"unlimited" Web Hosting Plan - Smart Marketing Technique?

The two basic elements of any web hosting plan comprise of:

1) available hard disk space to accommodate the website

2) allowed traffic.

Definitions: hard disk space is the space that is allocated for your website by a hosting company; traffic is the amount of data sent and received by visitors to/from a web site.

Like in the physical world, any resources, including web resources, have physical restrictions and cost money. It is impossible to have unlimited RAM and CPU as there is no such invention as an unlimited semiconductor (yet!). Why, then, some of the web hosting companies market their web hosting plans as "unlimited"?

Looking through various offers, we often come across the so-called "unlimited" plans. In the finite world of today, can something be unlimited in its true sense? Let's try to understand how the so-called "unlimited" plans function. It has already been mentioned that web hosting providers cannot physically offer their clients unlimited traffic and disk space due to the limitation of the web servers.

In practice, most of the websites' usage of traffic and disk space is reasonable. When the web hosting companies offer an unlimited plan, in reality they actually assume (and hope!) that the usage of disk space and traffic would be limited (you would not "overuse" the resources!). Typical static websites (majority of websites today) consume very little resources. From my experience working with FamiliarHosting clients' websites, the typical requirement is around 300-500 MB of disc space and 4-5 GB of traffic. Should the disc space allowance and/or traffic to the website exceed the initial quota, then FamiliarHosting works with each client on an individual basis to meet the needs and expectations.

"Unlimited" does not equal poor quality. If you are launching a small/static website consuming limited resources then go ahead with an "unlimited" offer. You shall be more cautious though if your website will have high traffic, if you plan to have a video/photo gallery, sound etc. In all of these cases, your web site will start to consume vast resources and it is very unlikely that the web hosting company will offer you unlimited usage of computer resources for free.

You will be asked to upgrade your hosting plan and will thus incur an additional payment. Web hosting companies are here to make money like any other business! Also, it is worth mentioning that unlimited plans are often restricted by various limitations such as CPU queries, RM, nodes, number of mySQL database and FTP uploads. It is advisable that you plan ahead and order the optimum tariff plan according to your needs.

To conclude, the unlimited hosting is always limited. If you plan to launch a website with the escalating unique visitors, large content, photo/video galleries and so on, it is desirable for you to avoid unlimited hosting plans.

by: allan k

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