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Some web hosting companies offer web hosting plans
with the "unlimited bandwidth", "unmetered
bandwidth",or "unlimited
disk space" as a sales feature to tempt
unsuspecting consumers.
Unfortunately, bandwidth is not free. And there
is no such thing as an unlimited size disk drive.
If there were, large companies like Google and Yahoo
could run their businesses on a $20 "unlimited"
hosting account,
instead
of investing millions of dollars a year on their infrastructure.
Bandwidth is a measure of the amount of data that
people download from your website. This includes web
pages,
graphics and text. If you have a lot of visitors who
look at or download a lot of large files from your
website, you will need
a lot of bandwidth.
A web hosting account includes a certain amount of
bandwidth. If you exceed this amount you have to pay
an additional fee for each megabyte of data that your
visitors download.
In Australia, Telstra charges up to 25 cents per megabyte
( $250 per gigabyte) of bandwidth. This can become
very expensive, as shown
in our Hosting comparison
chart.
So an unlimited bandwidth hosting account would be
VERY attractive for owners of site using a lot of bandwidth,
who could potentially save thousands of dollars a month.
If fact, you might ask why sites like Yahoo and Google
would spend millions of dollars on bandwidth if they
could get unlimited amounts for a few dollars a month!
The Fundamental Flaw
You've probably noticed the fundamental flaw.
1. Bandwidth is not supplied free - Hosting Companies
pay for it.
2. These Hosts promise an unlimited amount - Free.
Something doesn't add up. Turns out that it's a smoke
and mirrors marketing trick.
The only reason that these people offer unlimited
bandwidth is that they know that most sites will only
use a small
amount, and never approach their definition of "excessive",
whatever that may be. That's why it's offered - they're
betting that their clients won't use too much.
Human nature being what it is, people will perceive
that "unlimited" will be better than the
defined amounts offered by more reputable hosting
companies. Until their website stops working because
it has been shut down, because unlimited is not
really unlimited.
A Special Meaning of "Unlimited"
Here's the catch. If you have an account
with an unlimited bandwidth host and try to use it,
you will discover that they
have
a very
special definition of "Unlimited".
Have a look in their "Terms and Conditions"
document, and you'll find that there will be a limitation
clause. Here's one from a local company who loudly offers
"unlimited bandwidth"
4(b) XXX XXXX reserves the right to immediately
suspend or terminate SERVICES to a Subscriber generating
excessive bandwidth to the server(s)
So -you buy unlimited bandwidth, but if you use more
than a certain amount your account is shut down. And
what's more, they don't tell you what "excessive" means.
And they'll shut you down if you exceed it.
Looks pretty misleading to us. And similar conditions
exist on every "unlimited" site that we have
checked.
Another thing to be careful of is companies offering "Lifetime" web
hosting for a very cheap price.
The "lifetime" they refer to is not YOUR
lifetime, but that of their business - which is generally
short.
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