Adult Web Hosting

By Web Hosting on Oct 25, 2007 in Hostgator Blog, Web Hosting

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Adult Web Hosting

In the realm of web hosting there are many dimensions such as uptime, service level, space/bandwidth requirements as well as other requirements to look at. How much of each you will need may largely depend on the kind of website you are planning to have. While all types of websites will vary in their needs, there is one type of website whose demands often rise above the rest. This type of website is also the toughest to find good, reliable web hosting for. This type of hosting is known in the industry as adult web hosting.

Adult web hosting differs from regular web hosting in many ways. There are legal issues, different service requirements and higher levels of space and bandwidth usage. Before going all in with a web host that seems to be good, you should double-check the host for certain characteristics to make sure that it will fulfill your hosting needs.

First, check to make sure that the host allows adult content. While many hosts will not mention this on the homepage of their business, there is often fine print in the terms of agreement that adult material is not allowed. There are also hosts that offer large amounts of space and bandwidth but offer a smaller allotment for adult websites. If you break these rules and violate their terms of service, then your account will be terminated without any refund. Any attempts to challenge them in a legal battle will probably fail because the terms are stated in the webhost’s TOS, even if it is in fine print.

Second, make sure there are no hidden charges for hosting adult content. Many times a host will have hidden charges written into their TOS or hosting certain types of content, namely adult content. The base fee of $5 or so a month will only cover the basic functions but bandwidth usage that comes from streaming video or feeds will many times cost a hefty additional fee. Since this is not clearly stated on the host’s homepage but tucked away in some remote section of the user agreement, the adult website owner can easily be hit with a large fee that he or she is not aware of.

Third, many hosts offer differing amounts of space and bandwidth for adult sites as compared to regular sites. You need to be sure what the terms are for hosting adult content on their servers. Many hosts that offer enormous amounts of space and bandwidth for $5.99 a month are using a tactic known as overselling. They are basically selling more space and bandwidth than they actually have and banking on the fact that the majority of the users will not even come close to using the amount of space and bandwidth allotted. While this may work with most types of sites, it will not work with adult websites which often feature streaming video and other features which require large amounts of space and lots of high-quality, low-latency bandwidth.

File type and size restrictions are also a common problem for adult websites. In order to prevent people from using all of the allotted bandwidth, many shared hosts often restrict the maximum file size you can upload for one file. Most often, this limit is 5mb or 10mb, but in some cases in can be as low as 2mb. While this is not a problem for people who want to run a personal website, it will not suffice for an adult website whose content may include large streaming videos. File type restrictions are also a problem for adult websites. On many hosts, only common extensions such as .html, .php, .zip, .cgi, etc are allowed. Many hosts specifically forbid file types such as .avi or .flv because these types of files are generally large in size and use a lot of bandwidth. Hosts know that just with regular text files and images, it is nearly impossible to use the terabytes of bandwidth that many of them offer. However, video and movies, which are often in .avi or .flv format, can easily eat up huge amounts of bandwidth. The quality of bandwidth provided by hosts who offer terbytes for a few dollars per month is also not suitable for an adult website. Most of the time this bandwidth comes in the form of low-quality, high-latency bandwidth from a value provider such as Cogent. While this is fine for most websites, it will not be good enough for an adult site that features streaming video as its headliner content. The latency that comes with value bandwidth will turn many visitors away as the movies and videos will have delays in loading as well as streaming. The constant freezes and lag while watching the videos is sure to drive many potential customers towards your competitor. Another catch to the large amounts of space and bandwidth offered by many hosts is that they have strict CPU/RAM usage rules and will automatically suspend your site without question if you are using past a certain % of the server resources. Many hosts will also cut you off if you consistently use over a certain number of open SQL connections at the same time. Since adult websites are generally high-traffic sites that are powered by some kind of content management system utilizing some kind of SQL database, it is very easy for an adult website to get suspended due to excessive CPU/RAM/Database usage. At best if the host does not suspend you, they will resource cap your account, making your site’s load speed slow to a crawl.

Besides space and bandwidth issues, other important issues are uptime and customer service. While this is true for all websites, it is especially critical for adult websites that are usually high-traffic in nature. Hosts that usually offer “unlimited” space and bandwidth or numbers so huge that they may as well be unlimited are usually piling customers onto extremely crowded servers. This not only produces overage problems if just a few of the customers actually decide to use all the resources allowed, but produces a low-performing server that runs at less than expected speeds. This will cause your site to run extremely slow and is a prime candidate for server outage problems. The hosts that usually run into these problems are also most likely the ones who skimp on tech support to cut costs. Combine these two factors together and you generally get a low-performing host with frequent outages who take forever to bring your site back up. Since for every minute your site is down, you are losing money, a host with poor uptime and customer service, or even a host that looks like is has great potential for poor uptime and customer service, will cost you far more than a few dollars a month.

Aside from the technical issues, host reputation is also something you want to look at before you go with a host. Many hosts who give high space and bandwidth are known to terminate a customer’s account without any reason or cause. They usually send the customer a generic email saying that you are somehow or other violating their TOS, when in reality, they are just suspending you because you are costing them more to host than the $5/month you are paying them. This is especially prevalent among adult websites because of the space and bandwidth these websites use. When researching a host and looking for reviews, do not go to host review sites as your source of truth. Many of the reviews on these sites are often biased as the host itself or its employees will write great reviews for the company to get more visitors. The person who owns the review site will sometimes also write a positive review on a particular host because that host is paying for advertising or sponsorship. What worse is that the site administrator will often delete negative comments that would steer many people away from a bad service. If you are looking for some honest and truthful reviews about a webhost, the best way to get feedback from existing customers is to post in a large web hosting forum such as http://www.webhostingtalk.com . There you will get unbiased reviews from former and current customers and can make a well-informed decision based on that. Besides getting good reviews for customers, a large web hosting forum such as webhostingtalk.com will be full of other adult webmasters who will happily recommend web hosting services that have served them well in the past to you. Forums like these are also a great way to get the attention of adult webhosting companies and may even get you a discount for being a member.

So, in short, before choosing a host for your adult website, make sure you do your research. Carefully reading the terms of service, checking for reviews online, and getting feedback and recommendations from other adult webmasters are key to getting started on the right foot.

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