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The "unlimited"-tag in Shared Hosting offers
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The "unlimited"-tag in Shared Hosting offers

Given I am currently in the search for either a suitable reseller hosting or a selt hosted solution for my web hosting clients I very often stumble upon the promise of "unlimited ssd disk space". SmartHosting which I once used also offered this. Am I the only one who acctually is scared of this term? We all know there is no such thing as a drive with unlimited capacity. So usually these kinda marketing offers are accompanied with a FuP stating that "if your websites/your clients websites do not exceed average usage for websites" you get unlimited storage. The only problem is that quite often they lack to define the actual limits. The only provider I've seen that seems to be quite honest about this is DreamHost stating:

Hey, that doesn't sound very "Unlimited" to me!
Actually, for you, my dear Legitimate Website Owner, it is unlimited.

This whole page is just to announce to the <.1% of people who want to try and run free porn affiliate sites or anime video trading forums or host pirated rips of The Dark Knight on DreamHost that we're not having any.

Now how do you guys think about the unlimited marketing? Surely at first it might appear as a "no worries" solution for the average user, however am I the only one who does not want to rely on them supporting you when you will need more resources for the first time? Providers plans on how to handle excessive use range from 48h termination to no questions asked termination which for a reseller with various clients would be a pain.

Anyway, maybe some of you support this marketing strategy, too. Let me hear your input on this.

Comments

  • In the case of shared hosting, imho that type of ad is not directed towards nerds like us. It's for Joe and Jane Realworld who want to put up some vacation pictures and want to know how many they can put there. The basic theory may be that if it's all uploaded from your home PC, there can't be that much to start with.

    Thanked by 2Ympker WSS
  • @willie said:
    In the case of shared hosting, imho that type of ad is not directed towards nerds like us. It's for Joe and Jane Realworld who want to put up some vacation pictures and want to know how many they can put there. The basic theory may be that if it's all uploaded from your home PC, there can't be that much to start with.

    True that haha :D But it is exactly because I'm a nerd that I do not like this approach too much :/

  • RadiRadi Host Rep, Veteran

    It is simple: you are not expected to use unlimited disk space on a shared account.

    Do it and you will be asked to upgrade (so you can be moved to another server with more disk until next time) or to move out.
    However it is nice thing to see unlimited in your control panel. :)

    Thanked by 1Ympker
  • @Radi said:
    It is simple: you are not expected to use unlimited disk space on a shared account.

    Do it and you will be asked to upgrade (so you can be moved to another server with more disk until next time) or to move out.
    However it is nice thing to see unlimited in your control panel. :)

    The problem is that some providers using that marketing tag would terminate account (also reseller) instantly without warnings although most would give you 24h-48h to upgrade or move. Instant termination would be a no-go for me.

  • You cant use more then 100 GB in one account because:

    You can not host backups, videos, softwares, movies etc..

    You cant host more then 50 websites as Ram, CPU and inodes are limited.

    This is same as all-you-can-eat for $5. Can you eat the whole Kitchen?

    Thanked by 2Ole_Juul Cam
  • RadiRadi Host Rep, Veteran

    @Ympker said:

    @Radi said:
    It is simple: you are not expected to use unlimited disk space on a shared account.

    Do it and you will be asked to upgrade (so you can be moved to another server with more disk until next time) or to move out.
    However it is nice thing to see unlimited in your control panel. :)

    The problem is that some providers using that marketing tag would terminate account (also reseller) instantly without warnings although most would give you 24h-48h to upgrade or move. Instant termination would be a no-go for me.

    Choose a more famous provider. They won't do that, because it will hurt their reputation. What if you go online and start posting everywhere what they did to you?
    A shady host on the other side would just not care.

    Thanked by 1Ympker
  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited February 2017

    Unlimited GB is often confused with infinite. All it means is not strictly limited by that variable. Dreamhost does it and they're not shady or unfair. The reality is that a lot of people don't know how much they need, it's why everyone always buys more than they need. Removing the stated GB limit eases confusion with a particular customer base.

    The only problem is the tiny minority who thinks they can use it as a cheap Dropbox replacement. That person is so very far from being one out of every ten customers.

    Though it's honestly not hard to give one customer 4TB of space for every 400,000 customers who use less than 1GB.

    Thanked by 2Ympker hostens
  • They will say that its unlimited, but you cannot store big files or movies or backups,, also I'm pretty sure that if you used more than 100GB they will find a way to make you leave the hosting by slowing down your website or showing errors.

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    @Jorbox said:
    I'm pretty sure that if you used more than 100GB they will find a way to make you leave the hosting by slowing down your website or showing errors.

    I've never heard of anyone doing that.

  • @jarland said:
    Unlimited GB is often confused with infinite. All it means is not strictly limited by that variable. Dreamhost does it and they're not shady or unfair. The reality is that a lot of people don't know how much they need, it's why everyone always buys more than they need. Removing the stated GB limit eases confusion with a particular customer base.

    The only problem is the tiny minority who thinks they can use it as a cheap Dropbox replacement. That person is so very far from being one out of every ten customers.

    Though it's honestly not hard to give one customer 4TB of space for every 400,000 customers who use less than 1GB.

    That's why I mentioned DH in a positive matter :) They are fair for sure :P

  • gestiondbigestiondbi Member, Patron Provider

    @jarland said:

    @Jorbox said:
    I'm pretty sure that if you used more than 100GB they will find a way to make you leave the hosting by slowing down your website or showing errors.

    I've never heard of anyone doing that.

    Dreamhost simply ask you to GTFO ;)

  • Even if you manage to get some storage, you will be limited to bandwidth. Most likely your shared plan will be restricted to 100Mbps or less in terms of bandwidth. Which also makes it difficult to abuse it.

  • @letrocks said:
    Even if you manage to get some storage, you will be limited to bandwidth. Most likely your shared plan will be restricted to 100Mbps or less in terms of bandwidth. Which also makes it difficult to abuse it.

    The fact that people are bitching about 100Mbps in LET still astounds me, to be perfectly honest.

    Thanked by 3letrocks Junkless Nomad
  • Just wanted to chime in here - I'm on the support team at an unlimited host

    We are probably one of the more lenient providers. We generally don't care if it's related to your website, and as others have said you will hit other limits before your disk space becomes a problem.

    We have a fair few customers that are >50GB and some even over 100GB. It's generally mail or a fair few photographers. A majority of our customers run at <1GB, sure, but they usually prefer the peace of mind

    We also don't terminate if you become a problem. We will open a ticket if you are taking space against our terms (uploading a backup of your PC hard drive or something) or suspend you if you become a problem (there's only so many requests running cloudlinux helps with). We don't instantly terminate, and always work with customers

    Thanked by 1Ympker
  • @WSS said:

    @letrocks said:
    Even if you manage to get some storage, you will be limited to bandwidth. Most likely your shared plan will be restricted to 100Mbps or less in terms of bandwidth. Which also makes it difficult to abuse it.

    The fact that people are bitching about 100Mbps in LET still astounds me, to be perfectly honest.

    I never said it was a problem. I stated the fact that with the shared hosting that is what you would expect.

  • @letrocks said:

    @WSS said:

    @letrocks said:
    Even if you manage to get some storage, you will be limited to bandwidth. Most likely your shared plan will be restricted to 100Mbps or less in terms of bandwidth. Which also makes it difficult to abuse it.

    The fact that people are bitching about 100Mbps in LET still astounds me, to be perfectly honest.

    I never said it was a problem. I stated the fact that with the shared hosting that is what you would expect.

    I wasn't singling you out or anything- I just see this very often, and I'm thinking "You're paying what, again?" :)

  • @Jorbox said:
    They will say that its unlimited, but you cannot store big files or movies or backups,, also I'm pretty sure that if you used more than 100GB they will find a way to make you leave the hosting by slowing down your website or showing errors.

    Yeah the EIG-bunch companies actively do that, they'll force you to upgrade to VPS or reduce your disk usage

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited February 2017

    @zafouhar said:

    @Jorbox said:
    They will say that its unlimited, but you cannot store big files or movies or backups,, also I'm pretty sure that if you used more than 100GB they will find a way to make you leave the hosting by slowing down your website or showing errors.

    Yeah the EIG-bunch companies actively do that, they'll force you to upgrade to VPS or reduce your disk usage

    Source? I worked at hostgator and maybe witnessed one customer kicked off for extreme disk usage in clear violation of policies. They knew what they were doing, wasn't "oh my blog accidentally used an entire disk array" :P

    I've never witnessed anyone slow down website, force errors, or kick someone out for 100GB disk usage.

    I know it's popular to make up stories about EIG that possess "truthiness" (sound probable based on common opinion therefore not questioned) and that's kind of what that sounds like to me.

    Thanked by 1Ympker
  • Even Amazon apparently is putting up with people using 100s of TB on ACS unlimited storage for $60/year.

  • @jarland said:

    @zafouhar said:

    @Jorbox said:
    They will say that its unlimited, but you cannot store big files or movies or backups,, also I'm pretty sure that if you used more than 100GB they will find a way to make you leave the hosting by slowing down your website or showing errors.

    Yeah the EIG-bunch companies actively do that, they'll force you to upgrade to VPS or reduce your disk usage

    Source? I worked at hostgator and maybe witnessed one customer kicked off for extreme disk usage in clear violation of policies. They knew what they were doing, wasn't "oh my blog accidentally used an entire disk array" :P

    I was sending out the notifications :P

  • "Unlimited disk space" with a reasonable VPS style bandwidth quota (250GB, 500GB, etc. Does grandma really need 1TB to host her pics of her grandchildren and mad knitting skills?) to chase away the high bandwidth people

  • IKIHOSTIKIHOST Member, Patron Provider

    Most important thing be smart buyers who are able to distinguish the meaning of unlimited disk.

  • MorpheusxenoMorpheusxeno Member
    edited February 2017

    Ive randomly asked hosts if they would allow me to store my 833TB of files on their unlimited storage. Usually the chat ends rather quickly. lel

    Ive been kicked off a host for using 77GB before. Without notice lost ALOT of my shit, Since then ive hosted my own stuff.

    I like the idea of hosting companies telling you what their limits are. It lets you know they have set bounds, at least thought of what their network / storage can support. I think its more wise decision

    Thanked by 1Ympker
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