Web Hosting Companies Offering Unlimited Plans

June 19, 2009 porkchop 6 comments

Beware of Hosting companies stating, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited disk space, there is no such thing as unlimited, and expect not to get unlimited for $4.95, take a look at Dedicated Servers on one of these Web Hosts, they cost at least 100+ dollars and they don’t even come with unlimited bandwidth and unlimited disk space, and you think a plan that is $4.95-$10.95 is going to be unlimited? think again! Read there TOS (Terms of Service) and you will see that those unlimited plans aren’t really unlimited, and it will have thing’s such as, amount of files allowed limited, resources limited, etc. If this web host could supply unlimited bandwidth and unlimited disk space, wouldn’t you see Google, Youtube, and Microsoft, all hosting from them? probably, since it would be a great deal for them to run on a $4.95 plan for unlimited instead of there 30,000 dollar operating cost plan for bandwidth and disk space, and maintenance on there servers. Web Hosts know that most people will not use that much bandwidth, they know the average user only uses 500MB to 1gig of space, and most likely use not more than 2gigs of bandwidth, unless it is a high traffic website.

This is where people get screwed over, they ruin a successful, popular website, on one of these “unlimited plans” and then finally get shut down, and they are requested to upgrade to a Dedicated server, from there $4.95 unlimited hosting package, you might say, oh but I pay for Unlimited! but the fact is that they have everything covered in there Terms of service, that most people don’t read before signing up, that has some rule broken, and grounds for them to remove your site. This is the worst case scenario, since your site is probably very popular at this time, and if you are running an E-commerce site you will loose business, since most dedicated servers/ transferring from hosts is not instant, it takes time. Tons of people get screwed over these unlimited plans daily, the way to solve the problem, is to always go to a web host that states what they are offering in bandwidth and disk space, even if you are starting a new site, this is the best way to start, because you can monitor your usage, you can see if your site is outgrowing that plan and size, you can buy more space, and move up, rather than just being stuck to an unrealistic unlimited plan. Then once you outgrow all the packages and sizes, that should indicate that you should move onto a Dedicated server, since shared hosting is not an option anymore, for example Google would never be able to run on shared hosting, the amount of traffic and hits it gets daily, so look at it as in a good way if your site gets that popular. And the great thing about it, is that since you know how much space/bandwidth you are paying for you can predict these things, and usually purchase more space and bandwidth until you get your dedicated server.

All these things you miss on an unlimited plan host, and one the worst things about these hosts, is that they also oversell there service, meaning that the web host may only have 10,000GB of disk space hard drives, and only 1000,0000GB of bandwidth, and they are selling unlimited plans to people, and they will never turn down a customer, they will keep selling, so say if 1000 people sign up, for web hosting, and all of them are on the unlimited plan, as you can see 10,000GB of space and 1000,0000GB of bandwidth is the maximum the host can offer, but these customers have no clue and they think they have unlimited, well the host keeps on selling more and more unlimited plans, reaching over 1000,000 people and they still have that space, in reality with a web host offering specific space amounts and bandwidth would of sold out by then, but that host would still keep on selling, since they think that the customers will never use that space and bandwidth up even if they are on those unlimited plans, and they have measures in place to protect them from the users who do use a lot. As you can see the web host benefits out of this, since they are overselling there service, they are selling what they don’t have. Another example of this is going to an all you can eat buffet, the people who own it know that the average person can only eat so much, so they advertise it as an unlimited buffet, but as you can see from being in that restaurant, they have limited amount of food, there is no unlimited food.

So what I suggest when looking for a web host to not go with those Unlimited plans to saves you the trouble and always try to find a web host that states the space and bandwidth you get, because remember you cannot get unlimited bandwidth and disk space for only 20 dollars a month, to get unlimited disk space, and bandwidth, which does not exist, would cost an unlimited amount of money. It is sad that hosting companies now all have to do this now to compete with each other, since most people see the word unlimited and go for it right away, thinking they are getting unlimited, but are actually being fooled.