There is no such thing as "unlimited" anything. You can only transfer so many GB a month and a hard drive can only hold so much data.

NEVER buy hosting where unlimited storage space or bandwidth is advertised. If you carefully read such a host's TOS, they'll often say what they really mean by "unlimited": usually before system resources are affected or a ridiculously low numerical value compared to what you'd expect.

On a related note, you may never advertise as such at WDF (and this is only allowed--with heavy restrictions--in signatures and in Service Requests). Offering unlimited services is the same as false or misleading advertising, and you will be banned.

(this is also a discussion thread)

what about unlimited mailboxes or databases?

Technically that's not possible either although it's not as important as the other two. It should instead say "no quota."

I agree with you filburt. A lot of people ask for "unlimited" this and that. Technically you can only offer as much as the server can handle (bandwidth, processing, disk space)...before you hit it's LIMIT! I get requests for unlimited crap all the time...it's just not going to happen

Unlimited anything is a total myth. If someone is stupid enough to go for hosting that offers that then they are idiots and are bound to end up very unhappy with their web hosting services

I can not believe there are hosts that still offers unlimited.

They should move on and stop trying to attract new customers (newbie usually) with a scam.

Unlimited mailboxes and dbs, etc, always simply implies that there are no fixed limits to these resources used. AFAIK, it's a common practice to use this description for these services, on the grounds that they are only limited by the space and bandwidth allocation of the plan.

But unlimited bandwidth and diskspace...never a good sign.

Like mah site

http://www.BANNEDFROMMYSIGHT.com

Unlimited means the number of email accounts, databases, FTP accounts, etc. are only limited by your disk space and bandwidth.

"Unlimited" is a marketing term.... the tech equivalent of the word "Free".

It's assumed that everyone knows there's no such thing as "Unlimited", just as there's no such thing as "Free".

It's not considered misleading advertisement to offer a pair of sunglasses for "Free", with $15 shipping and handling, is it? The reason is, everyone knows $15 is an unreasonable amount to pay for shipping and handling, and realizes they're paying $13.50 for a "free" pair of sunglasses.

Similarly, everyone in our industry will eventually know enough about technical limitations to know that unlimited bandwidth is both infeasible and impossible. They will realize that "unlimited" means "You can use all of our bandwidth if you want, but you pay overage fees if you use more than 2 Gb".

On another note, there are places where you can get true "connection limited" hosting for a fixed price. Places like Verio and Exodus will colo your machine and hook it up to a Tx or OCx for a set cost, not charging extra for bandwidth usage. The drawback is that service starts in the range of $600 a month, and goes up to over $100,000 per month (imagine what Yahoo pays Exodus for hosting !!!)

So the next time you see "unlimited" hosting for $6 a month, realize what everyone else already knows... there's a catch.

I'm hosted by a company that gives me limited disk space - can't remember how much because I will never reach half the amount - and I have 'unrestricted' as my available space. I looked into this and it seems that when my account was set up it wasn't done quite right and I have some of the bonuses of a decent package rather than the £6 per month one I've signed up for.

Isn't that wonderful? I now have the space to host my site about 450,000 times over!

If anybody's temporarily short an MB or two let me know and I'll set you up a folder.

Be careful though. If they see that you're using alot of their resources, they could correct the problem, and even charge you overage fees.

That would be an interesting argument. If they tell me that I have unrestricted space on my admin page and I use it then I think they might have a job to subsequently charge me.

Anyway I'm still at under 1% of my contracted capacity so it's never going to happen.

Also it's reporting that I'm using 0.00MB of my available space. I think their quota manager's gone wrong.

It would be good customer service not to charge you, it would just depend on the decency of your host. There are hosts out there that would charge you, and hosts that wouldn't. It depends on which host you have.

If they are mis-reporting my storage statistics am I expected to use my own methods to judge the amount used or is it up to them to supply me with the right data? (not that I'm interested in ripping them off, they are a good host).

Check the screenshot below -

Attached Thumbnails

 

I agree that it's the hosts fault, and you shouldn't be held liable for their mistake. I was just saying that there are hosts out there that would try to charge you, on the off chance that you wouldn't put up a fight and just pay their fee.

True. I might play the good guy and let them know that there is a problem which might get exploited.

I can just feel that good karma flowing through me!

Hi I'm new here. This is a damn un-user friendly interface so sorry if it takes me a while to get the hang of it.

I have to disagree with filburt1 that all hosts that offer "unlimited" anything should be avoided. I have been using a certain hosting company for a number of years now who offer me loads of "unlimited" features - they can do this because (a) I have a 2GB a month bandwidth limit, there are heavy penalties if I go over this (which I don't) thus it is not in theory possible for me to take up their unlimited offer (b) they are a quailty host with plenty of spare hardware - in the unlikely event I did take them up on the offer of hosting thousands of sites on my account they would simpily upgrade the server.

Don't get me wrong there are a number of shady companies out there with dodgy get out clauses but I just wanted to mention they are not all like that. If you pay enough (never go for a budget host if you can afford better) "unlimited" can mean "unlimited".

It's a bit like an all you can eat restuarant - you can have as much food as you want, trouble is there is only so much you can actually eat!

What "unlimited" features do they give you?

My question exactly... unlimited emails, etc are not the problem. The main concern is when a host promisses unlimited disk space or unlimited bandwidth.

So if you did buy one of these plans, and used like a zillion yottabytes of bandwidth and they kicked you off, would you be able to sue them?

yottabytes eh? LOL

LOL, largest of the byte family

Well they officially say that I can "host unlimited domains" and have "unlimited email accounts" etc. The way they stop you hosting the entire internet on your account though is only give you 2000MB of storage space and a 35GB* bandwidth allowance (although you can buy more).

All I was trying to add to this thread was that yes you're right you should be aware that "unlimited" rarely, if ever, actually does mean infinite resources but it doesn't necessarily mean just because someone says "unlimited" in their marketing dosen't mean you should avoid them like the plague.

To answer JR's question if I managed to use up a "zillion yottabytes of bandwidth" then I must be hosting a porn site (how else could you transfer so much data? which they don't allow so yes I would be kicked. If I did manage to come up with the next Yahoo though it's up to them once I pass the bandwidth limit how much additional credit they are willing to let me buy (will depend on what the other clients are doing). Still if I come up with the next Yahoo I think bandwidth will be the least of my worries.


[font size="1"]*I thought it was only two but now I've just checked it's a lot more! I'm well pleased now.[/font]

Correct. Unlimited does not exist.
There are other things, for instance, such as "unmetered". This applies to bandwidth however.
What it means is that you can use up bandwidth without having a complete control over what you use.
The only inconvinient about this is that if you place a couple of bandwidth chewers on a server, your other customers will just get damn slow connectivity....

Anyway, I hope I helped out anyone with that little annotation

I forgot to say: As for disk space, if you get offered unlimited, thats complete crap