Unlimited Hosting and Unlimited Bandwidth – Is that REALLY true?

All of us are fascinated with the word FREE. Aren’t we? Whenever we see something free then we try to grab it as quickly as we can. It’s human nature, we simply can’t resist it. The same thing applies to Web Hosting too. There are so many free web space providers.

I am not saying that there is anything wrong with it, you may use it. But it’s better to pay a small amount for hosting from a proper expert company in this field than to get free space from a company that might just vanish one day or decides that your site does not comply with their rules and regulations.

Ok now let’s talk about the various adverts you might have seen all around the web and in magazines etc. Unlimited Web Space & Unlimited Bandwidth. Do you think that this is really true? What is the reason behind it? Who can avail of this offer? What’s the catch?

‘Unlimited’ in Web Hosting is generally true and false at the same time. You must be thinking that how can it be both and that too at the very same time? Companies like inMotion and Dream Host Hosting provide this type of service where they give you unlimited everything. They can achieve this because they are in this business for many years now and are in a position to do so. But there is a little catch.

There are basically 2 types of websites – One which uses fewer server resources like CPU, bandwidth & disk space and there are other websites that use too much of everything. I’m not talking about static HTML or dynamic (CMS) sites.

The sites which use fewer resources will never go down (almost) as compared to the sites using more resources. This is the catch. If you are running a website that is not mainly a photo website or doesn’t have too many visitors and disk usage then the web hosting provider is fine with it.

But when your sites start getting more traffic then they ask you to upgrade your hosting package to a higher one if applicable or to move to a dedicated server. Shared Hosting is such, you can’t do anything about it. And it’s a fact that once your website starts getting a great number of visitors, the disk usage increases, and eventually, the bandwidth usage also increases you will have to move to a dedicated server.

This only helps you in the long run as your website downtime will be almost zero and you can provide all sorts of features to your end-users without any compromise. You can host videos on your own server for example and so much more.

THE TERM UNLIMITED CAN BE A BIT DISCONCERTING WHEN TALKING ABOUT WEB HOSTING, AS EVERYONE KNOWS NOTHING IS REALLY UNLIMITED IN THIS WORLD. BUT TO REACH THE AMOUNT OF DISK OR BANDWIDTH USAGE THAT WILL BE DEEMED ‘TOO MUCH’ BY SO CALLED UNLIMITED PROVIDERS, IT MAY BE TIME TO MOVE FROM SHARED HOSTING TO SOMETHING MORE POWERFUL, LIKE A VPS OR DEDICATED SERVER. – WEB HOSTING ADVICE FROM WILL THOMAS.

So you must have now understood what’s the reason for Unlimited Everything and how it actually works. For most people, this goes just fine and without any problems as such. But once you get lots of traffic to your website then yes you need to upgrade.

When inspecting web hosting providers, look out for the “unlimited” line or its modern equivalent. Read the fine print. Don’t accept the terms at face value when it is used for space and bandwidth. Opting for unlimited disk space or bandwidth may mean that your site can face unspecified, or vaguely specified, limits, as compared to web hosts that tell you upfront what you are getting.

A quick recap of what you have just read:

• Unlimited hosting is impossible; everything is limited in our world.
• Unlimited is just a marketing tactic used by hosting companies to win customers.
• Overselling is how we can get cheap hosting deals today.
• Unlimited hosting features, such as disk storage and bandwidth, do not determine the quality of a hosting deal.
• Instead, look into details such as site uptime, after-sales service, software support, and so on.