Website hosts with "unlimited bandwidth/storage?" What do YOU think that means?
Just wondering what the average person thinks "unlimited bandwidth/storage" means when choosing a website host, because it seems lots of companies are deceiving customers into thinking "unlimited" really does mean what it says. (it doesn't. The storage has to be used by files that your website uses DIRECTLY - you can't "store" anything - and the bandwidth is limited by the speed of often slow servers that can only take something like 20 downloads at one time)
So, this is basically a poll to see what you thought "unlimited" meant BEFORE reading this.
You can answer here, or just take these 2-second Polldaddy polls:
1) http://answers.polldaddy.com/poll/1850457/
2) http://answers.polldaddy.com/poll/1842882/
First only few host used these terms to cheat customers, now it has become a trend among hosts to promise unlimited bandwidth. but now a days most customers know what these means and how unlimited they are. only some new comers will get into their trap.
Truth About Hosting Unlimited Bandwidth
If you are looking to host your site you should think about two essential factors. The first is the storage space your site is going to occupy and the other is how many website visitors you are likely to receive each and every day. Now that you have figured out this two, you will be able to pick the most appropriate web hosting plan.
Nowadays, most of the providers will advertise web hosting unlimited bandwidth but that does not really mean what the term seem to imply. As you fully understand, bandwidth is the amount of data transfer that takes place in a month. When a person is visiting your website he or she is actually transferring files on to his / her computer. The amount of data transmitted will depend on the kind of data existing on the website. If you have multimedia files the volume can be quite large.
You can obtain a rough idea of the bandwidth you must have by calculating the size of your average web page and multiplying it with the number of visitors you are likely to get in a thirty day period. Let us say that your main page is 50 kilobytes and in a month you are likely to generate 1500 site visitors, then your bandwidth would end up being seventy five megabytes.
Hosting services have thousands websites and they hope to properly share the bandwidth of their machines among these sites. They assume that each site is not going to consume a huge amount of bandwidth and hence feel risk-free to declare that they provide unlimited bandwidth, though in actuality there is no such thing.
When you intend to decide on a hosting deal, it is advisable to clarify with the company the amount of bandwidth is readily obtainable for you. In many instances when you read the fine print of the contract you will see that they have outlined a certain volume of bandwidth that is designed to be available to you.
Normally most of the quality hosting services provide a monthly bandwidth as high as twenty gigabytes. Now this is certainly more than adequate for a standard website which can expect to have even a thousand visitors per day.
Though hosting unlimited bandwidth can be considered as a myth, it makes good sense to go for such schemes after you have checked how much the provider is truly providing. But do not forget that the word "unlimited" is a gimmick to attract you. Your web host must have a good track record not to mention must be willing to professionally answer to all your queries related to bandwidth. This would give you a good idea of the hosting provider so that you can choose a correct company.
About the Author
unlimitedhostingplan.com - Although in reality there is no such unlimited bandwidth hosting, but by hosting your sites with a good provider offering that feature you can utilize a huge amount of bandwidth. In addition, using unlimited web hosting means you can host multiple websites under one hosting account.
