Jun 10 2008
Choosing a WebHost – Unlimited Bandwidth?
A webhosting customer was angry because he was cheated by his webhosting company. I shall not name the hosting company here, in case they “run out of customers”.
This is what happened.
This customer had more than 2,000 unique visitors daily in his website. The way the customer described on a forum, i believe he hosted movies on his webhost. Thus, this will eat up alot of the bandwidth.
The webhosting company hosting his movie site had attractive package, here is the plan the customer bought:
- Free domain name
- 90 GB Webspace
- Unlimited Bandwidth !!!!
- 100 sub-domains
- Unlimited FTP accounts
- many many other features not important to discuss..
Sounds like a good offer eh? It’s only USD5 per month! How attractive!
Not exactly.
After a few days hosting his site with the company, he faces several downtime problem. For example, not able to get into his site, or website not available for data transfer, etc.
What went wrong?
The problem of insufficient bandwidth went wrong!
Is there such a thing called Unlimited bandwidth to start on with? What’s unmetered bandwidth on a dedicated server when you co-locate it in a datacenter?
I helped the customer contact the “sales” live chat a few hours back in the afternoon, and here is the EXACT transcript from an operator from the company: (P/S: Alex is just a fake name)
Chat Information: Please wait for an operator to respond.
Chat Information: You are now connected.
Live-Chat: Welcome to 3iX live chat, my name is Shawn, please hold for a moment, I am reviewing your question.
Live-Chat: How may I help you today?
Alex: Hello
Alex: i was looking through the webhosting, and saw the Extra plan
Live-Chat: Hi Alex
Alex: how much monthly bandwidth will be available on my account?
Live-Chat: monthly bandwidth is
Live-Chat: unlimited for that plan
Alex: but is there such a thing as unlimited? i’ve about a few hundreds visitor daily, that makes it a few thousands monthly.. do u think it can hold?
Live-Chat: you should have no problem
Alex: but there isn’t such a thing as unlimited bandwidth, dont you think so?
Live-Chat: what do you mean by no such things
Live-Chat: can you elaborate please ?
Alex: is 3iX overselling? because there isn’t such a thing called unlimited bandwidth
Alex: there is a limit to bandwidth, there isn’t an unlimited amount of bandwidth
Live-Chat: We have unlimited bandwidth with us
Alex: but sorry i don’t understand that, but how is it possible? there is no such thing as unlimited bandwidth
Live-Chat: I am sorry I am not getting you. how you can say there is no such things like unlimited bandwidth
Alex: network lines that carry data around the web have finite capacity, hence unlimited bandwidth doesnt exist
Live-Chat: Well it is unlimited monthly bandwidth. After one month the counts begin from zero again [he is insulting my intelligence! how can i not know the meaning of "monthly" ?!]
Alex: yes i get that. but the thing is, i’m having a huge amount of visitors daily, and since there is no such thing as unlimited bandwidth, my site can go down in a few days if the server doesn’t have enough capacity
Live-Chat: but keep in mind that you can not use more than 10% of CPU usage on the server as it is shared server [running away from my question is not a good idea!]
Alex: yes i know that but not bandwidth
Live-Chat: you can contact sales@3ix.org and get your doubt cleared
Alex: isn’t this sales?Live-Chat: nope! this is technical support
Alex: well, then you’re wrong yourself. the Contact page wrote: Sales 24×7 Live Chat. NOT technical support
Alex: and if you’re a technical support staff, the more you should have knowledge on unlimited bandwidth
Live-Chat: Is there anything else I can help you with?
Alex: please answer my question, Shawn
Live-Chat: I know that we provide unlimited bandwidth and no client had issue with it till now. if you have you can email on sales@3ix.org. Our admins will answer your queries [huh? i just saw a complaint from a customer, how dare he lie to me!]
Alex: there are customers from 3iX who are facing problem. look, you’re not honest, Shawn.
Live-Chat: So if you have problem with us so you can find any other host. Client have problem with every hosting provider. And we have lots of happy customer.
Alex: oh, so 3iX is misleading the customers, and you’re not doing something to stop it, are you? you’re just going to continue misleading them into buying attractive unlimited plans without them knowing there isnt such a thing
Live-Chat: Thank you for chatting. Good-bye.
Chat Information: Chat session has been terminated by the site operator.
What?! And it just shut off the conversation without my permission?! Poor thing. And oops, did i just revealed the name of the hosting company?
What is bandwidth?
Bandwidth is an amount you have available to transfer web pages from the web server to the browsers of visitors to your site. Web pages and graphics consume bandwidth or capacity on the web.
Many web hosting companies offer unlimited plans: Unlimited Webspace, Unlimited Bandwidth, etc.. But is there really such a thing?
It is impossible for a hosting company to provide an unlimited amount of disk space (webspace), or bandwidth. The network lines that carry data around the web (optic fiber, cable, copper wire) have a finite capacity. There is a limit to the amount of data that can be transferred at any point in time. Likewise, the hard drive of a web server has a limited amount of space determined by the physical size of the hard drive.
Then why do hosting companies misled customers?
Some hosting companies don’t do that on purpose sometimes. They thought, since they have more than enough bandwidth for the month, they might as well advertise it as “unlimited” plans, assuming that ALL clients do not have heavy traffic.
However, some hosting companies are trying to misled their customers! Unlimited plans? Can you believe it? For only USD5 monthly. Thats really a good offer!! Attractive plans enable hosting companies to make profit. But wait till they get complained, and wait till bloggers start blogging about them, they lose all their profits.
But the hosting plan is cheap! Can i try the plan?
I’d say yes and no. If you know you are going to generate large amount of traffic, i’d advise you to get a personalised dedicated server to host your website. Any excess amount of bandwidth can be sold as webhosting if you want to.
If you’re just hosting, say a blog or a portal for your school, and you know you won’t use as much as 50gb bandwidth per month, then try those hosting company, because it won’t make any difference, since the proportion of the bandwidth is very very small as compared to the total bandwidth a server holds.
What’s the next thing to do if i’m just hosting a small site?
Check their AUP and ToS! Some hosting companies contradict themselves very much. On the hosting plan they say “unlimited bandwidth”, but on the Acceptable Usage Policy, they state “no heavy network resources”.
Isn’t bandwidth related to heavy network resource? If you are in doubt, always ask call the pre-sales hotline, or email the pre-sales staff. Show them prove if you’re not satisfied. I believe most (if not all) hosting companies do have money back guarantee.
What’s the BEST webhosting company then?
There is NO best webhosting company in the world, because the taste and preferences varies from clients to clients.
Any questions? Post a comment today!
Almost all big web hosting providers oversell. They offer too much bandwidth and space, but it sells. Most newbie webmasters want too much space and bandwidth for their 2 page web site this is the reason these web hosts are too big. Also they will have clever terms that will prevent you from using too much bandwidth, so a user ending up with high bandwidth usage is less. Since these company is making good profit, selling unlimited resource is not going to stop.
Totally agree. also, customers need to be aware that some web hosting companies DO oversell, not by using “unlimited bandwidth” but by using “5000gb bandwidth”, etc..
when getting a webhost, get a decent plan. plan what you need and get what you need. :)
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[...] do remember to read my blog post on Unlimited Bandwidth. It gives you some information on what the host really meant by “Unlimited” bandwidth [...]
I hate when companies oversell their bandwidth, and sometimes their webspace. I have had a few online projects messed up due to the web host, who offers “unlimited” bandwidth, not being able to cope with some heavy traffic. I only use highly respected web hosts now, or just try and figure out what the website needs and buy accordingly.
Good read this post. That is some bad customer service from the 24/7 chat guy.
What really annoys me with these unlimited bandwidth guys is that their wording makes it virtually impossible to google up a decent dedicated server with ‘unlimited bandwidth’ ;)
Fantastic. care to share your sources :) ?
I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.