In today's web hosting, it is often typical to see all kinds of mouth watering web hosting features at low prices being advertised by web hosts. Because of the ever increasing popularity of the internet, thousands of new domains are being registered daily and equally, hundreds of new web sites are are hosted daily, making web hosting one of the top online business ventures on the internet. Because of that, there now exists a high level of competition among hosting companies, each trying to undo the others by offering irresistible features at very low prices to customers.
It is common to see features like UNLIMITED SPACE, UNLIMITED BANDWIDTH, UNLIMITED DOMAINS, UNLIMITED MYSQL DATABASES, UNLIMITED EMAILS, ETC, all attractively displayed by hosts on their websites in order to get the biggest customer share.
But the question remains: Do web hosts actually offer all those unlimited or are they just ways to attract new customers?
Today, let us analyze the issue of bandwidth. What is bandwidth? Bandwidth is the single most important feature in web hosting. Why? Because it is the feature that allows visitors to view your web pages. If there is no bandwidth, then there can never be any page view. All your hosting efforts would be lost if there was no bandwidth to support them or if you ever run out of it. Bandwidth (Also referred to as Monthly Data Transfer) is the amount of data transfer (in bytes) that passes between a web hosting server and an internet user. When a user logs on to a website, a bandwidth can be said to be the amount of data that will be downloaded temporarily to the user's computer in order for the user to be able to view the site. If for example the user wanted to stream an online video of about 100MB then he would have to use a bandwidth of 100MB while streaming the video.
Bandwidth is so important that once your site visitors reach the monthly allowable bandwidth for your site then your site may become suspended until the next month when the bandwidth calculation would be reset.
Most web hosts offer you unlimited bandwidth hosting for cheap prices. But before you buy, ask, do they really? Can you get unlimited bandwidth for as low as $5 US per month? The answer is yes and no. Let us explore both answers. If you plan to host a relatively small website comprising basically of texts and pictures and you target low to medium traffic daily, let us say never exceeding 1000 visitors daily, then for you bandwidth can be unlimited. In such situation there is no way data transfer would ever be a concern for you. But if you were to host a large site like Facebook, Google or Yahoo with millions of daily traffic; or you have a website like YouTube, ABC.com, a movie Pay Per View site with thousands of people streaming or downloading large amounts of videos daily, then for you bandwidth is limited. The actions of your visitors using terabytes of bandwidth per day is enough to cause problems on a shared server.
So for a simple personal or company website with no heavy files and low to medium traffic Unlimited Bandwidth can be bought for as low as $5 but for big sites like Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo and Google it is not possible to obtain limitless bandwidth at such low prices.
Why then do hosting companies offer unlimited bandwidth? Web hosts often make offers based on internet usage trends, surveys and estimated calculations. They estimate that more often than not a single web hosting account can never exceed their actual monthly allowable bandwidth. They may offer you 10 terabytes of bandwidth hoping, and most times rightly, that you would never exceed that amount. Even if you were to host 200 websites on one account, there is a possibility that you could never reach that actual limit. But the fact remains that there is a limit.
What if you decided to create another facebook of a PPV site with tens or hundreds of movies? Then that becomes a problem. In order for you to really get unlimited bandwidth for such sites you would have to go for a different kind of web hosting that is however very expensive. It is called the Dedicated Server Hosting. Dedicated servers simply allow you to host your website on a single server paid for by you and not shared with any other customer. They offer you endless possibilities in web hosting but come at very expensive prices depending on the hosting company. They are more reliable, secure and they offer unlimited bandwidth. It is the ideal hosting solutions for creators of large websites who really require limitless bandwidth. They often cost more than $100.
In summary, having Unlimited Bandwidth depends on the kind of website you operate and the kind of hosting service you choose. Actual unlimited bandwidth is possible and available but you may have to pay more for it. I recommend you carefully check the hosting features of web hosting companies if you require unlimited bandwidth hosting.
Free free to take a look at my blog The Top Ten Web Hosts on http://www.webmaster-guide.blogspot.com. The blog features a careful review of web hosts and a selection of the best ten in the world. You can read their offered features and select buy from your desired host.
Coming soon would be a review of Dedicated Server hosts in the world. The top ten would be available soon. So, that is it. I wish you happy hosting!
I am a motion graphics and special effects designer, 3D Modeler, Web Designer and PHP developer. I hold a degree in Computer Engineering but my passion is creative design and writing. I have a novel in the making which I intend to finish next year while working on my designs and promoting my online companies.
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