Sometimes the price to GB ratio for hard drive space really seems to make the “Unlimited Hosting” worth the price. Upon closer examination, you’ll start to realize that it isn’t exactly what it seemed. The typical reason you would shop for “Unlimited Hosting” is because you don’t have a firm grasp on your real needs. Most people figure that if it’s “Unlimited Hosting” how can I go wrong?
The truth is there is no such thing as unlimited hosting. No one manufacturers an unlimited hard drive. It simply doesn’t exist. It all boils down to a marketing ploy to get more people who want “all you can eat hosting” for one low monthly price. Which is what they get at first.
A few weeks or months after launching your site, you would have a better idea of how much disk space and monthly transfer you’re actually using. You can use this information to find a hosting package that fits your needs perfectly. This information is monitored by your control panel, either cPanel, Plesk, etc. There are also monthly bandwidth statistics included with most hosting accounts that are an invaluable resource for you. These detail how much monthly transfer your account has used over the past few months. For a new start up web site it could be as low as a few hundred megabytes of transfer all the way up to and over a Terabyte of total transfer.
With these pieces of information you can get off the oversold server your site is currently on and stop subsidizing these resource hog neighbors of yours . Below is a quick check list to figure out what you would need for your new hosting account:
- Has my month to month, or year to year transfer rate increased or decreased? Take your current month and subtract it from the previous month to figure out the overall increase/decrease.
- Disk space: how much am I currently using on my account over the total available? Hint:: If you’re control panel currently says “unlimited” for the total available disk space, RUN!
- Are there features that I’d like to have that are currently not included with my current package? If so make a check list of these and be sure to ask your prospective hosts if they have them.
- How often are the backups taken at this new host? Hourly, Daily, Weekly, Monthly? You want to know how often they take a snapshot of your invaluable data.
- Does this company own their equipment or simply lease equipment from a 3rd party? You want to get as close to the source as you can because it will mean that you will have a better quality of service since you provider has more control over your hosting environment.
These are a few tips to get you started. If you have any other tips or questions please feel free to comment.
Good luck in your search!
