“Unlimited”: A Marketing Tactic

admin — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 04:13:09 +0000

If you’ve been comparing hosts, you are bound to have noticed advertising pages proclaiming â€œunlimited bandwidthâ€ and â€œunlimited disk spaceâ€ or maybe even other â€œunlimitedâ€ features.

While â€œunlimitedâ€ certainly sounds inviting, customers should be aware of what it really means.

The term â€œunlimitedâ€ is a marketing tactic used by hosts to stay competitive in the fiercely competitive web hosting market. While deceptive in a sense, in the current climate it’s at least understandable, if not forgivable.

But what does the term â€œunlimitedâ€ really mean? And how does it apply to you?

In practice, Busby SEO Test few (if any) web hosting companies could deliver a truly unlimited service if all their customers simultaneously started using their accounts to full capacity. In practice this is unlikely to happen as very few customers actually utilize anywhere near this much.

The term â€œunlimitedâ€ is 100% marketing hype, pure and simple.

My advice is to just accept it for what it is and do not base any purchasing decision on the fact that a service is or isnâ€™t â€œunlimitedâ€. Almost all modern day web hosting services will offer the same thing.

More relevant points of comparison are a host’s reliability and level of support.

Just ensure you read the fine print before getting lured into such plans and be wary of clauses where the company will raise their prices when a certain level of traffic is reached, or even shut down a site entirely. If you are unsure, it is perfectly acceptable to get in contact with a representative of the web hosting service and inquire about it directly.

Always view â€œunlimitedâ€ hosting plans with a healthy dose of skepticism. In the web hosting world there is no such thing as “unlimited bandwidth” or “unlimited disk space” or even “100% uptimeâ€.

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“Unlimited”: A Marketing Tactic