Is There Such A Thing As Unlimited Bandwidth Web Hosting?
Most web hosting companies feel comfortable offering unlimited bandwidth, unlimited domains, and unlimited space in their web hosting plans. They feel safe offering these plans because they know you’re not going to be using huge amounts of bandwidth, domains, and space.
The fine print is the key to all hosting plans. Most hosting companies use it (fine print) to limit the amount of bandwidth you can use every month.
Most hosting companies provide a good gigabyte bandwidth per month. Normally this is more than enough for your website. But what if you have a huge website with lots of video and audio plus tons of visitors each month?
Just so you know – the term bandwidth means the amount of data that can be transferred from your site to a surfer browsers. There are always limits on the amount you can use every month no matter the plan or hosting company. Read the fine print.
For those who don’t understand unlimited bandwidth web hosting (and for those who do). This analogy is for you. Consider this. If bandwidth was a hot water heater. The water heaters server up hot water to the kitchens, bath, and other rooms in your house. When you use hot water in the kitchen, laundry room, and bath at the same time, you run out of hot water. The water heater has to work double time to keep heating the water. To have enough hot water to use it all the time you need a water heater as big as your house. You’ll never run out of hot water. It’s the same with limited bandwidth.
When web surfers visit your site they come in through an IP address. Each website has their own IP address. If you have 20 people visiting your site a month you would use a little bandwidth. If you have hundreds of thousands people visiting your site a month you’ll use a lot of bandwidth. If you have a limited amount of bandwidth to use you’ll run out of “hot water”, so to speak. When you have unlimited bandwidth you can have as many visitors to your site as you want, at no extra cost. Pretty cool, huh?
Web hosting companies like HostGator offer unlimited bandwidth web hosting. This means you can have lots of visitors, audio, and even video files on your site and still not run out of bandwidth. If you offer a special during a month and your bandwidth usage goes way up they probably won’t say anything but if it’s constant then they are going to notice. Reading your hosting plan will tell you how much that particular plan allows in bandwidth, domains, and space per month.
One of the reason they (hosting companies) offer unlimited bandwidth is because they figure you’re not going to use that much. If you’re a business then you might use a lot a bandwidth and they calculate that into their hosting plans. However, with unlimited bandwidth and you use too much of it, they might suggest you go with another plan. Read the small print in your hosting plan before signing up or you might be changing plans soon.