Mar 17 2008
Hosting Companies TOS
How to review a web hosting companies TOS (Terms Of Service), what to look out for and what SHOULD BE LISTED.
This article applies to Shared Web Hosting TOS’s. TOS’s for other services like Dedicated Servers will probably vary.
Time and time again we hear about customers getting the ax and getting quoted some paragraph from a hosting companies TOS. So, what’s the deal? All companies, whether it’s a hosting company or a cell company or a gym have TOS’s. The issue here is that with hosting companies (because anyone can start a hosting company cheaply) they will sell one thing on their site or omit something pertinent on the sales pages, but include them in the TOS. This way when you go to use the service (and the piece that’s not included) they fall back to the fine print and you’re left with all that time spent on your site just to have to start the process of looking for a new hosting company all over again.
So, let’s break down a TOS. First, what is a TOS?
A TOS is a guideline of acceptable use, that is, what the hosting company will allow you to do. So Read it!
What SHOULD be in a TOS?
The biggest cost to hosting companies is:
-Network (also referred to as transfer, bandwidth..etc)
-Disk (also referred to as storage, space, inodes..etc)
So it stands to reason that a hosting company doesn’t want it’s customers to abuse the two main costs on their equipment AND THIS IS FAIR. What is UNFAIR is when a company tells you that you can use UNLIMITED (disk or network) “don’t worry about it”… IT’s JUST NOT TRUE!
So, if Network restrictions or Disk restrictions are not listed in the TOS or on the Sales Pages then beware. You may get 50 or so GB of disk used on your site to suddenly have it shutdown for “unusual usage” with vague reasons that are un-related. A proper TOS will have these items listed along with other items like:
-Spam
-Mass Mailing
-Adult Content (unless your host is an adult host..etc)
A honest and fair hosting company will also be very open to discussing their TOS and any restrictions they may have, so ASK!
Stop and think about it, do you really want to be on the same server with other customers where the hosting company is not restricting the use of the service? How could their servers ever have a reliable performance history.