Don’t Fall for the “Unlimited” Hosting Hype: Here’s Why

Are You Looking to build a website? Hundreds of web hosting companies on the internet are ready to struggle for your patronage, and most are ready to offer you ‘unlimited’ resources. You’ll get unlimited disk space, maybe. You can host unlimited websites. And thanks to the unlimited bandwidth allowance, each of your unlimited websites should be able to handle an unlimited number of visitors. Hurrah!

If you’re a developer or other individual looking to host a personal or small business website the chances are you will need a shared hosting package which is most likely to cover for your needs.

You don’t need ‘unlimited’ anything.

Hear me out, a Gigabyte (1GB) of web space is enough to build a huge site, for instance, and your website will get a few thousand visitors a month, at the very, very most. Unless you’re fond of sending large attachments through your email, you would likely not use up your allocated space.

It’s safe to say almost no-one knows how many resources their website will require, so the word ‘unlimited’ can seem very inviting. The reality is, website hosting companies use words like ‘unlimited’ purely for marketing purposes.

There are often huge limitations in other areas, which you may not notice until it’s too late. If you find a web host promising ‘unlimited everything’, then, don’t immediately head for the ‘Buy’ button; do some little reading of the fine print.

Many website hosts also offer Unmetered bandwith. This simply means you’re not being charged based on the amount of bandwidth used. It doesn’t mean there’s no bandwidth limit, and most website hosts who offers ‘unmetered bandwidth’ usually have a small print clause saying there will be problems if you use too much. They just don’t tell you what ‘too much’ is. This is also commonly hidden in fair usage policies.

The message is clear. No matter how many web host sites you’ve skimmed, or how many comparison tables you’ve browsed, it’s vital to pay close attention to the language used, and to think about what it means. If you’re not completely confident you know, then scroll down the page, look for definitions or qualifiers, maybe inspect the Terms and Conditions page – you’ll often find useful clues there.

Fair use policies

Whatever variant of ‘unlimited’ or ‘unmetered’ a host uses to describe its service, this almost certainly means ‘subject to our fair and/or acceptable use policy’, and that can make a huge difference.

Some website hosts who offer unlimited stuff restrict you to either host just web files, active email and content of User Websites and not be used for storage (whether of media, emails, or other data), including, as offsite storage of electronic files, email or FTP hosts. Some others may be a little more generous allowing up to 10GB of video or other media files, another 10GB of archives or disk images, and another 10GB of executable files, for instance.

Providers which give you a fixed amount of storage and bandwidth generally don’t care what you’re doing with it, as long as you’re not breaking the law (sharing copyrighted material, say).

Bandwidth and other resources have issues of their own. Remember that because its a shared hosting package, website hosting companies reserves the right to limit processor time, bandwidth, processes, or memory in cases where it is necessary to prevent negatively impacting other Users.

There are big implications for hosting multiple websites, too. Yes, you might be able to host 100 websites on a single shared account, but it’s entirely possible that they’ll get 1% of the resources they actually need. So, the more sites you host, the slower they will be.

Website hosts small prints has plenty of interesting clauses along these lines, so check out the details before you buy. The Fair Use’ or ‘Acceptable Usage Policy is sometimes abbreviated to AUP, but browse the general Terms of Service page, too – that often has helpful related details.

Technical limits

The inode is a popular place to start. An inode is an entry in a file system index which stores the details of a file or directory. Most website hosts that offer unlimited storage almost certainly restrict the total number of inodes you can use, effectively setting a limit to the number of files.

This is different from disk space.

Inode is based on how many files you have, the more files and folders you have in your hosting account, the more inodes you use while disk space is based on how much data capacity a server can store.

Example:
You have 3 files around 10GB in total but you’re still only using a small amount of inodes because you don’t have that much files/folder but if you have 2,923 files and 28 folders only around 196MB, then you’re using a lesser proportion of your disk space but you’re already using a high amount of inodes and as you continue to add files or websites to your package, you will surely hit the inodes limit.

So in summary:
Inodes = the number of files/folders
Disk Space = the storage capacity

The standard figure is around 250,000, so this may not seem like a big issue. But it can vary considerably between providers.

Another thing to note is emails. Emails take one inode each, so 50 IMAP inboxes with 1,000 emails each would use 50,000 inodes all on their own. (You might want to check your spam boxes lol).

Even if you haven’t reached your inode limit, there might be consequences to having ‘too many.’ For example, although many services support up to 250,000 inodes, they might not always include accounts with more than 100,000 in their backups. If that’s happening on your site, it’s probably best you find out now. Dig into the small print for details.

Emails often have further hidden limits. Some website hosts also offer ‘unlimited email accounts’, for instance, but individual accounts get a maximum 1GB storage, and there’s a total limit of 10GB to cover all accounts. If you’re hoping to create 100 emails, that’s only 100MB each – which seems quite limited.

Don’t believe the ‘unlimited’ hype

When you’re next shopping for web hosting, be skeptical, especially of claims that you’ll get ‘unlimited’ anything.

Take the time to find out about any limits that really matter to you. Do you need loads of email accounts, or do you care about inbox size? There are huge differences between providers, so if a host isn’t clear, open a live chat session and find out before you buy.

If you’re tired of looking for hidden catches, though, consider skipping ‘unlimited’ plans entirely, and opting for something that gives you a fixed share of resources. You’ll know exactly what you’re getting, and because it’s easy for the host to manage, your site could be faster and more reliable, too.

Portions of this article has been culled from: The hidden limits of ‘unlimited’ web hosting on TechRadar

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