What Does Unlimited Mean To Your Web Hosting Company?

You’ve no doubt seen the advertisements from a web hosting company, touting “unlimited” web space, bandwidth and domains, and thought to yourself, “Wow, that sounds too good to be true!” Guess what – you’re just about right, but with several exceptions and a few tweaks in semantics. It is not quite an out and out lie, but you need to know what the terms mean in practical application before you can plan your hosting. Let’s see just what that is.

Unlimited web hosting is a relatively recent arrival on the scene, as the capabilities of servers grew exponentially in the last few years. Back in the day, (just a few short years ago) you got a certain amount, which wasn’t much, and you had to live with it, or have a number of hosting accounts. Since the expansion of web space and the greater availability of bandwidth, competition among web hosts has become more intense, and offers of greater web storage space and data transfer (bandwidth) began to make their appearance. This didn’t cost them much, and it was a smart way to increase the bottom line without drastically affecting expenditures.

Also a nifty way to grab greater market share. It wasn’t long before most every web hosting company was doing it. So what exactly does this mean in real terms? Well, when you see an offer that advertises unlimited domains, this is very likely true, at least technically. You are constrained by the amount of web space you actually have (more on that in a minute) and most people will never come close to approaching the numbers it would take to raise any red flags here. In relation to web space, however, this is an entirely different plate of pasta.

Just remember: there is ALWAYS a limit. It just probably won’t be written down anywhere you can easily access. Hosting companies, who are in the business of selling just as many web hosting plans as they can, routinely oversell their servers, many employing this “unlimited” tactic to do so. They are betting (and usually winning these bets!) that the vast majority of clients will never come anywhere close to using a large amount of space, and thus it becomes a bridge they don’t normally have to cross. Occasionally a client will grow large, and then is usually found to be in violation of the terms of service (TOS) in one way or another. Many of these TOS docs are written in such a vague manner as to leave the definition of what constitutes “unlimited” entirely at the web hosts discretion, never mind Webster!

Then they are sold a “better” plan more suited to their needs. A similar scenario plays out when it comes to bandwidth. There is another aspect to this one though, and that is when you are on a shared server, and one of the sites has become a behemoth, and hogs most of the available bandwidth for that server. The others are left to scramble for the bits and pieces not allocated, and your site’s performance can suffer greatly. So the best you can really do is to look as closely as possible at the host’s terms of service, and try to decipher for yourself what they really mean. Failing to do so could leave you scrambling to keep your site visible and functional. Suffice it to say that the word “unlimited” as it relates to web hosting should be considered as a politician’s campaign promises: good as gold – as long as it serves their purposes!

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