Do you really need that "unlimited" hosting plan?

[pandaa]

Before someone else says it, an unlimited hosting plan doesn't exist. How can you offer unlimited space, when there aren't infinite servers in the world? Anyway... 😛

Hosting companies LOVE to try to push unlimited/unmetered plans onto their customers. It looks so appealing... you can get that plan for only a few dollars more per month than one of their other plans. Seems like a no-brainer, right? Well, have you ever stopped and considered what your site really needs?

I'll be using Hawk Host for example. Their beginner plan gives you 3000 MB (over 1 GB) of disk space, and 45 GB of bandwidth per month. That's their beginner plan on shared hosting! Speaking from experience, Forum Hour only used about 100 MB of bandwidth per day when I ran it, and we only used about 7% of our disk space. So compare the stats of FH with your forum, and take a look if you're curious. Back on topic though, there's no WAY you could be topping the limits of a shared plan like that without running into other problems, like SQL errors, for example. At that point, it's worth upgrading to a VPS, or even a dedicated server if you understand the backend of things.

Long story short, I personally feel like unmetered shared hosting plans are a waste of money. How do you feel and why?

 

[CM30]

I don't need an unlimited hosting plan (and hence I didn't choose one and went for a reasonable, reliable hosting company), but I wouldn't be so quick to say people might not need the space. After all, my current site uses about 80% of the allotted disk space on my account (due to things like galleries, downloads, arcade games and add ons) yet hasn't been hitting any resource limits to the point it needs a dedicated server. It's entirely possible someone might actually use a good few hundred gigabytes if they've got the type of site that distributes large files or something.

 

[pandaa]

I don't need an unlimited hosting plan (and hence I didn't choose one and went for a reasonable, reliable hosting company), but I wouldn't be so quick to say people might not need the space. After all, my current site uses about 80% of the allotted disk space on my account (due to things like galleries, downloads, arcade games and add ons) yet hasn't been hitting any resource limits to the point it needs a dedicated server. It's entirely possible someone might actually use a good few hundred gigabytes if they've got the type of site that distributes large files or something.

Thanks for your detailed reply! I didn't exactly think about general websites for this, I was mainly thinking about forums and blogs. Hahaha, silly me. Anyway, IF you did have a site like that, I would think it would be best to have a little more control. If you're storing tons of files on a shared server, they're not exactly in a safe place. It would also depend on how much they're being accessed. I've seen hosts try to bump people up to their "unmetered" shared plan, which ironically can cost more than a low end VPS. :O

 

[Sam]

There isn't anything especially wrong with offering an unlimited plan. Most customers use less than 3Gb of diskpace but some may use more. This allows the client to grow when they need to without worrying about increasing costs. Sites with a lot of pictures are going to need more diskpace. HawkHost has an offshoot which offers an unlimited plan too BTW... http://www.froghost.com/ 🙂

 

[sainsjack]

To be honest only HUGE sites need a unlimited plan. I used to run a site that used about 30 mb of bandwith a day and I was stupid and foolish enough to pay $10 extra for an unlimited plan🙁

 

[YTHelpers]

Not on a shared hosting unlimited plan anymore, but what lead to getting out of shared hosting (which was used in the beginning) was using more resources than what was acceptable on a shared server.

So for a short time, that "unlimited" was needed.

 

[Shole]

You dont needed I am a host owner and in my 3 years of exp I seen a user pass 300 GM Traffic in one month , still dont know how he did it but he did it like a week or something :S
Also that;s the reason i have only unlimted traffic not everything else .

 

[Luke]

I don't use unlimited and I sometimes use a few GB of bandwidth a day 😛 most I've ever used was 6GB in one day.

 

[Ashley]

I don't remember on past forums, but then again I never paid strict attention either, nor did I when I had Chatting Time, but I think on CT we really didn't use up that much bandwidth at all, although I'm going to have to check with Ashley.S. on that because I really don't know. But honestly, I don't think we used that much GB at all. So really, there's no need for an unlimited plan. Even if there was, is there really such a thing? I highly doubt it. I know people brag and stuff and say "oh yeah I have an unlimited plan so I can do whatever I want and still have space left!" But it's hard to say if anything is REALLY unlimited, or if it's just a business jargon hosts use to make more money off of customers. Because when I've looked around at paid hosting plans before, I've always noted that the unlimited one is usually the most expensive. The smaller plans are usually the cheapest.

 

[Patrick W.]

"Unlimited" is false advertising. "Unlimited" bandwidth and disk space does not exist. If a host offering unlimited bandwidth and disk space then they are offering you something that does not exist and should not be trust.

Unmetered does exist, however. You can have unmetered disk space and bandwidth. There are limits but they are not monitored like metered plans are. I would also be wary of hosts that offer only unmetered plans. While they can be good and have their perks, most sites do not need the plan and would do better on a metered plan. Most hosts that offer only unmetered plans often oversell their space and that can cause your site to load slow and negatively impact performance.

 

[YTHelpers]

Even though unlimited is not truly unlimited, hosts can still offer this since they impose some restrictions like inode limits, processor limitis, and other kinds of usage limits, which you will likely hit before hitting their actual bandwidth limit.

 

[Sam]

Even though unlimited is not truly unlimited, hosts can still offer this since they impose some restrictions like inode limits, processor limitis, and other kinds of usage limits, which you will likely hit before hitting their actual bandwidth limit.

Exactly. It's a workable business model as long as you have a clear TOS and charge a fair price (e.g. Not a 99 cent a month unlimited plan).

 

[Rick Ace]

It's the same reason why carriers offer unlimited bandwidth, while the small text limits it to a couple of GB until you are moved to 2G speeds.

Basically, it means that the host provides a worry-free environment to the client. They'll take care of any bandwidth/disk space needs. For practical purposes, without doing anything illegal, one cannot exceed massive amounts of space in a day.

 

[iPhonefreak]

An interesting approach to this is Cloud Hosting. You only pay for what you use, so it's kinda unlimited.

 

[E07.NET]

I'm using Shared Hosting from HostGator, it is perfect for me, you can host unlimited number of sites here.

 

[pandaa]

It's the same reason why carriers offer unlimited bandwidth, while the small text limits it to a couple of GB until you are moved to 2G speeds.

Basically, it means that the host provides a worry-free environment to the client. They'll take care of any bandwidth/disk space needs. For practical purposes, without doing anything illegal, one cannot exceed massive amounts of space in a day.

Very good analogy, it's exactly the same.

On another note, I wonder how an unlimited host would feel about this.

 

[spyka]

AwesomeStyles is still run on a shared host and it uses a lot of bandwidth and disk space (30GB+ of bandwidth a month)

The same server also runs about 10 other sites of mine, then there's all the other people's sites hosted on the same server.