The myth of ‘unlimited hosting and bandwidth’

If there’s no such thing as a free lunch, how come so many hosting companies and their resellers claim to offer unlimited hosting/bandwidth? And what do the people who ask for such a service expect - a free lunch every day for the rest of their lives? Burger and fries for evermore anyone?

What most clients want is quality hosting. It’s only when something goes wrong that they realise the value of good hosting - it’s like insurance - you only appreciate it when you haven’t got it and something bad happens.

The simple truth is that unlimited users on one computer or server make the server slow to read and update. Imagine if the global population was to use one server - they’d have to queue and wait. If you want to offer your clients a slow and unregulated service, use a server with unlimited sites on it.

Bandwidth is limited by the size of the ‘pipe’. Like any funnel, you can’t squeeze everything through at the same time. So, if you want slow delivery, get yourself some unlimited bandwidth.

One final thought - if your site’s on a shared server with one IP address and there happens to be just one dodgy adult or gambling site sharing that server, don’t be suprised if your site gets kicked off Google.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 at 12:14 pm and is filed under Hosting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.