The Truth in “Unlimited” From a Hosting Company

Bigger is NOT always better.

Nowadays, hosting companies are going crazy with the amount they claim to offer in their hosting packages. But it’s all smoke and mirrors.

Unlimited Bandwidth

This is the biggie. Everyone wants something that’s unlimited, right? But is it really unlimited?

Bandwidth is the amount of data transferred to and from your website. This includes files (pages and images) downloaded to viewers’ cache’s, FTPed files up and down, and email in and out, as well as a few other things.

An average site won’t use more than 10GB per month. That’s enough for 1,000 visitors per day. A large site with tons of traffic? Maybe 20GB. The sites that really use a ton are sites with large files (downloadable content, for example), or sites that have been hijacked for spam (or legitimate spammers), or sites with hundreds of thousands of visitors every day (like microsoft.com). So the average hosting client does not really NEED unlimited bandwidth.

Before you sign up for hosting, check the fine print. Almost ALL hosts have clauses in their terms of service which basically say, “unlimited means only until your bandwidth starts to negatively impact our servers, then we boot you”. That means that if you are using enough bandwidth to impact the resources on the server (slow the server down, etc.), you are in violation of the terms of service and they can axe you without notice.

The fact is, companies that offer unlimited bandwidth are irresponsible. They tend to put hundreds, if not thousands, of clients on a single machine, assuming that maybe only a handful will ever use more than the average 10-20GB of bandwidth per month. So they can effectively OFFER unlimited bandwidth without having to actually deliver on it. Not too many people have the ability to test it out.

Now let’s say you happen to be on a machine with five or ten other accounts that ARE sucking bandwidth like chocolate milk through a straw? Even if YOU are not a large site using a lot of resources, the sites that are can impact the speed and functionality of your site, maybe even to the point of crashing the server and bringing ALL the sites on it down. (This is when the host will invoke the TOS clause and hopefully boot the offenders, but you never know).

Another problem with these companies who offer unlimited bandwidth and put thousands of clients on one machine is that they rarely offer good customer service. When you have thousands of clients, one one one help is hard to provide. Email tech support, we’ll get back to you next week. Oh, we don’t do phone support (well, we say we do, but play the “find the phone number” game)!

We limit our bandwidth per account so that we can control the loads on the server, thus making sure that a handful of accounts aren’t “spoiling it” for the rest. Because we are so watchful of server resources, we also limit the number of clients per machine.

We also offer phone AND email support, and we treat each client like our ONLY client. We’ll work with you to fix your issue until you’re happy.

So, just because smaller hosts can’t offer unlimited everything, doesn’t mean they’re inferior or not as good. On the contrary, they are usually BETTER. Just ask clients who fell for the “unlimited” pitch and then came back when they weren’t happy with what they paid for. The grass is not always greener

If you’ve read this far and want to sign up for our quality hosting, with our Classic or Complete account (annual contracts only) you can get a FREE domain registration or transfer until June 1, 2009. (subsequent renewals are at the regular rate of $12/yr.) Just visit scarletswebhosting.com.