Unlimited and Unmetered Features in Web Hosting

You've got your web site ready to upload, you've decided what platform you want to host on. Now comes the difficult part! You're wading through those thousands of hosts. How do you make a choice?

Certainly you'll be looking for certain features that you need, MySQL databases perhaps, or maybe you've got an image oriented site and need a lot of bandwidth.

Now you're realizing that somehosts offer features at what is referred to as an UNMETERED feature. What does that mean, you wonder? Can you use as much bandwidth as you need, as many email accounts as you want? This is what one would be inclined to think. Read the Terms of Service of any web host you are debating using through thoroughly, but pay special attention to the TOS that belongs to any host offering unmetered resources.

Unmetered doesn't mean unlimited, it simply means that your host will not keep exact tabs on the amount of bandwidth your site consumes or the amount of databases you use, or whatever feature they offer as "unmetered". However, and this is the important part, these hosts will state in their terms that any one site cannot take up most of the server resources. That means that if your site is pulling 30 GB of bandwidth a day, or you're using a high traffic, processor gobbling database, you'll probably find your account terminated.

Termination is the big catch with unmetered terms. Once your account gobbles too many resources it will be cancelled.

Why will your account be cancelled? Why is unmetered really not unlimited? Because there are limits as to what the server your account is based on is capable of handling. Your host only has so much disk space, bandwidth, and processor power as well. Remember, these accounts are hosted on an actual computer and no computer resources are limitless. Add to that the fact that there can be hundreds of accounts on that one computer and your account must share those finite resources with all of the other accounts on that computer.

Well, what about unlimited, you may be asking? I've seen hosts advertising unlimited services.

Unlimited anything is really a poor choice of words on the part of the hosting company. This really means unmetered and the same rules about termination of accounts, sharing of resources, and the finite value of computer resources will still apply.

I once remember reading an argument about unlimited features on a forum. One of the postees claimed that unlimited really meant that there were limits, the hosting company just chose not to disclose them. While the statement may have been made with bitterness, the idea is fairly accurate.

That said, if you plan on signing up for one of these plans, why not send an email to the company? Ask about their policy regarding unlimited resources, find out what actual limits are, and their policy for dealing with any over-consumption of resources. You may be well within their limits and not have any problems.