Many popular budget web hosts offer ‘unlimited hosting’ (eg, DreamHost, HostGator).
In practice, it usually means they offer ‘unlimited’ disk space and bandwidth, but with stricter restrictions on things like CPU usage.
So to help users choose between an ‘unlimited host’ and one with set figures, I thought it’d be useful to share stats.
So how much of your ‘unlimited hosting’ do you actually use?
Depending on what the sites are for depends on the host.
Although ‘Unlimited’ is the selling point, the drivespace is usually divided into 20Gb slots. If you use video from your own server, this could easily cause problems.
I ended up using around 3% of the space as most of the sites were fully optimised 🙂
Large files such as videos were hosted on an external server.
Amazon’s S3 looks interesting, but charge per Gb stored AND bandwidth used!
I combine the bargain hosting with external resources which have 100% uptime.
Well, I don’t like companies that say they have ‘Unlimited space’, because it’s simply not possible. I’d rather go with companies that specifically state how much space they have, so that you know that you have a limit.
Interesting to hear a users take saying that. The reality is, as a marketing gimmick, it works very well – just like the ‘free domain’ promotions that so many budget hosts offer.
I’ve never gotten anywhere close to my space quotas with any host I’ve used.
I usually use about 14 gigs of bandwidth a month.
CPU usage stays around 0.3% and 10 / 25 allowed processes.
I have heard of webhosts that have the “unlimited” deals on telling people that they need to move to a dedicated or VPN if they are using to much of the “unlimited” per month.
I’m just lookin for a cheap unlimited website…anyone know any?
kinkyk : hostgator.com is good
Hmm! Unlimited space and bandwidth is just a promotion stunt. I dont think any cheap webhost (2-5$/month) will allow more than 30 gb of web space.
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