Unlimited WorpDrive and Its Fair Use Policy

Unlimited WorpDrive storage is covered by a Fair Use Policy. This means, under certain circumstances where usage far exceeds "normal" we reserve the right to inhibit, restrict, or even remove a website from WorpDrive backups.

We don't want to do that, and we're quite lenient, but we're seeing a growing misuse of the unlimited backup service.

What is the purpose of WorpDrive?

It is simply a website backup and recovery service.

It has been designed and built to handle the daily and repetitive backup of small and large websites.  Essentially, there is no limit to the size of a website that WorpDrive can handle.

What is WorpDrive NOT for?

WorpDrive is not ideally suited to the storage and backup of large amounts of data not required for a given website to operate.  This includes, and is not limited to:

1. backup archives created by other backup plugins/services
2. backing up caching files
3. backing up audio/video/iso media and data that is static and unchanging which should ideally be backed-up and archived offsite
4. backing up the data for other websites that are stored within the same directory as the site being backed-up

#4 is particularly important as it seems that some people are looking to backup the data either (intentionally or unintentionally) for multiple sites within the same site.  This is clearly mis-use of the service.

Our position is that if the data is data that would normally be expected to be stored on a website host, then we will back it up.  But if the data is storage data because of misuse of a webhost, then we cannot guarantee that we'll service it.

Examples:

What if you have a large number of photos stored on your site?

This isn't a problem. At least not a problem for us, normally.  The problem will arise when you come to restore this website and all these GB of data needs to be copied back up to your web hosting account. This can takes days in some cases, depending on the provider.

We would recommend using a dedicated photo / data storage provider for this service.  Many plugins are available that help with storing and serving this data from 3rd parties much more reliably than a WordPress site.

What if you have old backups storage on your site?

We will not backup these old archives.

What if you have other website data store on the site?

WorpDrive has the ability to provide exclusions, or folders to not backup. We ask that you include those folders.  If you need another site backed-up, please add it to iControlWP and activate WorpDrive on it.

What we may do if we detect unusually large website backups?

Depending on the nature of the backups, we may do one of the following:

1. Absolutely nothing - we typically take a lenient view on this if the data is normal website data
2. Restrict to weekly/monthly backups - if the data is unusually large we may propose to move the backups to weekly and monthly only, instead of daily.
3. Add certain filters to the backup so that certain files/folders are not included.
4. Remove WorpDrive backups from the site entirely