Unlimited hosting, is it for real?


Over the last few years, the use of the term “unlimited hosting” has been used to describe hosting packages. I take calls daily from those that have been barraged by this term and still do not know what package to choose when picking a  hosting package.

The ‘Unlimited’ claim makes many believe they can store anything they want when they sign up for that package. You can find these unlimited claims everywhere and it seems that every hosting provider is on the bandwagon. It’s simple those hosting providers are all hoping to entice you, the hosting client, to buy.  
These offerings go by terms such as "Unlimited Space" or "unlimited domains " possibly  "as much as you will ever need". The question I keep getting is, are these claims for real? Can you actually put as much in your hosting account as you want?   In a  word NO, you can not.

The term unlimited is used as purely an advertising term to draw you in.  While doing my research, I have found none that did not have limits attached. Many think that this term means that they can put as much as they want in their account and that space will never run out.
For instance, if your website has six trillion pages, there must be room. Should you have a personal website and use a photo gallery for your cat’s pictures,  you can have four million photos on display.  There should be no problem. The word ‘Unlimited’ does give you that believe that there is no end. I actually did  a search on Google using the search "define unlimited" and received this result:
un·lim·it·ed
Adjective:
Not limited or restricted in terms of number, quantity, or extent.
(of a company) Not limited.

BUT it’s not that simple. Is it ever ? The details of what is meant really needs to be examined if you want to get what you are expecting to get. After all, the saying "The Devil is in the details" had it’s roots somewhere.

Recently while establishing the policies of WereDigital Hosting Inc, we examined the policies of countless hosting companies and their unlimited plans and policies. Everyone we looked at had some policy or term that actually limited one’s use of the "unlimited web hosting" account. Yes there is all sorts of legal mumbo jumbo in these policies to confuse, but it all boils down to this. You have limits and rules that make your account very much limited.

One such company uses the term “Inodes” to limit the account, stating you are limited to 500,000 Inodoes . Unfortunately most users would have no idea what an Inode was or if they even had any . Simple put, an Inode is a file. The catch is a single period can be stored as a file and if you have misconfigured your website, you may have a lot of files you're not aware of. I’m quite sure you can see the implications there .

Another provider uses the size of your backup to limit the size of the account This provider claims that any account having any back ups larger than a specific size must upgrade to  a higher priced service. Yet another stated in their policy section that if you exceed the traffic limits already set, your bandwidth will then be limited and reduced.

I guess the question should not be, how much can I buy? It should be, how much room does one actually need for a website? That would allow you to purchase what you need with enough room for growth already planned in. I find many don't actually believe the fact that the size of  a web site is quite small. Even with the recent advent of Content management systems, CMS as they are referred to, which require often large databases teh size  ofa site is still small . Even with theses changes a site is only at most a few hundred MB . Yes, you read that right! Sites are, for that most part, a few hundred MB with a “M ” or less. Many designers claim the average page alone is 1MB, so you know how many pages you have- do the math.

What's included in your unlimited account? Well, that is as varied as the number of hosting providers out there. Some include Email storage in the numbers, some include your backups in the numbers. So if you have additional information counted toward your total storage, the number quickly adds up and you can quickly reach limits and be required to move to a higher price package.

We, at WereDigital, try to steer far from unlimited accounts.  However, we do still have some listed in our offerings. We feel its best for the client to know upfront what is in the package they choose. To that end, WereDigital Hosting includes everything  in your unlimited package. With our Unlimited package,  you're allowed to store anything as long as it is actually displayed on your site . So I guess that after this blog goes public, we may have someone with five billion cat picture hosting with us .

That’s the risk I  take going public with my thoughts.

Till next time when you will get my thoughts on Cloud Hosting.
Greg
Also found at
http://http://weredigital.blogspot.ca/2015/05/unlimited-hosting-is-it-for-real.html