The Definition of Unlimited Web Hosting Plans – Advertising Gimmick

As you may already know, the term overselling refers to when a host offers more disk-space and bandwidth than they can actually provide to each of their customers.

They do this since most customers only use a fraction of the disk-space and bandwidth offered to them, meaning that hosts can then (in theory) balance things out by allowing other customers to use a relatively large amount of disk-space and bandwidth.

Whilst this can be a good thing (and indeed many great hosts oversell a little bit), some practices of overselling – which I prefer to call extreme overselling – can be very problematic.

Extreme overselling is when a host will offer a much higher amount of disk-space and bandwidth than they can realistically expect to provide, even to one customer.

An example offer would be (for argument’s sake) “500 GB disk-space, 5,000 GB bandwidth, $5 per month”. While this sounds great, a typical server (which usually hosts hundreds of hosting clients) comes with around 500 GB hard-drives and usually less than 5 TB (5,000 GB) of bandwidth – and such a server would cost $150 per month or more. Therefore it is economically impossible for a host to actually offer what they were advertising.

An extension of extreme overselling is “unlimited” offers. This is where a host advertises “unlimited” disk space and/or “unlimited” bandwidth.

Of course, there is no such thing as an unlimited hard drive (or an unlimited internet connection – despite what ISP’s advertise!), thus such an offer is completely impossible. If it was possible, why wouldn’t Google, Facebook (etc) all go with such a host and pay them $5 per month, instead of spending $100,000s per month for hosting like they currently do?

Having said that, if done correctly overselling can be a good thing. It can bring in a lot of customers quickly, and if managed correctly there’s no reason why an extreme overselling host has to offer bad service.

And in the case of someone like HostGator, this is certainly true. They are an “unlimited” host, but yet their service is typically good.

The issue for some people, though, is that whilst HostGator (and other extreme overselling hosts) provide a great service, they still can’t provide you with ‘unlimited’ or even hundreds of gigabytes of disk space and bandwidth for a low monthly fee. It simply wouldn’t be possible without that host making a huge loss.

Hence extreme overselling can be problematic since if a website is too popular, a host may simply suspend/cancel it (as they are probably entitled to do as per their Terms Of Service).

In addition, because such hosts claim to offer very high (or ‘unlimited’) amounts of disk-space and bandwidth, how can you know when your hosting account will in-fact be suspended/cancelled due to using “too much” disk-space or bandwidth?

I therefore usually recommend to others to try and go with a host who don’t massively oversell. This will mean that you know how much disk-space and bandwidth you can use before you will be suspended (and if you are using too much, you can simply pay more and upgrade).

However at the end of the day, it is completely down to personal preference. As I mentioned earlier, there are many good extreme overselling hosts out there. As long as you know you can’t use too much disk space and bandwidth – and you do your research and ensure the host has good reviews – you should be safe. One final thought: how much is ‘too much’ disk space and bandwidth? Well that’s the problem. There’s no way of knowing…