WebHostingPad is one of several companies offering “unlimited space and unlimited bandwidth” at a very cheap price. But what exactly does “unlimited space and bandwidth” mean? What other terms and conditions must be met? This article seeks to break down the terms of service (actually called “terms of use” at WebHostingPad.com) and give potential buyers all the information they need about WebHostingPad.com’s hosting plans.

First off, I am not a lawyer and I’m not a certified geek. I’m a geek alright, but I graduated from the School of Hard Knocks. So what qualifies me to discuss the terms of service? Two things—1. I read them, which is more than what can be said for 90% of those out there. I didn’t scan them. I read every word of Web Hosting Pad’s terms of use and their Abuse of Terms document. Over and over. 2. Then I wrote them and asked questions for clarification. I did not tell them I was writing an article and I used an unfamiliar email address with an alias name. Their response time from their Technical Support Department: a documented four (4) minutes.

This is what I learned about the terms of service at WebHostingPad:

WHAT “UNLIMITED” STORAGE AND BANDWIDTH REALLY MEANS
Every account is initially set up with 10 GB’s of disk space and 100 GB’s of monthly bandwidth. They automatically increase it upon request without hesitation. The only qualification is that your current usage shows that you actually need it. If you’re only using 5 GB of space or only 30 GB of bandwidth, it would be wasting their resources to increase space and bandwidth.

WebHostingPad does put a limit on the amount of space you can use for intensive things such as graphics, audio, and video files. You cannot use more than 10% of your storage capacity. So a regular account would be limited to 1 GB of storing audio files, video files, and large graphic files. There is also a 10,000 count file limit. Another 10,000 file credit can be purchased for $9.95 at the time of this writing, though it is unlikely the average user would need it. To exceed the 10,000 file limit would require every single file in your account to average 1 MB in size.

Databases are also limited to a 10% cap of the site’s overall storage capacity. No database can exceed 1 GB in size for an initial 10 GB site. WebHostingPad says it is not set up for the purpose of dispensing software or multimedia products, nor is it to be used as a commercial file backup service.

LIMITATIONS ON SERVER USAGE
Think of a server as a neighborhood where other people live and reside. No one can take all of the water or suck up all of the electricity at the expense of others. Sharing a server is the same way. WebHostingPad stipulates that a single account holder cannot require more than 10% of the server’s CPU and memory usage longer than ten (10) minutes. That’s a fair and reasonable request. No one likes a neighbor that parties like it’s 1999 on a school night. No one likes their site slowing to a crawl because someone on their server is a resource hog.

WEBHOSTINGPAD’S UPTIME GUARANTEE
Web Hosting Pad guarantees your site will be up 99.9% of the time. What that really means is WebHostingPad guarantees your server will be up 99.9% of the year, and only for things that are under their control. Outages caused by acts of God, are due to war, or have to do with other entities, such as your domain name registrar, are not included in WebHosting Pad’s guarantee. 99.9% of the year translates into eight (8) hours and forty-five (45) minutes of total downtime for the year.

SERVER CONFIGURATIONS
The typical server at WebHostingPad has an Intel Core Duo Xeon processor with 8 GB of RAM. Each account comes with cPanel and Fantastico for one-click installation.

HOW WEBHOSTINGPAD HANDLES ACCOUNT SUSPENSIONS
The rules are laid out. Expectations are put on the table. What happens if they get bent—or broken? The Web Hosting Pad tech support person that responded to my question said it plain and simple—the site will be temporarily suspended and the owner notified of what needs to change. This is a good thing. If my “neighbor” on the server is sucking all of its resources, I don’t want it to continue on until the tech support person can catch him on the phone. I want it shut down now so I don’t lose customers. All WebHostingPad accounts use cPanel, which shows all usage metrics for a shared hosting plan so webmasters can see how they’re doing.

THE FINE PRINT FOR MISCELLANEOUS THINGS
You will definitely want to read the Terms of Use for yourself, but the following is a summary of the details in WebHostingPad’s most relevant Terms of Use:

• No spamming allowed.
• No IRC or IRC bots allowed.
• Site cannot be used for the purpose of distributing software and/or multimedia products.
• You cannot use your site for anything illegal, especially terrorism. Duh.
• Site owner must comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (aka “DMCA”), http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#512.
• Your site cannot be used for any type of pornography.
• WebHostingPad can discontinue, upgrade, replace, modify, or change any of its services without assuming responsibility for having to contact everyone who has ever done business with them. All they have to do is post any changes on their site.
• You and NOT WebHostingPad are responsible for backing up your data.
• If there are any legal disputes, they will be settled according to the laws of the State of Illinois, in the United States of America.
• And there is the universal, “We reserve the right to refuse, cancel or suspend service at our sole discretion.”

CONCLUSION
Before signing up for a hosting account with WebHostingPad or any other major web hosting company, remember that you are buying a SHARED hosting account—you are sharing the resources on a particular server. If you want more resources with less restrictions, purchase a VPS (virtual private server) plan. That way, you will only be sharing the server’s resources with a few people instead of hundreds or even thousands.

If you want to find the absolute best deal for your web hosting, check out WebHostingPad.