Ever heard of a hosting solution that offers unlimited add-on domain capacity, unlimited storage size, and unlimited data transfer? It’s real and is generally termed “Unlimited Hosting”. So basically you get to have many websites hosted by the web hosting company at an affordable price.
This means you won’t have to rely on expensive dedicated hosting servers, right?
Wrong.
It may seem impressive, but it’s clouded by a lot of myths. We need to dig out the truth behind unlimited hosting before deciding to go for one.
Unlimited bandwidth and storage: Is it possible?
When it comes to digital services and products, the terminologies differ. For example, “unlimited” literally means having no limits or end. But technically, it’s not the same when it comes to hosting. In a nutshell, what they mean by unlimited hosting isn’t actually ‘unlimited’ hosting in the literal sense.
Unlimited hosting is limited in reality.
Let’s get technical.
The idea of unlimited hosting will give people dreams of having terabytes of their images and videos stored on their web host. That will just stay as a dream though, because there are limitations. Take the physical world for starters. You will need unlimited RAM and CPU to make that dream come true. That means you are going to need unlimited semiconductors to make infinite RAM and CPU, not to mention unlimited cables for unlimited bandwidth. And hire unlimited people to maintain those unlimited servers and networks. Hope you get the point.
‘Unlimited’ is just a term hosting companies use to bait uninformed website owners. They run the business for money.
So what is it then?
To get a better idea, think about an all-you-can-eat buffet. You can’t eat too much obviously, but you can eat all you want to. Unlimited hosting is similar. You can use as much disk space and bandwidth as you want, but you obviously wouldn’t want that much.
You won’t be able to eat more at an all-you-can-eat buffet once your stomach is rigged to explode. Similarly, you won’t be able to use more ‘unlimited’ stuff in an unlimited hosting plan once a certain limit’s reached.
The hosting provider will most certainly have house rules that you need to abide by while using their ‘unlimited’ hosting solutions. There would be a red zone, where you won’t be able to move further. Once your website hits the red zone using all the ‘unlimited’ resources, the hosting provider would simply pull the plug or pull you back by charging you more for the service. This is how it works.
So it’s a scam by greedy businesses then?
Now you might be thinking that this was just another scam from dishonest businesses. That’s not always the case, because there are bright sides to unlimited hosting too.
A large hosting company will have an inexplicable amount of resources like manpower, servers, bandwidth lines etc. A single website practically will not be able to exceed such an amount of resources in its life. Generally, most websites will not need that much resources to function properly with all features working fine.
In such a situations, many companies would go for overselling i.e. reselling their unused hosting capacity – the remains after websites use up the required resources.
So should we choose unlimited hosting then?
Unlimited hosting may seem like an unethical practice but that doesn’t necessarily mean the hosting company is bad. What matters is an efficient server and reliable technical support. As long as they deliver those two, the companies shouldn’t be criticized for their way of doing business.
So should you go for unlimited hosting?
You can if you want to, after making sure the hosting company delivers quality service of course, and is not a substandard company trying to grab as much money as they can.
The easiest way to decide whether the hosting company’s ‘unlimited’ deal should be taken is to sign up for a trial of the service by spending a little amount of money, and then look at the things you are getting from the service – the support, the quality, performance, efficiency, reliability, resources etc. If you don’t like what you see, you can cancel the service during the trial period itself. You can also check reviews or contact existing clients of the company to get some feedback on their services.
Conclusion
- Unlimited hosting is not practical and is just a marketing tactic.
- The features of an unlimited hosting solution in no way indicates that the quality of the service is good.
- Web hosting is more than disk space and bandwidth.
- A reliable hosting company is what matters in the end.
