Usage Policy


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This Usage Policy and accompanying definitions pertain to certain web hosting plans that may be offered on our website that include “unlimited disk space” and / or “unlimited storage”.

For certain Shared and WordPress web hosting plans there is no stated limit to the amount of disk space, storage, bandwidth, or data transfer a single customer may use with respect to their web hosting. Subject to these terms, HostPapa makes every reasonable commercial effort to provide customers on those plans with the disk space, storage, bandwidth, and data transfer resources required for the normal operation of a website. Our goal is to provide the resources required for a typical website that may experience periods of growth resulting in increasing demands for resources (such as disk space, storage, bandwidth, or data transfer) without customers being subject to additional charges.

In order to ensure excellent performance for all websites on a server, customers must be fully compliant with our Terms of Service, and utilize disk space, storage, bandwidth, and data transfer in a manner consistent with the normal operation of a website. While rare, when performance on a server is compromised due to excessive demands by an individual website, we occasionally need to temporarily constrain websites that are utilizing more server resources than needed for normal operations. For those websites that are consistently making excessive demands above the normal operation of a website, including those that are not in compliance with our Terms of Service, we may suspend or terminate the account in question or ask that the customer adjust the web hosting plan they are currently on to one that better matches the needs of their website.

What is acceptable and appropriate usage?

Acceptable and appropriate usage is defined in two ways:

  1. As outlined in Section 6 of our Terms of Service, which clearly describes unacceptable, disruptive, and forbidden uses of our Services.
  2. As outlined in our Detailed Server Resource Usage Specification Chart, which describes the technical limits of our Shared and WordPress hosting servers.

Websites utilizing server resources within these technical limits and in accordance with our Terms of Service are considered to be operating normally and using resources appropriately. In addition, we provide customers with the ability to easily monitor in real-time the level of server resources their websites are using, and we are always available to help answer questions about how a website’s performance can be optimized.

HostPapa is continually investing in technology and support features. Our web hosting solutions have been specifically designed to serve the web hosting needs of small and independently owned and operated businesses and organizations throughout the world. Since you will be hosting your website with many others on our servers in a shared community, these offerings are not intended to support enterprise level or large company requirements. This typically also includes eCommerce websites, high traffic websites that require greater server processing resources than a shared web hosting server can provide, and websites that have been configured improperly or have been extended with additional functionality causing higher server demands. For these types of websites, we may recommend migrating your website to higher performance Services that provide dedicated server resources such as a virtual private server (VPS) plan or managed hosting plan(s).

To ensure that our hosting is reliable for all customers within a specific server community, we monitor our servers continuously in order to maintain optimal performance, and occasionally have to take preventative measures on individual websites or accounts where resource usage is adversely affecting the server’s performance. If your website is subject to these measures we will attempt to contact you to determine the potential cause for this excessive usage and highlight possible ways that you can make adjustments or changes to your website before we take any corrective actions.

Lastly, our web hosting Services are intended for hosting websites. Using these Services primarily as an online storage space for backing up or archiving electronic files and images is strictly prohibited.

What is unlimited?
  • Unlimited disk space and / or unlimited storage: For those plans that offer “unlimited”, there is no defined upper limit on the space your website can occupy on the server. However, there are many other users on the server and we may need to restrict certain resources if you are operating your website in a way that negatively impacts other customers. Typically, customers only experience issues if they use their websites for storage (for example large multimedia files), computer backup, or file sharing. Our web hosting Services are not intended to support these activities, and in accordance with our Terms of Service your disk space, storage, bandwidth, and data transfer usage must be used exclusively for operating your website normally.
  • Unlimited websites: On plans offering “unlimited websites” you can create as many websites as you want in your account.
  • Unlimited email accounts: On certain web hosting plans, you can create an unlimited number of email accounts or email addresses. However, please keep in mind that the “unlimited disk space” or “unlimited storage” of your hosting plan is intended for website files only. While email account creation is unlimited, these Services rely on the file storage available on your account and individual email accounts have limits, so you must operate within the Terms of Service to ensure resources are available to fully enable email functionality.
  • Unlimited hosting space but excessive database files: On most HostPapa Shared and WordPress hosting plans we do not set specific limits on the amount of disk space, storage, bandwidth, or data transfer allowed for an individual website, nor do we charge additional fees based on an increased amount of usage, so long as you are compliant with our Terms of Service. However, HostPapa’s Services are designed to host websites and as such we DO NOT provide unlimited space for backups or the archiving of electronic files, emails, documents, log files, etc., and such activity may result in the suspension or termination of your account without notice. Furthermore, websites with an extraordinarily large number of files can have an adverse effect on server performance. This includes, but is not limited to, websites with an excessive number of database files or an unreasonably large database size. HostPapa may request that the number of files/nodes, database tables, or total database usage be reduced to ensure proper performance for all customers on that server, or we may suspend or terminate your account, with or without notice.
  • Unlimited domain hosting: Most HostPapa Shared and WordPress hosting plans do not set an upper limit to the number of domains a customer can associate with a website.

For more information please refer to the acceptable use section of our Terms of Service.