As a result of the heavy competition in shared hosting, a number of web host companies roday have been introducing unlimited hosting plan. Their plans normally incorporate unlimited bandwidth, data storage, email accounts, databases and of course, add-on domains. Although it seems great, many people questioned whether such features are really unlimited. They debate that unlimited hosting plans are simply some sort of marketing ploy and there are no unlimited hosting providers that can truly deliver such packages.
By far, it can be said that bandwidth and data transfer are the most popular unlimited features of any unlimited hosting plan. But logically there is no a hard disk with unlimited storage capacity, right? Needless to say it is true. However the strategy implemented by web hosts in order to provide unlimited disk space is to setup a number of servers in a chain. As a result any time a particular disk happens to be full, a new hard disk or server can be added easily. Theoretically this is not impossible. In reality, unlimited or not, this is what happened every time a disk became full. A similar process applies to bandwidth. If the bandwidth allocated almost reach its capacity, the web hosts simply invest in more bandwidth.
Therefore, in theory unrestricted usage of data transfer and also data storage can be provided, assuming that a web host keeps supplying more resources. Even so a lot of critics of unlimited web hosting argue that certainly no provider will continue adding resources indefinitely due to the fact it is economically irrational to implement. Imagine what will happen if every customer utilizes a very large amount of disk space and bandwidth. Having said that, it is the fact that many users only use several megabytes of resources. This is actually the risk that unlimited web hosting take. They are gambling on the majority of their customers who will only utilize a very small percentage of their resources.
The actual problem to think about is the way in which a web hosting provider handle a few of customers who take advantage of the unlimited packages offered. Of course this will depend on their policies. They may have to suspend the accounts of customers who are consuming an enormous strain on their system resources. Thus, when viewing this issue the critics seem to be right: Unlimited web hosting can be described as a scam.
For that reason, if you have a plan to use an unlimited hosting plan in order to host many terabytes of data, then you should choose a dedicated server. But in other cases an unlimited package may fit your needs. For instance, you can use such service to host many mini sites. It is always be better to use different domain names for different niches, right? Another example is to use it to host squeeze pages promoting a wide variety of products. After all it will be far more cost-effective to host unlimited websites under a single account instead of having to setup separate accounts for each sites.
In addition, even though you are not using up unrestricted bandwidth or disk space, an unlimited web hosting is still worth considering. By using an unlimited hosting package, you will not have to be worried getting hidden charges. As long as you do not take up excessive resources your account will be fine.
