Wouldn't keeping people's balances protected be more feasible in a smaller server, not a large server with 500 players online? I'd generally assume that a large server would take up more space, thus the need to clear balance files and such as opposed to a smaller server with no that much files at all.
Keeping player's balances protected indefinitely comes with a much different process than what we currently use for storage.
to put it in really simple terms. Each user in essentials is a file, your balance, homes, etc is stored in that file. When you have tens of thousands of files they cause 2 major problems. 1, it heavily affects startup times, considering each file's data has to be loaded into memory, although it's only a few KB/MB, it's still a lot of things to be loaded from the disk and into memory and can take some time. (even with an SSD) 2, it heavily affects backups. 20MB divided into 20k files is many times slower than 20MB in 1-2 files. Backing those files up takes a lot of time, and when the backups happen it's a bunch of wasted time. Essentials, although easy to use and probably the most well used and heavily maintained plugin, comes with its downsides with large servers that see thousands of users. That's why the cleanup process came about, things took too long. It's not feasible to keep everyone's balances protected. BUT, you can utilize the bank to secure your money. Not that you'll lose much money anyway, due to the way cleanups are set up. (more money = longer it takes for money to disappear)
This seems to say that you need to have more than one home set. You don't have any forum badges so I assume don't have the multihome feature.
