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Cheap website bandwidth

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Guest

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Im running a site at the moment which uses a lot of bandwidth every month (varies from 1.5 - 2 TB / month).

My site has been removed from two "unlimited bandwidth" hosting providers for breaking their terms and conditions. The content is legal, it's just downloaded too often. I dont want to resort to put up rapidshare / megashare links as they are a pain in the ass for the users... I'd rather host the files myself.

No point signing up for another "unlimited bandwidth" host as they normally pick up on the activity fairly quickly.

I have ads on the site but they barely pay for the hosting as it is so what are the alternative?

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Grand Master

Phenom II

Posted
Posted

eUK E5200 Processor Dual Core Intel E5200 Bandwidth 3000 GB RAM 1 GB Control Panel (Optional) cPanel/Plesk/DotNetPanel Root Access Yes PHP 5/MySQL 5 Yes Server Type Dell PowerEdge Price · Only £79.00 a Month

http://www.eukhost.c...web-hosting.php

3TB should be enough for you ?

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Grand Master

Cupcakes

Posted
Posted

Pay for your own server with a provider that can offer 100mpbs unmetered and/or perhaps something like a 10TB line (Singlehop for example.)

They have an ATOM 330 with 2GB RAM, 250GB HD, 10TB Allocated Bandwidth (10 Mbps).. for $99/mo. Which doesn't include server management, a control panel or anything else.

You won't have any luck with any other "unlimited" hosting provider even if your content is 100% legal (which you already know having been through 2 so far).

So if you can't afford to pay for a server then perhaps something like Rapidshare is your best option. Which it seems it might be since you're already relying on ads to pay for the hosting. It's not that uncommon anymore to go with something like Rapidshare. You could probably even recommend it to your viewers and/or use the affiliate link. That would certainly help bring some revenue in for you to pay for the hosting itself.

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Guest

Posted
Posted

eUK E5200 Processor Dual Core Intel E5200 Bandwidth 3000 GB RAM 1 GB Control Panel (Optional) cPanel/Plesk/DotNetPanel Root Access Yes PHP 5/MySQL 5 Yes Server Type Dell PowerEdge Price ? Only ?79.00 a Month

http://www.eukhost.c...web-hosting.php

3TB should be enough for you ?

Thats the thing... I only make about ?20 revenue each month through the use of google ads.

I dont care if the site makes money really, I just want to provide the content without costing me anything.

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Grand Master

Cupcakes

Posted
Posted

Thats the thing... I only make about ?20 revenue each month through the use of google ads.

I dont care if the site makes money really, I just want to provide the content without costing me anything.

Have you ever considered looking into load balancing options? That might work out for you as well. Split your download content between several hosts that allow this within their AUP. That would definitely help "lighten" the load although it would all depend on the host you go with and of course their cost and if you'd be willing to increase your budget per month.

Gotta take shortcuts if you don't have the money necessary for your project. So either you increase your budget a bit to sustain your site or you take cutbacks on your own website and offer less to lower the bandwidth consumption.

  • 0

Guest

Posted
Posted

Have you ever considered looking into load balancing options? That might work out for you as well. Split your download content between several hosts that allow this within their AUP. That would definitely help "lighten" the load although it would all depend on the host you go with and of course their cost and if you'd be willing to increase your budget per month.

Gotta take shortcuts if you don't have the money necessary for your project. So either you increase your budget a bit to sustain your site or you take cutbacks on your own website and offer less to lower the bandwidth consumption.

Good idea, I'll think about it...

As I said, I have no interest in making money off this site, just want to provide a service and learn PHP, MySQL and other web technologies as I go.

Thanks guys

  • 0
Veteran

DrJohnSmitherson

Posted
Posted

Just talked to one of them on the live chat... "Unfortunately, we do not offer file hosting services."

So even though they set a specific limit it still rules my site out.

Ok. I believe their TOS states that 90% of files must be linked in a HTML page. I don't know if this would be hard to do, but you could just have one giant list. Then everything would be ok.

  • 0
Enthusiast

TechFreak:)

Posted
Posted

Maybe you could use some sort of CDN service for your file downloads? Something like Amazon's Cloud front might be what you need.

2000 GB * $0.15 per GB = $300

I think $300 is a little more than ?20. :laugh:

I doubt OP will find web hosting with 2TB bandwidth for only ?20. IntoVPS offers 1TB per month for only ?20 which seems a bit suspicious.

  • 0
Mentor

Plarkster

Posted
Posted

Have a look at Dropbox - they let you have 2GB of storage for free and if you add the files into the Public folder it will generate a link to add to your website. You didn't say how much space you need, but you could see how it goes before paying for more (if you need it) or run it alongside another service like Rapidshare.

They don't have any bandwidth limits as far as I can see, but have a good look through the forums, FAQ, Terms, etc and see what you can find. I had a quick look and they do suspend accounts that use massive amounts of bandwidth, but I don't know if you'll fall into that category or not as they don't have any set limit - you probably would get suspended if you had all of your files on there but it's worth a try with a few of the files and then you could trial it for a few weeks.

I also agree with Cupcakes about spreading the files to reduce the bandwidth for each service - maybe have some files hosted on your server, some on Rapidshare, some on Dropbox etc. It might also be a good idea to have 2 or 3 links for each file in case one of the services does go down or gets suspended, so at least your users can still get the files.

Torrent files might also be an option depending on your userbase - it just depends on whether enough people would seed the files back.

  • 0

Guest

Posted
Posted

Have a look at Dropbox - they let you have 2GB of storage for free and if you add the files into the Public folder it will generate a link to add to your website. You didn't say how much space you need, but you could see how it goes before paying for more (if you need it) or run it alongside another service like Rapidshare.

They don't have any bandwidth limits as far as I can see, but have a good look through the forums, FAQ, Terms, etc and see what you can find. I had a quick look and they do suspend accounts that use massive amounts of bandwidth, but I don't know if you'll fall into that category or not as they don't have any set limit - you probably would get suspended if you had all of your files on there but it's worth a try with a few of the files and then you could trial it for a few weeks.

I also agree with Cupcakes about spreading the files to reduce the bandwidth for each service - maybe have some files hosted on your server, some on Rapidshare, some on Dropbox etc. It might also be a good idea to have 2 or 3 links for each file in case one of the services does go down or gets suspended, so at least your users can still get the files.

Torrent files might also be an option depending on your userbase - it just depends on whether enough people would seed the files back.

haha... i thought of that too yesterday but it appears that they do block people who abuse it

I actually put up the files on the free hosting provided by my ISP. They dont specify any bandwidth limit and being an internet service provider I doubt they monitor the bandwidth too much.

  • 0
Grand Master

Cupcakes

Posted
Posted

haha... i thought of that too yesterday but it appears that they do block people who abuse it

I actually put up the files on the free hosting provided by my ISP. They dont specify any bandwidth limit and being an internet service provider I doubt they monitor the bandwidth too much.

You'd be surprised but I'd say that would apply to a lot of US based ISPs. Especially with you bringing in 2TB of traffic a month.

Have a look at your ISP's ToS first before you do this. You don't want to lose your internet connection just because you didn't want to go the route of Rapidshare, etc.

  • 0
Veteran

DDStriker

Posted
Posted

Im running a site at the moment which uses a lot of bandwidth every month (varies from 1.5 - 2 TB / month).

My site has been removed from two "unlimited bandwidth" hosting providers for breaking their terms and conditions. The content is legal, it's just downloaded too often. I dont want to resort to put up rapidshare / megashare links as they are a pain in the ass for the users... I'd rather host the files myself.

No point signing up for another "unlimited bandwidth" host as they normally pick up on the activity fairly quickly.

I have ads on the site but they barely pay for the hosting as it is so what are the alternative?

how much content is being put out? the 10TB website (now 100TB) still offers a 10TB service for $98 in its cloud services but that seems to be above your budget

why not look at taking the torrenting approach? set your server up to share files via torrent at a certain speed as people start downloading it, when others come they can get a bit from everyone and really reduce the bandwidth requirement for your server for the same content

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