Unlimited Web Hosting
If you have been searching for a web hosting company, you have probably noticed the never ending offers of unlimited web hosting (or nearly unlimited) plans. You know, the companies offering unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth for $10 or less monthly. While these sound like excellent deals, you need to stop a take a look at what is being offered and how it will impact your business. You see most of the time web hosting does not get a second look, but you really should consider what you are buying before you buy.
So what is there to consider? Let me ask you something…. have you ever seen a unlimited space hard drive at Best Buy? Definitely not!! Why? Simple, it does not exist. So another question for ya? If an unlimited space hard drive does not exist, how can a hosting company offer you unlimited disk space. You see where I am going with this. The next argument is that they can keep adding hard drives to the server. While that is true, they can only add so many hard drives before the cabinet is full. So as you can see, these unlimited web hosting companies are actually offering a service that they can not deliver and what ends up happening is that when you use more than 2 or 3 Gb of disk space, your account is suspended for violation of other terms and you are forced to move or upgrade to one of their VPS or dedicated servers.
The same thing goes with the unlimited bandwidth. While they can certainly justify this claim by saying that they will give you the unlimited bandwidth that you want, it would be far to expensive for the hosting company to do this. Let me explain. The average cost of bandwidth is .50 per Gb. At this cost, if you use 20Gb of bandwidth in a month, the hosting company is breaking even and start using 20.5Gb and they start losing money. The hosting company is in business to make money, so breaking even and losing cash is not even an option. What happens is if you start using more than 2-3 Gb of bandwidth per month, your account is suspended for violation of other terms and you are forced to move or upgrade to one of their VPS or dedicated servers.
So the question remains; if they can’t honor the promise then why are they offering it. Simple, this is purely a marketing ploy to get business and they know the average customer will never use it. In fact, the average web site uses less than 1Gb of disk space and 1Gb of bandwidth per month. Therefore, the chance of the hosting company ever getting caught for lying losing money on you is slim to none.
So if they will not get caught and I will never use what is offered, what is the big deal. Looking past honesty, the issue is that your site will be hosted on an oversold server and your site will lag in speed as well as having intermittent down time issues. While this may not be a big deal for a personal site or a small affiliate site, you should not put your business web site in the hands of a company that can not deliver reliable service and starts off the business relationship on a questionable note.
So how do you who is honest and what hosting companies to do business with? Well for starters look at what the hosting company is offering. Do the offerings sound to good to be true? If so, they probably are. Look for sites that have a definite limit on disk space and bandwidth. Web hosting companies such as Downtown Host, Host Nexus and Fused Network are all stable and reliable hosting companies who offer top notch hosting solutions at affordable pricing.
In closing, I am not trying to bash someone’s business model. I just want to make you aware that these companies are offering something that they can not deliver and you should reconsider doing business with companies that start the business relationship on a questionable note.
If you need any assistance finding a web host or have further questions, please give us a call at 757-271-3315
