. At $5-10/mo/user you really can afford to give a ton of resources but there are still defined limits.

    Do these shared hosting platforms have each account so well isolated that outliers will naturally run out of resources before the IMAP server can overwhelm the disks? Are they expecting those clients will cancel and move on once they find the true limit? I am looking for actual experiences, no speculation please. Thanks!

  2. #2
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    This is easy, the accounts have very low inodes, email outbound/inbound rates are rate limited. While technically their panel may say they have unlimited email accounts, bandwidth, etc. the physical limits on their hosting account will prevent them from exceeding an amount that would become unprofitable for the host and disturb the stability of other tenants. In Linux there are many hard restrictions hosts can place on user accounts, it is even more fun when everything is running as the user so there are no ways to bypass this.

  3. #3
    Your answer is what I expected. I only wasn't sure, because a departing client recently that said the big host they are using hasn't imposed any limits on them in over a year (no slowdowns, etc). But many other clients have told me it happens on the cheap plans. For myself, I don't really want to run a hosting business with false marketing--Unlimited should mean unlimited--but high limits fully disclosed directly on the features listing is okay.

    There more I've looked into this, the more I think I need a CP change. The one I've been using as fallen behind IMO, mostly in some key areas that a multi-tenant environment needs to stay healthy (resource throttling, email rates, security). Thanks for the feedback.

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by sojimp View Post
    How do companies offering really low prices ($5-8/mo) and virtually unlimited resources do it? By virtually unlimited, I mean ones that offer 1,000 mailboxes up to 100GB each.
    Can you name one host that offers this?
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  5. #5
    My past research has found some. Am I allowed to drop names here? I've noticed some of the forums here have some very specific rules.

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by sojimp View Post
    My past research has found some. Am I allowed to drop names here? I've noticed some of the forums here have some very specific rules.
    As long as its not your company, or you are related to the company, etc
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  7. #7
    Okay. I pulled up my research that I did in 2016. Some of it has changed, as I noticed while verifying it now. It appears some of these plans were not a good idea? Note that I didn't sign up for these accounts. The info was either directly from the respective websites or in one case from a support chat.

    Shared hosting email limits

    GoDaddy - Economy plan was/is $7.99/mo. It offered 100 mailboxes at 100MB each. Now it offers 1 Office 365 mailbox with 5GB included, extras cost more per mailbox.
    Namecheap - Value plan was $3.24/mo and offered 50 mailboxes at 200MB each. This plan is no longer offered and the replacement has 30 mailboxes at ??? per mailbox. They offer per-mailbox hosting with 3GB and 10GB plans max, which I think is the upgrade path if you need more.

    Now here are a couple I found in 2016 with "Unlimited" email

    1&1
    Unlimited - 100 mailboxes, 2GB each- $6.99/mo - Now $7.99/mo
    Unlimited Plus - Unlimited mailboxes, Unlimited space - $9.99/mo
    Unlimited Pro - Unlimited mailboxes, Unlimited space - $14.99/mo
    All plans are now limited to 2GB/mailbox.

    HostGator - Hatching plan - Unlimited mailboxes, Unlimited Space - $10.95/mo
    I never could find HostGator's per-mailbox limit.

    ---

    I basically in 2016 I found at least 2 major hosts offering some kind of "premium mailbox" and regular mailboxes were very limited. And I found 2 major hosts just giving it all away (maybe not HostGator). But at this point it looks like none of them are doing it, and GoDaddy has partnered with Microsoft to handle the email.

    It seems to me that the only way a major host will sell you "high storage" email now is if you pay $3-10/mailbox or rent a VPS and do it yourself. The shared hosting options limit email by MB (and likely by other OS restrictions per account).

  8. #8
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    @sojimp I think you are confusing email hosting with web hosting. The plans found in email hosting is not equivalent to email you get with web hosting. Generally speaking, the email you get with web hosting uses the same disk space as the web site. This is called "disk aggregation." For example if a customer has 2GB of mail sitting on a 5GB hosting plan before building his/her site, there will be only 3GB for the web site (and vice-versa).

    Some hosts offering this plan will often refer to this as "unlimited email" since they do not put a limit on the number of mail accounts you can create. Some will limit the number of mail accounts.

    email, is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, source of inodes. Having an inode limit (usually stated in the tos/aup) can mitigate the resource usage caused by email, especially for a web host.


    An email hosting plan will use a completely different server dedicated to email hosting. In this case the mailbox space is all for mail. In addition, the type of add-ons available, such as archiving, calendar sharing, etc are enterprise-related
    Last edited by Collabora; 07-27-2018 at 09:00 AM.
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  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Collabora View Post
    I think you are confusing email hosting with web hosting. The plans found in email hosting is not equivalent to email you get with web hosting. Generally speaking, the email you get with web hosting uses the same disk space as the web site. This is called "disk aggregation." For example if a customer has 2GB of mail sitting on a 5GB hosting plan before building his/her site, there will be only 3GB for the web site (and vice-versa).
    I understand and I agree! But my potential incoming or outgoing customer does not. They see web hosting with "Unlimited space and Unlimited email" and think "Why would I use you? They are $10/mo for all my needs forever." The customer definitely doesn't understand what an inode is. They sincerely believe they have something unlimited and I do not.

    So over time I've been studying some of the bigger competitors trying to see if they really are offering what their marketing strongly claims. At this point I believe none of them really are. There is either a low per-mailbox quota with an upgrade path or an inode limit on the user that would hold 100k emails before the limit is reached. This is more or less what I've always suspected, but everyone seems to think it's all about volume with "unlimited" plans. Volume helps, but the service isn't just a runaway train either.

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by sojimp View Post
    I understand and I agree! But my potential incoming or outgoing customer does not. They see web hosting with "Unlimited space and Unlimited email" and think "Why would I use you? They are $10/mo for all my needs forever." The customer definitely doesn't understand what an inode is. They sincerely believe they have something unlimited and I do not.
    You are not a mind reader and I bet you have no documentation illustrating what a customer is saying to him or herself . You want to turn this into another unlimited debate? Don't bother, but let me state with absolute certainty unlimited hosting simply eliminates the need to choose between an array of multi-tiered hosting plans, by removing the limits that define and distinguish them.

    In the context of a shared hosting environment where almost all web sites are less than 2GB, "unlimited hosting" is real. In such an environment, shared hosting user does not need to know what an inode is because inodes will never be an issue. Inodes, and the other limits you find outside the hosting plan (e.g., in tos/aup) is to protect the integrity of the shared hosting environment from abusers -- this is a good thing. Contrary to what many here believe, "unlimited hosting" does not include "unlimited abuse" of the shared hosting environment.

    Quote Originally Posted by sojimp View Post
    So over time I've been studying some of the bigger competitors trying to see if they really are offering what their marketing strongly claims. At this point I believe none of them really are. There is either a low per-mailbox quota with an upgrade path or an inode limit on the user that would hold 100k emails before the limit is reached. This is more or less what I've always suspected, but everyone seems to think it's all about volume with "unlimited" plans. Volume helps, but the service isn't just a runaway train either.
    As stated immediately above, unlimited hosting eliminates the need for an upgrade path, whether that upgrade path includes emails accounts or disk space. With that I will leave you with an illustration on how you should be thinking about unlimited anything (for shared hosting environment)

    Suppose your host has a 2 GB, 5 GB and 10 GB plan. You sign up for a 2 GB hosting plan. Now let's suppose over time your site grows to 2.5 GB. What happens? Your limited host will either:



    1. Suspend your site when you hit the 2GB limit
    2. Charge you a premium for going over the 2GB limit
    3. Ask you to pay for the 5 GB plan, with a new bigger limit
    4. All the above


    What happens with the unlimited hosting? Nothing! Your site goes from 2.0 GB to 2.5 GB without penalty, threats of suspension, or additional charges. That is what unlimited hosting is all about!

    [BTW, I never met a web site that is suitable for a shared hosting environment that is 10GB -- even with mail]

  11. #11
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    Most customers will only use a few GB of space, but pay for unlimited for the peace of mind, or because they don't know what they are going to use realistically. The ones who do use space, you need to have clear Terms and Conditions around fair usage - what your customers can and cannot store on your service and what will happen if they do.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Collabora View Post
    [BTW, I never met a web site that is suitable for a shared hosting environment that is 10GB -- even with mail]
    I appreciate your examples with 2GB, 5GB, etc, but I'm focusing on email usage, not website usage. My plans offer more than that, but they used to be low and ran into a lot of unpleasant upgrades like you described. However, I just looked at my clients webspace alone and I have sites ranging from 100KB to 30GB. MOST websites are under 300MB. When you count email usage, the disk space is between 5GB and 75GB for accounts over 1 year old. Email is easily 90% of the space used on my servers.

    I understand Unlimited removes the friction of upgrade problems. I actually started this thread to not debate if Unlimited is a bad idea, but rather how are these large hosts keeping resources in check. In my experience, email takes far, far more space in the hosting environment and it is the only resource guaranteed to grow with time. These clients have lightweight websites suitable for shared hosting. But then they use their email like crazy (like all of us IMO). I'm honestly not sure how your clients are using so little. You have no mailbox quotas or inode limits, and your shared hosting clients keep their entire email usage under 10GB max?

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by zFastLee View Post
    Most customers will only use a few GB of space, but pay for unlimited for the peace of mind, or because they don't know what they are going to use realistically. The ones who do use space, you need to have clear Terms and Conditions around fair usage - what your customers can and cannot store on your service and what will happen if they do.
    Agreed. But then there is enforcement. Surely the server is handling this automatically? For example, a customer signs up and plans to transfer their 2GB website and 40GB of email into their new Unlimited plan. That's millions of inodes. Is that fair usage?

  14. #14
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    99% of the customers won't come anywhere close to using the limits imposed, so that's how it remains viable to offer.
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  15. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by sojimp View Post
    I appreciate your examples with 2GB, 5GB, etc, but I'm focusing on email usage, not website usage. My plans offer more than that, but they used to be low and ran into a lot of unpleasant upgrades like you described. However, I just looked at my clients webspace alone and I have sites ranging from 100KB to 30GB. MOST websites are under 300MB. When you count email usage, the disk space is between 5GB and 75GB for accounts over 1 year old. Email is easily 90% of the space used on my servers.

    I understand Unlimited removes the friction of upgrade problems. I actually started this thread to not debate if Unlimited is a bad idea, but rather how are these large hosts keeping resources in check. In my experience, email takes far, far more space in the hosting environment and it is the only resource guaranteed to grow with time. These clients have lightweight websites suitable for shared hosting. But then they use their email like crazy (like all of us IMO). I'm honestly not sure how your clients are using so little. You have no mailbox quotas or inode limits, and your shared hosting clients keep their entire email usage under 10GB max?
    Not sure if you were a user wondering how some hosting plans work out, or a host looking for advice. That one 10GB customer is using almost all that space storing 2x daily mysql backups for the last couple years. Other than that the site is typical like yours. I emailed him a couple weeks ago to clean it up without a response. Thanks for reminding me to delete them (I'll leave him a couple days worth). I put a 2GB limit per mailbox, no limit on number of mailboxes. I think more than 90% of them are a single person so it doesn't matter if there are 1 or 100 mailboxes on an those accounts. Catchall accounts can be the biggest contributor of diskspace and inodes. My philosophy is web-hosting email should not be used for critical services so I offer business-class email for the more serious customer, businesses with employees, etc. Looks like some of your examples are doing likewise.
    Last edited by Collabora; 07-27-2018 at 04:51 PM.

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