Unlimited web hosting. What does that phrase even mean? It has taken on a kind of shady, hyped type of meaning over the last few years. It has been used in relation to the number of domains you can host on an account, the web space you are allotted, as well as the bandwidth you are allowed to consume each month. The truth is, there is usually no hard and fast answer that’s entirely true for any of these scenarios. Let’s take a look at each, and what it has come to signify for them.

Unlimited Domains – You will often see “unlimited” in informational boxes and promotional material advertising a web host’s offerings. This is an attempt to get you to believe that you can host as many domains on this account as you’d like. The truth is, that you are limited by other variables as well, such as web space and bandwidth, (which we’ll get into in a moment!) and do not actually have the ability to do what they are suggesting. Not only that, many times these “unlimited” domains turn out to be “add-on domains”, which are little more than glorified subdomains in the eyes of the search engines, and not truly stand-alone domain names, with their own unique web credentials! Ways around this include opting for a reseller account, (which gives you far more options) or having your own dedicated server, where you are less limited also.

Unlimited Web Space – While this is often advertised as a feature, they are hoping that you’ll never be prosperous enough to test this one, or that if you are, you’ll have already voluntarily opted for a more robust account. There obviously is a limit on space. Get too near to what they consider the breaking point for that price level, and you’ll be asked to upgrade.

Unlimited Bandwidth – This one is likely the most ludicrous of the three. Of course there is a limit! Any site on a shared server that is utilizing more than their fair (paltry) share of the server is likely to find their domain “throttled”. This is the practice of limiting server resources so as to “balance the load” among all the other sites on the server. You’ll then politely be asked to switch to a plan that is more suitable for a site with all your traffic! (By the way, that’s not a bad idea anyway; it’s just the way it is done at this level that we find unseemly!)

Best practice when it comes to issues like hosting multiple domains, web space used, and bandwidth is to try and anticipate your site’s needs in advance, as far as that is possible. Many times a site becomes popular out of nowhere, and no one could have guessed. Other times, a blog post or video goes viral. There’s no way to know when that will happen.

However, as much as it is within your control, try and budget for as much web hosting power as you can. If you know you have promotion hitting, or a product launch coming up, you’ll want to look into this issue. If you are truly taking steps to build your traffic and business, you want to be ready for that day when it comes!