Cheap Web Hosting With Unlimited Bandwidth – a Bargain or No?

by Willow S. Sparks

The whole world of web hosting can be confusing. There are lots of plans, lots of features with confusing terms. Which website hosting plan is best for your website?

I would say the most confusing term when you talk about web site hosting is probably "bandwidth" because it can mean several things. It can mean the size of the Internet connection that the physical web server has leading to it. It can mean how much allowed data transfer you have with your plan. And it can also mean how much space a rock band uses when they are up on stage performing. Ok, sorry... I am just kidding about the last one... although a drum kit does take up a lot of room.

When it comes to web hosting, bandwidth mainly refers to data transfer. The connection to your server is important as well. If you think of an Internet connection as pipes and plumbing, you want a big pipe connected to your server so that a lot can flow through it quickly or if there isn't much traffic, it can still move through easily. Your web hosting needs to be able to handle traffic spikes when they come.

Web hosting bandwidth is data transfer and it is the data going through the pipe. Think of it as the water meter on your house that the water utility comes out to check. How much data goes through it depends on what kind of data you are sending and how much traffic your websites get. If you have a standard website with text and images, then that's not large data chunks. If your web site has things like audio and video files on it, then those are much larger data chunks. When people come to your site to get audio and video files, that's more going through the pipe and the meter goes up.

The two kinds of bandwidth that you can get with a web hosting plan are allowed bandwidth and unlimited bandwidth. The plans that give you a set, allowed bandwidth limit will charge you if you go over that amount. Unlimited bandwidth plans do not charge you for an overage because there isn't one.

When you go with a website hosts that offers fixed, allowed bandwidth (usually measure in gigabytes), you are usually getting a website hosts that gives you some kind of management service and has really good uptime, These hosts are usually a lot more reliable. They will also give you some sort of web control panel where you can login and see how much bandwidth you have used for that month. And instead of overages, you can often pay in advance for some added bandwidth if you think you may go over. This will save you some money but you have to start watching it near the end of the month.

Web hosts with unlimited bandwidth plans are often cheaper plans but their reliability is typically lower. These kinds of website hosting companies will sometimes just fill up servers with sites and want volume to make their profit. This type of website hosting plan is just fine for a lot of sites that are not mission critical. The costs for unlimited bandwidth, unlimited domains, unlimited space web hosting is often pretty low " under $10 per month.

When choosing a website hosting package, the bottom line is that you will get what you pay for. If your website is mission critical to your business, then you definitely do not want the cheapest web hosting package out there. You'd be shooting yourself in the foot and take it from me, that really hurts. A website that is down all the time does not get traffic. More expensive hosting plans may or may not offer unlimited bandwidth but that is fine. Just make sure you find out what the costs are for overages and watch how much bandwidth you are using.

Hopefully with the knowledge in this article, you can now better find the right plan that offers the right kind of bandwidth and also the right kind of rock band on stage!

About the Author:

Willow Sparks is a manger at a web site hosting company and has a website with lots of great information about website hosting. He posts great articles about unlimited bandwidth hosting. Also find out information about getting more website traffic by keeping your website up to date with web maintenance services.