Who among you don't like to have unlimited bandwidth and disk space usage if you are to host a website? Everyone wants to have unlimited services, e.g. unlimited call, unlimited text, or even unlimited rice.

Anyways, unlimited services are sometimes being advertised with too much exaggeration and specially in the Philippines the ads are misleading. When you travel along EDSA, say from Taft all the way to North EDSA you will definitely notice that 'text ads' typically have an asterisk anywhere on those giagantic billboards. Now if you won't read the details you might be the next victim. Today I will not talk about the ads in the Philippines alone but I want to talk an 'unlimited service' in hosting a website. I have many hosting plans here and abroad. By the way, don't you ever conclude that I am financially stable because I am definitely not.

To all Bloggers and individuals who plan to get a hosting plan I suggest that you should read all the Terms Of Service (TOS) before deciding what package you should have. This may also be applicable to small scale companies which are being managed by a single Information Technology contractor. Hosting service providers do provide details of the so-called 'Unlimited' plans they offer.

Let me cite an example from my hosting providers.

Let me start with my local hosting service provider.

XXXXX provides subscribers with bandwidth, disk space and other resources, such as e-mail, mysql databases, and/or file-transfer-protocol ("FTP") accounts, the amount of which is defined in XXXXX's web pages describing the package of Services purchased at the time of purchase. In some cases, XXXXX may not establish a specific amount of bandwidth, disk space and other resources, and refer to that as "Unlimited". In all cases, the Services are intended for normal and fairly use only, and any activity that results in excessive usage that is inconsistent with normal usage patterns is strictly prohibited. XXXXX reserves the right to suspend, discontinue or delete the accounts of Subscribers whose use of disk space, bandwidth or other resources results in or presents the risk of degradation of service to other customers, regardless of the amount of disk space, bandwidth or other resources included in the Subscribers plan. Subscribers agrees that such usage shall not exceed the amounts set by XXXXX for the Services purchased (the "Acceptable Use Policy") and is additionally subject to normal usage guidelines established by XXXXX as in effect from time to time. These allotments are optimized and dedicated towards serving the Content and Subscribers active electronic mail services related solely to Subscribers web hosting account(s) with XXXXX.

Let me quote a TOS from the other hosting provider that I have in abroad.

YYYYY provides Users with bandwidth, disk space and other resources, such as e-mail and/or file-transfer-protocol ("FTP") accounts, the amount of which is defined in YYYYY's web pages describing the package of Services purchased at the time of purchase. In some cases, YYYYY may not establish a specific amount of bandwidth, disk space and other resources, and refer to that as "Unlimited". In all cases, the Services are intended for normal use only, and any activity that results in excessive usage that is inconsistent with normal usage patterns is strictly prohibited. YYYYY reserves the right to suspend, discontinue or delete the accounts of Users whose use of disk space, bandwidth or other resources results in or presents the risk of degradation of service to other customers, regardless of the amount of disk space, bandwidth or other resources included in the User's plan. User agrees that such usage shall not exceed the amounts set by YYYYY for the Services purchased (the "Agreed Usage") and is additionally subject to normal usage guidelines established by YYYYY as in effect from time to time. These allotments are optimized and dedicated towards serving the Content and User's active electronic mail services related solely to User's web hosting account(s) with YYYYY.

The TOS of my first hosting provider above looks like to be a pure adoptation of the hosting provider I have in United States. Filipinos love to do copy and paste. Anyways, the truth is it's not really unlimited.

Here are some major things that you should be aware too.

1. Unlimited hosting plans means shared Internet Protocol (IP) Address. Meaning, a couple of other websites also resolves to that same IP you have for your domain. And in cases like the IP address gets infected and tagged as SPAM by RBL servers then your site may not even load at all even though you didn't do anything bad as long as other websites running on that shared IP address made something malicious.

2. Unlimited hosting plans also means shared resources- hardware and software allocation. In this case, don't expect that your website will load pages normally as it should because if other sites sharing your server gains more traffic than you do then that would result to load issues. Thus, pages may timed out or would not be displayed.

3. Unlimited Hosting services are cheap but please note that most of these hosting companies advertised fees on a monthly basis but when you purchase the service you will be obliged to pay an entire year of hosting charges.

4. Money back guarantee is limited up to 30 days from the date of purchase. That means, if you gain more visitors after a month you might be surprised that your site is completely shut down and you are no longer eligible for the reimbursement for the amount you already paid for the remaining months.

Here are some advices that I would like you to remember.

1. If you think that you are just going to use the unlimited hosting service with minimal disk usage and minimal traffic then go ahead grab the service. Always do a full back up of your site so that whenever they shut down your site you can easily migrate into another hosting service provider.

2. If you plan to make your unlimited hosting service like an online storage, do not upload too many files in a single day. Try to upload files evenly across the entire month. I mean, if you have 2GB of files try to split it into 80MB and upload it one by one everyday. In that way the hostmaster will not notice a 'spike' of your usage.

3. Be vigilant of your bandwidth. Use tracking tools and analytics to determine your bandwidth usage. If there is a sudden spike of your web traffic then try to shutdown your site for a while. It would negatively impact your site but that's the best option that you can do to minimize any additional bandwidth.

4. If you are thingking to run a website for commercial use, do not use unlimited hosting plans. You will just be frustrated at end .

There are so many things that I would like to add but for the meantime I believe these are the major factors that you have be aware to avoid any future issues in your website.

I hope that you learn something from my article. That's all for now folks!