Unlimited Hosting and Hidden Disappointments

Most webmasters are always in a hurry to make their website available for the whole world. In the process of making a website webmasters hardly ever do any research on their needs and requirements for a healthy hosting environment. One of the basic reasons behind this is that most of the webmasters are unaware about hosting logistics. They don’t want to skip a very lucrative unlimited offer to a limited offer; they don’t want to read the Terms of Service and/or Acceptable User Policy. They only compare between the pricing and how many unlimited items are listed, before they decide their hosting provider. And that’s where the tragedy starts with a lot of hidden disappointments.

The hosting providers are usually offering unlimited bandwidth, unlimited disk space, unlimited email accounts, unlimited domains, and unlimited databases on their shared hosting plans. But, when these cheap shared hosting plans are compared with vps/dedicated server there will be a big difference between the pricing and the features. Because the vps/dedicated hosting plan is at least 10 to 100 times as expensive as the shared unlimited plans and they come with a lot of limitations.

A simple question to ask yourself is, if unlimited hosting can be obtained for only a few dollars then why do people need to buy vps/dedicated server which has limits disk space/bandwidth? The straight and clear answer is that there is no such thing as unlimited web hosting available on earth. All the unlimited features are having hidden restrictions to provide free disappointments through the hosting period.
Unlimited disk space: It is almost impossible to offer unlimited dist space. Every server has its own limitation which depends on the hard disk driver size that is installed in the server, and there is no such unlimited sized hard disk available in market. Also in a shared hosting plan, there are many websites hosted in the same server, and those websites shares the resources of the server. In this case there is no such possibility for having a unlimited disk space to offer to all those clients, whose websites are hosted in the same server. All the hosting service providers usually restrict the clients from utilizing more than certain amount of disk space with a quota named “inode”. Generally, one file uses one inode. Thus, if you have 50,000 files you have used 50,000 inodes. This inode limitation varies between different hosting providers. But be aware about those hosting services who offer only 50,000 inodes.

Unlimited bandwidth: One website only needs a lot of bandwidth when you are having a lot of visitors and when your website contains a lot of images/large sized files. But all the hosting providers restrict the processor per user under their terms of service or under a acceptable user policy. Cpu uage per user is restricted between 10% to 25% among all the hosting providers. Also sometimes some providers limit the connection per ip address. If the cpu per user is restricted then the visitors will experiment either a very slow performance of your web or will see an error message.

Unlimited Email: Another feature that depends a lot on other features. If a webmaster wants to open unlimited email address then he/she requires unlimited inode count along with unlimited disk space. It also requires heavy Cpu usage when a lot of email clients start to retrieve email/attach large sized files. As all these features are limited, unlimited email accounts is also can only be available in dreams.

All this means is that “unlimited web hosting” does, in fact, have its limitations. There are several criteria of limitations that are applied to unlimited web hosting, including RAM, bandwidth, CPU, queries, FTP uploads, and the number of MySQL databases being utilized. Each of these can trigger an automatic or even manual suspension of hosting/website.
So our suggestion is that whenever you visit a site promoting “Unlimited Bandwidth/disk space” as one of the account features, be sure to visit the Acceptable Use Policy, or the Terms of Service. Read the fine text about the so-called “Unlimited” disclaimer, you will be surprised!

Suggested

Host Gator (Higher Cpu Resource & Inode Count, Fair Bandwidth Ratio)
Host Moster (Higher Cpu Resource, Good Maintenance)
Linode (Good VPS if you are a “Do it yourself” type, Best Price for Performance)

Bad Ones

Justhost (They bought a dedicated server on Singlehop.com, and hosts everything in that server, 10% cpu resource, 50,000 inode count and almost no tech support)
Inmotion (10% cpu resource, inefficient tech support)
Globat ($4/Month for 1TB of space, but it’s so slow it would take you 12 months to fill it up!)

K M Rehan Salahuddin is an Opinion writer for different media & Newspapers. He has freelanced for different media for years before he has started professional career. Currently working at Eximlabs Ltd Hong Kong as Chief of Public Relations (www.sortoflife.com & www.sortofmag.com).

K M Rehan Salahuddin has become a Icon figure among the youth for founding Eximlabs Ltd Bangladesh back in 2001 at the age of 19. The company has created a big crowd as it served 188 clients in a period of 15months to create/design/host various websites/databases/servers. To peruse higher education he left the company at 2002. At 2009 he has again joined back the company and registered it as a Limited Company at Hong Kong. K M Rehan Salahuddin has been awarded best National Debater at 2004. For his charity works and great achievements in study he has also been awarded with Provincial Recognition Certificate at 2007. He is much known as Soul among the young generation for his continuous effort to support the environment and the society. He has published a poetry book “Truth of life” at 2008. He is currently studying as a phd student at PR China. K M Rehan Salahuddin’s interests are broad but there are some specific interest like World Affairs, E Marketing & Technology.