In this jungle of web hosting providers, it is easy to get confused. It is rather common that web hosts adapt their marketing to the idea that the potential customer is a total dummy, easily impressed if you show them some large numbers.

As an example: nowadays you see how budget web hosting providers overbid each other in offering fantastic features, the ultimate being “unlimited” something or other - like “unlimited” bandwidth. And of course you get this deal at a cheap price, like $5 per month or so.

To some, this may seem like an irresistible deal, but wait - is there really such a thing as a web server with “unlimited” resources? Remember that a budget web hosting provider is putting 100’s of customer accounts on each server, so how can they then claim that each and every customer has “unlimited” bandwidth?

No, this is of course just marketing hype. If you happen to visit a web hosting ranking site which compares different hosting companies, you should pay more attention to the customer reputation of a web host than to how splendid features they offer.

Again, consider this web server with 100’s of accounts packed on it. If even a fraction of all those customers started using really large amounts of the server resources, then it would stop working. What actually happens is that the central processing unit (CPU) of the web server can no longer keep up with all the incoming processing requests, if they come in too fast. Then, the web pages on that server begin to load very slowly - or not at all.

Naturally, the hosting company won’t allow this to happen, since they will get flooded with complaints from angry customers if it ever does occur. Therefore, if the load on a server goes up to a certain level, the hosting company will disable those web sites primarily responsible for the excessive use of CPU resources. Further action against offending hosting accounts may include suspension of the account, or perhaps just a warning not to do this again.

If you happen to read the fine print, i.e. the TOS (Terms Of Service) of a web hosting company, you will certainly find a clause to the effect that the web host reserves the right to disable each and every hosting account that uses “too many resources”. And, note that the hosting provider defines “too many” at their discretion!

In conclusion: you can see that the “unlimited” slogan is just empty marketing hype directed at gullible people. Sure, if you have a static web site you can likely get away with using a good amount of bandwidth, but if you have a dynamic site with databases etc., you will quickly run into problems if you get a lot of visitors, since dynamic sites use CPU-resources much more heavily.

So, don’t get fooled by the marketing hype of all those budget web hosting providers. Instead, I recommend you check out some honest independent web hosting review sites, to compare different hosting providers and find out what kind of reputation they actually have among their audience.

Tags: Web Development