The Truth About Unlimited Bandwidth And Disk Space
If you have ever spent some time looking for a web hosting providers you will have seen unlimited thrown around as if were really possible. Unlimited disk space, unlimited domains, unlimited CPU usage WOW! – Unfortunately it’s just not possible as every server and data center has limits.
This marketing tactic (which is what it is) has a name – overselling. Overselling simply means to sell more than you actually have. Due to the competitive nature of the web hosting industry web hosts have been increasing the amount of space advertised in order to gain more market share. Web hosts that offer advertise unlimited hosting are doing so with the hopes that the majority of people on the server won’t use much space. The truth is that the majority of people using shared hosting are not likely to use/need very much space so that’s another reason why it’s so common to sell unlimited offers.
How Do Companies Get Away With This?
Simple, these companies protect themselves with small print hidden in their terms of service/acceptable usage policy. For example a web host may say they offer unlimited bandwidth but in their acceptable usage policy they have:
“No client can use more than 3% of the total server resources at anyone time”
Not only does this make it impossible for the client to use much space but it also means the hosting company is not breaking any laws so there is nothing that we can do about it.
Why Do Companies Still Oversell?
To anyone new in the hosting world having unlimited of anything at $5/month is just too good to turn down. The majority of people using unlimited shared hosting will never believe that they are limited because only a couple of people will go over the limits.
What’s The Real Value Of Bandwidth?
To put it into perspective the most visited website on the Internet Youtube costs Google an estimated $1-3 million every month in bandwidth expenses alone, if unlimited bandwidth web hosting really was possible Google would be spending $5 a month on hosting.
Should I Avoid Unlimited Hosts?
This will greatly depend on your requirements. If you have a personal website you’re unlikely to face any problems but if you’re looking to host your business’s website it would be a good idea to look for a host with limits as the quality is more than likely to be higher.
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