The unlimited bandwidth trend and what it means for you

Over the last two years, hosting plan bandwidth offerings have increased dramatically, with the terabyte* becoming a standard feature in advertisements. Now we are witnessing a comeback in "unlimited" hosting plans, where bandwidth and disk space are unmetered. In the highly competitive world of high-bandwidth budget hosting, the battle of the big numbers inevitably leads off the charts. Hence, unlimited. With more and more major hosts joining the trend, it looks like unlimited plans may be poised to rule the roost for a while.

Along with bandwidth (the amount of data transferred due to traffic to your site) and storage (space used on a computer hard drive to hold your web pages) other unlimited features are often thrown into the deal. Especially, an increasing number of hosts are allowing unlimited domains per account. This means you can host yoursite1.com, yoursite2.com, and so on, without purchasing a separate plan for each. (Not to be confused with free domain names, which some hosts also provide.)

So, what does the current unlimited bandwidth trend mean for the consumer? Compared to the previous terabyte plans, the change is not as big as it may appear. The numbers are no longer counted, but it's likely that you're still getting approximately the same level of service. In essence, the new plans are saying, "Don't worry, if you have a typical web site suitable for shared hosting, we've got you covered." However, there are still practical limits on what you can accomplish with these plans; they simply aren't measured officially in terms of raw data transfer.

Here's how it works. Web hosting servers (computers that serve information to the internet) have finite capabilities, just like the computer you're using right now to view this page. When you buy a hosting plan, you are sharing a server with other accounts. Each account gets to use a portion of the server; some may use more and some less, but altogether the accounts will not exceed the server's capacity. Rather than looking at bandwidth per se, hosts will be looking at how much of a server's resources and speed are being used by a web site, whether the resource usage is caused by traffic, scripts, or other factors. As long as you don't cause problems for the server, you're fine. In a nutshell, this means you will have plenty of bandwidth for a typical website, but don't expect to give YouTube a run for its money on a low-cost shared hosting account.

Here are five major hosts with unlimited bandwidth plans:

BlueHost is offering one plan with unlimited transfer, storage, and domains.

HostGator features unlimited bandwidth and space, with unlimited domains on Baby and Business accounts.

HostMonster offers a single plan with unlimited bandwidth, storage, and domains.

InMotion Hosting has unlimited traffic and storage on its Business Class plans, with multiple domains.

Omnis Network features unlimited transfer, space, and domains, with plans for Linux and Windows.

* A terabyte is more than a thousand GB (gigabytes), or an amount of data equivalent to more than a trillion characters of text stored in ANSI format. For comparison, currently most desktop computer hard drives hold less than a terabyte.