HostGator Doesn’t Allow Customers to Host Torrent Files
The popular hosting company HostGator effectively bans its customers from storing .torrent files on their servers. They want you to store podcasts or other media files on their server instead of saving bandwidth and resources by offering it as a .torrent download.
From HostGator’s Terms of Service: “Please note that you may link to torrents off server, but may not host or store them.”
One of the benefits of offering media files for download via BitTorrent is that it takes the load off the server and decreases the chance of your site becoming inaccessible due to excessive bandwidth consumption.
Apparently HostGator doesn’t care, they want you to just store your podcasts, videos and other media files on their server instead of saving bandwidth by offering it as a .torrent file.
Unfortunately, it can become quite a costly affair if you surpass the bandwidth limit set by your host. Good for them of course, because that will increase your bandwidth bill, but not very customer friendly.
I can see that they don’t want you to run a BitTorrent tracker or a client on a shared server because these use quite a lot of resources, but there is absolutely no valid reason to simply ban .torrent files. As far as I can see this would only save bandwidth and thus resources.
And it gets even worse, you’re also not allowed to: “Participate in any file-sharing/peer-to-peer activities”
This is getting ridiculous, most webhosting companies at least have good reasons to disallow certain activities on their servers. But, just banning everything that’s related to filesharing like HostGator does is a little too much if you ask me.
