The deal with Unlimited webhost!!

[SoulReaver]

Hi everyone,

Whats the real deal with unlimited everything webhosts? I've seen webhost companies offer everything a webmaster dreams of and more and would like to is this a scam.

This is one of the companies im talking about.

http://www.hispeed.com

[Martie]

Most will agree its just a poor marketing technique, but hosts continue to do it.
Do a search in any of these hosting forums for the word unlimited host and you will see MUCH feedback about it.
Most of the unlimited hosts usually have their unlimited stated in their terms of service somewhere.

The sad part of it is....people genuinely think they are getting a fantastic deal....only to find out in a little time their website usually gets suspended/deleted from using all that unlimited transfer.

BEST ADVICE--> Look for a host that states right up front what their transfer limits are and go from there.
Believe me...there are plenty out there.
Best of luck

[jiminsd]

The return for a promise they can't keep is poor service that will probably be out of buisness soon than later.

[twmcmahan]

I run an "unlimited" web host, and we are able to run at a profit, and still maintain customer service, and quality.

We don't allow certain types of bandwidth/storage intensive sites, and that is plainly stated on our web page. We're always happy to accomidate those folks with a colocation or dedicated server plan which is what they should be seeking in the first place. Shared hosting is good for the small to mid sized web site, but when a site is getting massive amounts of hits per day, it needs the resources provided to it only by a dedicated server.

We're able to survive because only 60% of the sites we host are pretty low traffic, 10% are high traffic, and the other 30% fall somewhere in the middle. By placing these high traffic users on servers with lower-traffic users, we're able to average out the cost amung all users. That's the whole idea of shared web hosting... spreading the cost between multiple users who don't need the dedicated resources.

Second off, anyone who is serious about running a high-traffic web site will want dedicated service sooner or later. For either control purposes, or resource purposes.

[jiminsd]

So if you are one of the moderate or low end users it would be more reasonable to go to another host for a lower price with set resources and not have to pay for the high bandwidth user who is getting a free ride... right?

Sorry... but I could'nt resist.

[ducktape]

you never need unlimited space or bandwidth. you may need alot of both but never unlimited

[Cael]

Even if you need UNLIMITED of both, you won't be getting it. At least, not when another genius come out with a new equation to measure UNLIMITED.

[Technics]

When i was a newbie to paid hosting i fell foul of the " UNLIMITED SCAM". I was hosting with www.webnetics.co.uk now a defunct webhost. I hosted my FreeWebSpace provider there for many months and had lots of happy users until the last few months of Webnetics being in business.

To keep the dream of unlimited domains alive they overloaded servers which had 500mhz and 256mb ram with 800 websites. Connections where always slow as they where using 3 isdn lines from an office based in nottingham.

When Webnetics had servers based in the USA with Maxim they had excellent uptime, excellent support and fast cobalt servers when they switched to there internal network thats when things went wrong. They couldnt provide the service people saw the cracks jumped ship and Webnetics went out of business. Unlimited will cause you problems go with a host that states its real limits even hosts who state cpu useage, Many people get stung for using too much cpu.

[RobW]

I did some research into this for our marketing - in most cases if you read the fine print you see the limitations to "unlimited". A really good point is that most sites don't need unlimited, or the limits of the mid range packages. 1GB of file transfer is 100,000 page views, and I haven't come accross to many sites that use 100MB of storage.

[twmcmahan]

It's unfortunate that my company's peers are doing things as described earlier. I'm running dual Pentium 800 servers with about 100 gigabytes of 10K RPM Raid5 storage, 1 gigabyte ram, and redundant fiber backbone connections. We work hard at balancing the usage on our servers, and providing optimal service to all of our clients.
While it's true that most web sites don't explicitly need the "unlimited" resources, i've found that in my experience with customers, they like the idea of paying one price for their domain, while they grow to the point where shared hosting is no longer a viable option to them. When a business is getting 50,000 hits a day and 500 sales a day in the case of one of the e-commerce sites that has grown from nothing to a multi-million dollar company hosting with us, it is no longer a candidate for shared hosting of any sort.. whether that hosting provider offers 50 gigabytes of transfer a day or not. In the case of the aforementioned host, they grew for 6 months on our $14.95 plan, and have now bought a server and colocate from us. They've used one host for the life of their company, they didn't play games going from one place to another, or trying to find a free host, and when they eventually grew out of shared hosting, they went with us. This is just my ideal for a Web Service Provider. There's a point at which shared hosting is not a viable option, for every web site in existance. Whether they have to make that decision or I do is the question. 80% of the time, it's their decision.
The fundamental problem with people who use (and abuse) unlimited web hosts is they don't have a real understanding of the difference between shared web hosting, colocation, and dedicated web hosting.

What do you guys think? I'm interested in the outcome of this conversation, and I find it Ironic that people on a "free web space" site are having it :)

Just my two cents,
Tim

[jiminsd]

Hey Tim....

Let's say that guy (getting 50,000 hits a day and 500 sales a day) doesn't want to move and he continues to grow on your $14.95 per month all you can eat buffet. At what point do you cut him off or do you let him just eat up all of the resources that the other accounts share on the server? Do you move everyone else off that server and let him have it to himself at $14.95 per month?

[Chicken]

I'd say good luck in trying to convince people that they've outgrown the UNMETERED Disk Usage and UNMETERED Data Transfer that they've paying $14.95/mo for, and let them know that they can now colocate a LIMITED server with NON-UNMETERED Data Transfer. I've read your TOS and personally I'd file a lawsuit against your company if you ever told me that I had to get a dedicated server.

[}:8) Supermoo]

lol, I second that one Chicken!

Why would you change from UNLIMITED $14.95 to LIMITED $$$? :rolleyes: