Forum Moderators: phranque
They have given me the option of upgrading the email service by of course paying more (US$ 50 per month), which would allow us to send out 15,000 emails a day (which we don't need yet).
I am still trying to learn more about this, but do you know if it is regular practice for hosts to limit the amount of emails sent out?
Dave
Why not go ask some other web hosts what their terms and conditions are, and if you find you're getting the short end of the deal from your current host, suggest that you may be better placed by moving elsewhere?
My next move will be to move the site to dedicated but as I say I am worried about the transition.
So do I take it no one else has heard of email limits?
Moving hosts shouldn't affect your links, search engine rankings, etc., so that shouldn't have much placing in your decision. You're only moving hosts, and not the domain name. If it's done well, none of your users should even notice.
Of course there are still the worries about timing the DNS change and having SE spiders come to the right place, but that can generally be helped by keeping the old pages at the old host for a period of time, and timing the change to occur just after the latest spidering.
A shared server is like having to play tag with your friends in a classroom, a dedicated server is being able to run out on the playground. There are still limitations to what you can do, but you're given so many freedoms to move about and adjust the system to your website that it's well worth the struggle of porting everything over, which, if done correctly, can be an extremely smooth transition.
The biggest problem you might run into, especially if you're using a server-side scripting language (ASP, PHP, ColdFusion, etc.) and/or a database, is getting all your settings and libraries to reflect those on your shared server (which may or may not be information that you can get from your shared host prior to the move). Also, if your shared host hasn't brought the scripting languages up to date, when you install the newest version on your dedicated server, you may find that your code behaves differently.
Straight HTML rarely causes problems on server changes, the main concerns in these moves being web server settings on the new server.
I've seen bandwidth charges over a certain amount but never email charges.
E-mail = Bandwidth
Doesn't matter if it's web, FTP or e-mail, it still needs to go out over the same pipe. Your ISP is probably being charged by the Gigabyte of transfer, so he's passing that additional cost on to you.
The reason most companies don't have published policies about e-mail or FTP bandwidth is that it's extremely rare that anyone would use up very much e-mail on either. The average web site probably uses FTP every 6 months, and e-mail once a month. For every site that sends out 15,000 e-mails a day, there are 100,000 sites that won't send out 15 e-mails in a year.
What you should find out is how much additional bandwidth you need. I would guess that $5/gigabyte/month is probably an average cost.
This in fact means I could send out 3,000 emails a day with an enormous attachment or 3,000 emails a day of plain text.
The only two options they gave was to increase to this 15,000/email/day package or go dedicated.
i know that some hosts will apply charges based on the number of emails received, and i think this is mainly to retain some control over the use of mailing lists. every incoming or outgoing email on the server uses up a tiny amount of the server resources for a short period of time. thousands of emails per day can use up a sizeable percentage of resources. the total amount of resources on the server is finite (just the same as on your home PC), and as available resources are reduced, there is less capacity for other on the server for other sites.
if you use excessive resources, you prevent the host from adding more sites and earning more money. the host relies on that money to pay for the servers and other equipment and overheads. someone has to pay for the resources you use, and if you don't, who will?
the web host may be open to negotiation - maybe offer to pay half that for say 7,500 emails per day. don't expect the host to instantly agree to it though - non-standard agreements may mean the host has to do a little bit of extra admin work, maybe set up a payment page specially for you, and they may not want to bother with the extra admin work involved - could be minutes, could be a couple of hours, and after costs and tax etc, there may not be very much (or any) profit left in it for them. but then again, if you have a site that is this popular, shouldn't it be making enough money for $50 a month to be a drop in the ocean?
you might be better off looking at ways to reduce usage or looking for another host that has bigger allowances at lower costs. dedicated might be even better. moving the site shouldn't be a problem if you plan it carefully and take your time. does your current host provide dedicated servers? if so, how about leasing a dedicated server from them and asking them to help you move the site without any downtime?
I think I will post a new thread about members past experiences with switching to a dedicated so I can hopefully learn from their mistakes. As I have a quite a few questions. Thanks.
