The Truth Behind Unlimited Web Hosting
By : Arundhati Date : 18 Dec 2007
There are some words that always sound compelling and most of us do not feel the need of delving into the depths of these terms. In web hosting, such terms would include “unlimited” and “free” at the foremost. “Unlimited Web Hosting”, sounds alluring. But unlimited what? Bandwidth or unlimited web hosting offered by the free web hosts? Let’s see how far we can relate the word unlimited with all of them.
Unlimited web hosting for free : A large number of companies offer unlimited web hosting services for free. But what you get for free, makes you pay somewhere else. Free web hosting is not always harmful, but at the same time, it is even not very suitable for all type of businesses and persons.
Unlimited web hosting that you get for free, makes your website pay for it. It may be by the downtimes that your website faces or the spam that it has to cope up with, it may be through the deprivation of quality control or through the slow loading times. A proper investigation is imperative when you look for the best unlimited web hosting for free.
Unlimited web hosting is mostly offered by the shared hosting servers. The upside of shared hosting is its cost effectiveness, but the downside is the low security level. SSL or TLS shields are also not much effective in this respect as websites have the same IP address and the same SSL/TLS certificate. In shared hosting, knowing your neighbors with whom you share the server is crucial. The free unlimited web hosting is best for small business sites and family websites.
One important aspect of unlimited web hosting plans is that most of the time they are set up under a single account. So if you want different web masters to host different websites of yours, a security risk may arise by sharing the same password. One more negative aspect would be the “unlimited” number of ads that your host may put up in your site. But looking up at the fairer side, unlimited web hosting plans might be a decent deal for businesses that wish to operate multiple websites without keeping separate plans for each.
Unlimited Bandwidth: Now that’s more of a myth than a truth. Have you ever come across a hard disk with unlimited disk space? Or a broadband company offering unlimited megabytes per second? If these are not possible how could a hosting company offer unlimited bandwidth? Their “unlimited bandwidth” may be 20GB as per their terms and conditions!!
A very little amount of bandwidth is needed by some sites, and the hosting companies offering unlimited bandwidth target these website. And somehow if these sites too use more than the “unlimited”, either they will be made to pay through something or the other or the hosting account might get suspended.
So as far as the term ‘unlimited’ is concerned in web hosting, it is well compatible with unlimited web hosting, but not with unlimited bandwidth. Talking about the paid unlimited web hosting plans, they are quite economical for multiple website owners, but before opting for one it is crucial to know, whether you really need it or not. Unlimited web hosting plans offer great services, and if you really don’t need one, you end up overpaying as hosting a single website is a very cheap with a plethora of web hosting companies available now-a-days.