Introducing Unlimited Website Storage with Amazon Web Services S3

We’re excited to announce Unlimited Website Storage, a brand new, optional feature for our Fully Managed WordPress Website Hosting clients. Traditionally, website servers limit the amount of storage to keep the server running smoothly. We’ve partnered with Amazon Web Services to provide our clients with the most scalable, safe, and efficient storage service for websites that require a large amount of data.


What is Amazon S3?

Amazon Web Services S3 is the industry-leading cloud-based, object storage platform built to store and retrieve any amount of data from anywhere. It is designed to deliver 99% durability, and stores data for millions of applications used by market leaders in every industry. S3 provides comprehensive security and compliance capabilities that meet even the most stringent regulatory requirements. Amazon S3 is the most supported cloud storage service available, with integration from the largest community of third-party solutions, systems integrator partners, and other AWS services.


Do I need it?

It all depends on how much website storage you need and utilize. Typically, if you’re account is using over 5gb (local storage in your uploads folder), we recommend activating this feature because it will give you greater scalability as your website grows. We’re always monitoring server usage and will contact you if this feature is something that we feel will benefit you.


How does it Work?

Usually, the largest files on a WordPress website reside in the “wp-content/uploads” folder which includes images and other files uploaded by users in the WordPress admin. After we activate the “unlimited storage” hosting feature for your account, we’ll begin migrating the data in your “uploads” folder.

  • We transparently move content off the server’s filesystem onto S3.  This happens during low-traffic periods and is fully automated.
  • We move files only once they’re sufficiently old, so it doesn’t interfere with other server operations and plugins.
  • Our fast, front-end caching load balancers understand which paths are controlled by LargeFS, and automatically serve content either from the server’s filesystem or from S3, depending on where the file is.
  • Uploading new files or modifying files are available instantly; there’s no lag and no caching delay.
  • Larger files are 301’ed directly to S3 for better throughput and scalability under traffic loads, and also those URLs in HTML are automatically rewritten to go straight to S3, so under normal conditions this is as fast as possible for the end user.
  • Smaller files which are accessed frequently are automatically cached by our caching load-balancers and will also be placed on our CDN automatically, so popular content is as fast as possible and doesn’t have any of the speed issues with S3.

Is Your Data Safe?

Amazon S3 Standard, S3 Standard–IA, S3 One Zone-IA, and Amazon Glacier are all designed to provide 99.999999999% durability of objects over a given year. This durability level corresponds to an average annual expected loss of 0.000000001% of objects. For example, if you store 10,000,000 objects with Amazon S3, you can on average expect to incur a loss of a single object once every 10,000 years. In addition, Amazon S3 Standard, S3 Standard-IA, and Amazon Glacier are all designed to sustain data in the event of an entire S3 Availability Zone loss. Bottom line, yes your data is safe and sound.

Amazon S3’s standard storage is:

  • Backed with the Amazon S3 Service Level Agreement
  • Designed to provide 99.999999999% durability and 99.99% availability of objects over a given year
  • Designed to sustain the concurrent loss of data in two facilities

How do I Signup?

This new feature is available on all of our WordPress Website Hosting Plans. Please contact us to activate for your account.