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Portland?? @!#?%§!!

B

Bernhard

New Member
Just discovered that Portland.co.uk locks your site *permanently* once you exceed your bandwidth quota (100 MB/month), asking you to pay ₤14.10 (for an additional 1 GB of bandwidth). Okay, you get what you pay for, but that's blackmail. Isn't it enough to block the site once it goes over the allowed traffic and reconnect it the following month? You don't even get the chance to properly move your site to a new server. And it's great to be listed as "Portland Communications" in all search engines. Argh, the perks of "free" webhosting!

Summary: AVOID PORTLAND AT ALL COST.
 
Blocking your site don't seem unreasonable when they clearly stated that you have 100MB of monthly bandwidth. It's normal practice when a client exceed his bandwidth limits. Bandwidth do cost money... :p
 
Yah... If it's permanently, you should just change host. You can easily find a bunch of free web hosts offering much more than Portland. In fact, you should have changed host a long time ago. :p
 
It's not blackmail according to the law.
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Who said it's blackmail according to the law? This is not the point. To lock down a site permanently for the mentioned reason is both unusual and unfair. To "force" people to buy overpriced bandwidth to get their site back is certainly not nice either.
It's easy to move the site to a better provider, in fact I already did, but what's not so easy is to change the links on other sites or to get the #1 spot on Google back that has been transformed into a Portland ad (so much for "get something for nothing").

It simply makes no sense to sign up with Portland. As soon as your site is even slightly successful, it's gone and your free webspace suddenly turns into (expensive) paid webspace. Avoid it...and if they host your site - move while you can. Just a recommendation...
 
It is a bit stiff but remember you had a free service and went over the agreed limits. If your site is becoming successfull then you need to change to paid hosting and the penalty for not doing so is steeper than it would have been.

A lesson learned the hard way I'm afraid but you did agree in the first place in order to get the service for nothing. No reason to down a company for standing by their rules that you should be aware of.

The permenant bit will be to ensure they receive the overuse costs. It all costs someone at the end of the day and why should your costs be passed on to others that did nothing wrong.

Not passing judgement or blame just a hosts p.o.v. it needs to be seen from both sides.
 
Lets run over a couple of scenarios right quick:

1) You run over bandwidth and they suspend your website but, still allow you access to your data. This is okay and a pretty solid way to get people to "upgrade" to their paid services.

2) You run over bandwidth and they suspend your website then hold your data hostage. This is what I consider digital blackmail or theft of data.

Just my opinion though.
 
It is a bit stiff but remember you had a free service and went over the agreed limits.
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We don't talk about gigabytes of traffic, but about maybe 110 or 120 MB instead of 100 MB/month. Also, it was the first time the site exceed the maximum traffic...

If your site is becoming successfull then you need to change to paid hosting
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Ahem...too "successful" for Portland means 20-50 unique hits/day. The traffic is generated by viewing HTML documents, there are no downloads. That's a little small for paid webhosting.

No reason to down a company for standing by their rules that you should be aware of.
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They've changed this rule several times...

The permenant bit will be to ensure they receive the overuse costs.
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You got nerves...actually they would receive a sum of money that could buy gigabytes of traffic, not just the few additional MB. And if they lock the site when it goes over the agreed traffic there are little or no overuse costs. All other webhosts I know handle it that way. No one blames them for shutting down a site temporarily, but what they do simply isn't okay. Hard to understand there are people who support such a coercive and hostile practice...
 
Your the one who chose to host with them - now your complaining here, why? Complain to Portland and see if you can sort it out yourself. Flaming a host when they gave you a free service is hardly going to endear you when you start looking around for another.

You make mentions of all sorts of things like a #1 google spot - for what, and did you backup your site contents? Don't blame others for your lack of foresight.

And realise that free services have to be paid for somehow, if it happens to seem unfair to you then maybe you should try something else.
 
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