UPDATE 08/27/2021 12:41pm MST: We have postponed the free CloudSite deletions as some customers were not receiving our notification email. Free CloudSites will start getting deleted 10/01/2021. Please upgrade your plan or migrate data off. Once deleted we will be unable to recover files.
Today we are announcing the end of the free CloudSite plan. As of today June 3rd, 2021 the free CloudSite plan will be removed from the GearHost Portal. For now, any existing free CloudSites will stay active for at least 30 days. 30 days from today all customers that do not have a paid service will lose their free CloudSite whether its actively used or not. This means July 3rd our team will begin deleting every free CloudSite that does not belong to paid customers. Customers with paid services will be able to keep their free CloudSites for the time being. We do plan on fully removing the free CloudSite by the end of the year.
This decision was not easy to make but it is something we must do. The idea behind the free CloudSite 6 years ago was to allow potential customers to quickly signup and test out our platform. Unfortunately, many users are taking advantage of the free CloudSite and hosting illegal content. In the past two years our fraud count has exceeded 2000% compared to years before. We do have automated anti-fraud measures, but these are starting to take a toll and are degrading performance for our paying customers.
We thank you for your understanding and hope you can accept our apologies for this. As the hosting industry shifts every year, we feel this is the best change to make at this time. We plan on sending out this blog via email to all customers. We will post updates inside the portal, twitter and on our status page: https://status.gearhost.com As always if you have any questions or concerns, please open a support ticket from your portal.