Effective Date: August 14, 2017
Last Updated: May 28, 2026
In a hosting environment, a server's resources are what economists would call a common-pool resource: although having plenty of available system resources benefits everyone, no single user has an incentive to ensure they do not use too many resources themselves. To protect against the tragedy of the server commons, we have placed limits on the amount of a server's resources that any given user may consume. While these are limits, server abuse is not limited to these policies, and it remains within ChemiCloud's discretion to determine what constitutes server abuse.
This page is a companion to the Terms of Service and the Service Agreement. The acceptable-use rules — including all prohibited content and activities, regulated and high-risk industries, the lawful-operation requirement, the VPS-with-written-approval requirement, sanctions and OFAC restrictions, and the suspension and termination rights — are set out in the Terms of Service §3 and are not duplicated here. This page focuses on the resource-consumption and operational side: backups, reselling, web-application security, resource-abuse patterns, CPU, memory, I/O, processes, database, mail, and inode limits.
Understand that these policies are in place to protect you, our customers, from poor service quality. Generally, if we need to impose a restriction on an account for resource abuse, that account is in violation of at least two of these policies (or one policy to a very serious degree) and is adversely affecting the other clients on its server. The large majority of sites — at least 99.5% — will never even have to take these limits into consideration. That said, it is good to make yourself aware of them.
Acceptable-use rules — including all prohibited content and activities (phishing, CSAM, hate speech, AI-generated fraud, file-storage-only use, real-time chat backends, anonymizing networks, cryptocurrency mining, etc.) and all regulated and high-risk industries (forex, gambling, escort services, online pharmacies, adult content, crypto-related sites, etc.) — are set out in the Terms of Service §3. Those rules are incorporated by reference into these Resource Usage Policies and are binding on every ChemiCloud account, in addition to the operational and resource-consumption rules below.
2.1 Backups and file-storage-only use. Using a hosting account primarily as bulk file storage, an off-site backup destination, or a cloud-sync endpoint (Nextcloud, ownCloud, Seafile, Dropbox-clone, photo backup, etc.) detached from a real website is prohibited on shared, WordPress, and reseller plans. See TOS §9.5 for the full list of file types we may delete and TOS §3.2.7 for the underlying prohibition.
2.2 Reselling. Reselling is not allowed on Web Hosting and WordPress Hosting plans. If reselling is desired, a reseller hosting plan must be purchased.
2.3 Web applications and web-accessible scripts. All web applications that are out of date and actively being exploited will be shut down immediately without notice. As a webmaster, you should evaluate your web-based applications and scripts on a regular basis to ensure they are secure and up to date. Forums and any applications using a commenting system should have some form of spam protection or moderation (CAPTCHA is a popular way to eliminate spam robots).
2.4 Resource-abuse patterns. The following usage patterns are expressly prohibited on shared, WordPress, and reseller plans because of the CPU, memory, bandwidth, and connection patterns they generate (separate from any content-rule prohibitions in TOS §3):
The above usage patterns create undue system load on shared infrastructure and should only be run in a dedicated server environment. All violations will be shut down immediately and may result in account suspension and/or termination. If you have a question about whether a usage pattern is in violation, please email [email protected] for clarification.
Shared hosting accounts are managed by CloudLinux, which enforces per-account resource limits. Our shared hosting packages support the following CloudLinux resource limits:
Detailed technical information on CloudLinux limits is available on the CloudLinux Documentation website. These limits vary by hosting package as follows:
3.1 Web Hosting plans
3.2 WordPress Hosting plans
3.3 Reseller Hosting plans (per cPanel account)
It is important to note that many of these limits are hard limits. If your account starts to affect the overall performance of a server, we do need to have limits and policies in place.
Customers using the shared hosting service are provided with detailed, up-to-date statistics for their CPU and memory usage in the service control panel (cPanel). The customer is responsible for maintaining their account and any installed software in a proper manner to ensure all installed software operates in its optimal state, and that account resources are released and available to other users as soon as possible to assure optimal performance of the hosting environment for all customers sharing the resource.
If an account is found to be in violation of these Resource Usage Policies, we will do our best to work with clients to give 48 hours, 5 days, or 10 days notice depending on the severity of the violation. A customer who exceeds the level of consumption 100 times (100 Faults) within 24 hours will be contacted by the tech department for website optimization or for shifting to a plan compatible with the level of consumption.
We reserve the right, as outlined in the Terms of Service, to limit the account's resource-usage limits if it is causing a severe problem.
6.1 Inode limits. The total number of inodes in an account may not exceed the values listed below. Every file on your account (a webpage, image, email, php file, directory, etc.) uses one (1) inode.
Shared Hosting plans:
WordPress Hosting plans:
Reseller Hosting plans:
6.2 Log files. A single log file should not exceed 1 GB in size. The total size of all similar log files should not exceed 5 GB.
6.3 Directory size. A directory may not contain more than 2,500 immediate child files. This includes subdirectories themselves but does not include files contained within those subdirectories.
8.1 Unsolicited bulk/commercial email (SPAM). The use of ChemiCloud servers and networks to transmit unsolicited bulk/commercial email is strictly forbidden. Under no circumstance is the transmission of SPAM acceptable or tolerated. The transmission of SPAM from our servers and networks can cause irreparable monetary and reputation damage. All damages caused by spamming will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Any client caught explicitly spamming from our servers or networks will have their account immediately terminated, without notice. See also TOS §10.3 for the $90/hour cleanup-fee policy.
8.2 Sending limits. To maintain the integrity and reliability of our email services, the following sending limits apply:
8.3 Mailing-list requirements. Mailing lists larger than 1,500 will require a VPS service from us. Dividing one list into smaller parts to get around this limit is not allowed. Any mailing list must be throttled so that it sends an email every 6 seconds at the very minimum. If the mailing-list software you are using does not support throttling, you must use something else. We do this because throttling keeps the server load from going very high and causing problems for other users. If you do not throttle, your account may be suspended.
8.4 Purchased / borrowed lists. We do not allow you to send to a mailing list you were given or that you bought. This is spamming and we have zero tolerance for it.
8.5 CAN-SPAM compliance. Any mailing list must comply with the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act and can be found at ftc.gov — CAN-SPAM Compliance Guide.
8.6 SMTP relay. No direct-SMTP mailing-system scripts are permitted. Mail should be relayed through the local MTA.
These limits are in place to prevent excessive use of resources and to ensure fair usage across all users. Failure to adhere to these limits may result in temporary suspension of email services.
Bandwidth-overage fees apply exclusively to our Managed WordPress Hosting product. In the event that your usage exceeds the bandwidth allocation provided under your selected plan, a charge of $0.06 per additional gigabyte (GB) will be incurred. For illustrative purposes, if you exceed your bandwidth limit by 100 GB within a given billing cycle, an additional fee of $6.00 will be assessed.
Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and similar high-volume inbound traffic events targeting your account, domain, or IP address may degrade or interrupt service. ChemiCloud reserves the right, in its sole discretion and without prior notice, to null-route the affected IP, temporarily disable the affected service, apply rate-limiting at the network edge, or take any other reasonable mitigation measure necessary to protect the stability of shared infrastructure and our other customers. Service is restored where practical after the attack subsides or after mitigation is in place. For accounts subject to persistent or targeted attacks, ChemiCloud may require migration to a Virtual Private Server (VPS), dedicated server, or a third-party DDoS-protection service. Downtime caused by DDoS is excluded from the uptime SLA — see Service Agreement §3.3.
Failure to fully comply with these policies is grounds for account suspension and/or termination. We reserve the right to remove any account without prior notice. ChemiCloud will be the sole arbiter of what constitutes a violation of this provision.
The examples listed herein are a guide and may not be an exhaustive list. If you have a question on whether or not your content or usage is in violation, please create a ticket with our Support team or contact [email protected] for clarification. Reports of abuse should be sent to [email protected].
A dated history of changes to these Policies and our other legal documents is published at terms revisions.
