File quota and how it can affect your website

Each web hosting account on our cloud hosting and semi-dedicated servers has been assigned a certain amount of files, which it is allowed to use. Every file you upload and every message you send/receive counts as a separate file, since a copy of it is being saved in your account (and therefore - on the sevrer). The file quota is different for each web hosting plan.

Our system monitors the file usage for each account and shows the respective statistical information in the Account Usage section on the left side of your hosting Control Panel. There, among other usage statistics for your account, at the bottom of the table you can see the files currently used, as well as those that remain until the allowed quota is reached. For example, if you see something like: 19,000/31,000, then this means that at the moment there are 19,000 files in your account, and that you can host 31,000 more.

Because these file limits cannot be changed or upgraded, we recommend that you regularly check the Account Usage section and monitor the number of the files left until the file quota limit is reached. Exceeding the file quota limit will result in the following:

1. You will not be able to upload files to your account. If you try to upload additional files, you will get an error message that there is not enough space.
2. You will not be able to log in to the Webmail. In this case, no error message will be returned, but once you try to log in, the Webmail client will load a blank page and will not show the menus or any other options.
3. If you are using a local mail client for your mails, for example, Outlook Express, you will receive an error message when trying to send an email, and people who are trying to send messages to you will get their emails returned back to them with a message explaining that the delivery has failed.

The obvious solution to any of the afore-mentioned problems is to remove old files and emails, and thus reduce the number of files hosted in your account.

Often people don't realize how many unused and unnecessary files they are actually hosting. For example, you may have many mailboxes in your account, which are storing thousands of e-mail messages that you may not need and that are only taking up space. Often a catchall account, which you never actually check or don't monitor regularly, gets filled up with SPAM. Each email counts as a file and these SPAM messages could take a great amount of your file quota. The solution - delete the catchall account and re-create it, thus removing all the emails stored in it, or use Outlook or any other mail client to review the messages and delete unwanted and/or old and unnecessary emails.

If you are unsure what to delete and where to look for the files that are filling up your account, please contact us by opening a support ticket and we'll provide you with a list of folders and email accounts that have large amounts of files stored within them.