MySQL

We provide the powerful MariaDB ("a drop-in replacement for MySQL") database engine as an option for our members' sites' database needs. Developed by the original authors of MySQL, MariaDB is a purely open-source fork that provides great performance, advanced features, and full compatibility, while remaining purely open-source and avoiding some of the concerns that have arisen about MySQL's future since its takeover by Oracle.

MySQL is provided by the process; each process is the sole domain of the member who creates it (unless you give out the login credentials, which we strongly discourage). You'll have full control to create whatever usernames, databases, and tables you need to set up the database security that will best protect and serve your site(s).

MariaDB 10 Pricing

Our MariaDB 10 option is designed to provide good scalability and performance to both small and large sites. All MariaDB 10 processes include InnoDB by default.

MariaDB 10 is more resource-intensive than MariaDB 5.3, and uses the same resource-based billing as our web hosting:

*A RAU is our unit of CPU-RAM accounting. It refers to the use of one gigabyte of RAM for one minute, or the equivalent amount of CPU power.

With MariaDB 10, there is no automatic daily charge for your first process, and only a $0.01/day charge for each additional process.

MariaDB 5.3 Pricing

Note: MariaDB 5.3 is obsolete and is no longer offered for new processes. This information is preserved for people who still have one.

The base price for a single MariaDB 5.3 process is $0.02/day. One process is typically sufficient to support the needs of several small sites and applications, but its configuration is designed to minimize resource usage and cannot be customized, so it does not scale very well.

If you have more than one MariaDB 5.3 process, each process after the first costs $0.03/day.

The base price of each MariaDB 5.3 process includes up to 40 MiB of disk storage for its data. If additional space is needed, it's available for $0.002 per megabyte per month, but the average MySQL process size is about 3.5 MiB. Less than 10% of MariaDB 5.3 processes, only the very largest ones, incur the size surcharge.

By default, MariaDB 5.3 does not include the InnoDB table type, because when it is enabled it greatly increases the resource demands of a MySQL process, even if it isn't used. If you need it, however, InnoDB support can easily be added on a per-process basis for an extra $0.01 per process per day.

We do also monitor MySQL processes' resource usage (CPU, RAM, and I/O) in order to help ensure good performance for everybody. If your MySQL needs are particularly resource intensive, we may contact you to discuss whether it would meet your goals better to scale back your usage or attempt to reserve more resources for your process at a correspondingly higher price.

Alternatives

Naturally, you don't have to have (or pay for) a MySQL process just to host your site here; it's an option we provide if the applications you want to run demand it. (Note, however, that we are a web host, not a MySQL host; you may not get a MySQL process from us and use it with applications or sites hosted elsewhere.)

If you want to avoid the cost or complexity of MySQL, we offer a couple of alternatives that don't incur a daily charge, and use flat files stored as part of your site. Bindings for both SQLite and BDB are available for many of the programming languages we support. Due to licensing considerations, we recommend the use of SQLite over BDB for new application development. (Oracle strikes again!)

It is also possible to run other database software, like PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or Redis on our service using the "Custom" server type. As with MySQL, these instances can only be accessed by sites hosted here.