So, why does WESH UK, NEVER offer unlimited web hosting resources?
Everybody else does it, dont they?
Lets make 1 thing clear...
The entire reason for this article is to educate people onthe perils of "Unlimited" web hosting offerings. The companies that bring bad feelings towards web hosting companies in general..
You will often see many web hosting companies advertising "Unlimited Bandwidth/transfer" or "Unlimited disk space" but this is false advertising.
The same can be said for example of mobile phone contracts offering "Unlimited text messages", yet if you check the small print, they will all have what they call a "fair usage policy" which actually places firm limits on the amount you are able to use, so the advertised "unlimited" is in fact, limited.
Have you ever seen any broadband company offering an Internet connection as "Unlimited Megabytes per Second"? Of course not, it doesnt exist, neither does unlimited bandwidth usage or unlimited disk space, these are all commodities that cost money, with data transfer and disk space being the primary commodities.
Practically EVERY web hosting company on earth does NOT own the data carrier lines that carry the network traffic around the internet, or the lines that come into their networks, as we all have to pay the network carriers for this data usage, just as we all have to pay for the disks in our servers, so how can anybody offer unlimited bandwidth/traffic and/or disk space when all of these resources have physical limits?
To put it simply, they cant.... Its mis-leading advertising to attract customers.
What actually goes on...
What you will find with all of these "unlimited" web hosting offers is that they will have extremely lower tolerances for server usage, which will severely restrict the usage of your shared hosting, and as such, any high usage websites often get shut-down with the host claiming that they are in breach of the acceptable usage policy, and you wont get your money back either.
You will also find that these web hosting companies dramatically oversell server space to make up the money they loose in selling too much, for too little, resulting in slow servers, regular downtime, and poor support as their isnt enough staff to handle the never ending support tickets and/or phone calls (If they even have a phone number)
We have seen a LOT of evidence of this @ vbseo.com too, with customers using only a few GB's of traffic a month, complaining about hosts shutting down their websites, with figures like 2% server usage being quoted by hosting companies as acceptable usage, proving how oversold these "unlimited servers" are.
This in turn will also severely affect your own search engine rankings as faster websites will be given a better ranking score than those on oversold servers.
End result is, you pay a bit more for the "unlimited" plans, but what you get is far less than a well managed, clean server.
The numbers!
Currently, the average gigabyte of traffic ranges from £0.30p to £20.00. If a "high traffic" site (i.e. 200 GB per month) were to sign up for an "Unlimited Bandwidth" plan, it would end up costing the Web hosting company anywhere from £80.00 to £300 to maintain these "high traffic" sites. Yet, most of these Web hosting companies only charge less than £20 per month. So the numbers dont add up, it just isnt possible to provide this level of service at that price!
Whenever you visit a site promoting "Unlimited traffic/bandwidth" as one of the account features, be sure to carefully check their acceptable usage policy and/or their terms of service. Read the fine text about the so-called "Unlimited" disclaimer, you will be very surprised!
It takes a very high end enterprise server with multiple quad core CPU's and at least 8GB of ram working @ 100% of its capacity 24/7 to server out 1000GB of traffic a month, so the next time your shopping for a web hosting account, find out what specification the servers are, then do the maths on how oversold the servers are..
A web hosting company doesnt always have to advertise "unlimited" to be highly oversold, as many also offer rediculous numnbers like "200GB a month of traffic" for a shared hosting package costing on average less than £10, which again, is not physically possible if you find out their server specifications and check their acceptable usage policies, or terms of service.
What you end up with is..
The easy way to figure out what you get is, the less you pay, for more they sell, the quicker you will be shut-down with less support to help. The more traffic and space you buy, for less money means more overselling, which in turn will mean server usage tolerances will be lower, decreasing the chances of ever getting anywhere near using the resources you pay for. As previously mentioned, many of the big US based host's that sell unlimited plans often shuts down customers usng only a few GB's a month of traffic, simply because their websites are using too much CPU time, and/or using too much memory, and these figures seem to fall around the 2% or above mark, which means if you want any sort of functionailty with your website, your going to get nowhere, fast.
So why are WESH UK different?
We have never, and will never advertise something that doesnt exist, cant be provided, or mislead customers with offers that contradict actual service provisions by offering unlimited hosting resources, as plain and simply, there is no such thing; nor do we oversell.
We do however provide very affordable web hosting and scalable packages. We do not and will never load any of our servers past 25% of their capacity/resources. If we find that a server is approaching 25%, we make the appropriate upgrades (i.e. HDD, RAM, etc.) to increase its available resources and/or bring another server on-line.
Keeping server usage to a maximu of 25% of its capacity allows customers burst usage of a servers full resources, ensures there is plenty in reserve for unexpected advertising campaigns a customer might start, and/or any customers scripts that go horribly wrong, to run
