Difference Between Unmetered & Unlimited Bandwidth

Unlimited vs Unmetered
In the world of shared hosting, there are plenty of fans of unmetered. Many times when discussing how “unlimited” is used, people argue it’s only semantics and that it’s obvious to everyone that the idea of unlimited hosting really can’t be taken strictly at face value. In other words when a host uses that term in regards to space or bandwidth there is no harm done. It is argued that what unlimited really means is the amount an average or regular or standard website might need. The problem is there isn’t any real average or regular or standard website.

Some people who acknowledge that unlimited is an unacceptable word for describing bandwidth because it can be deceiving believe that the right term to use would be “unmetered.” But is it really?

What unmetered means for this context is “unmeasured.” The problem is many of the hosting companies that offer it mention explicitly that once an initial limited has been reached, that upon request at no charge you will be upgraded. So in fact they do measure your data traffic consumption. The thing that they don’t do, or at least claim not to, is placing a limit on your consumption. It is true that they don’t, at least not in a direct way.

Reasons Why Hosts Offer Unmetered Bandwidth
Businesses exist in order to make a profit. That is their purpose and employees are responsible for doing whatever is necessary to maximize profits.

How does offering something like unmetered bandwidth increase a company’s profits? It is through sheer volume. A significant increase in sales that have a small profit on each account potentially could translate into a higher amount of total profit.

For serious businesses offering unmetered bandwidth is a decision to gamble based on statistics, which is the cornerstone for all overselling decisions.

However a way has been devised so that the hosts don’t have to take the risk. There are certain requirements that websites must meet in order to receive unmetered bandwidth.

So why would unmetered bandwidth sell more than a quota would? It all comes down to perceived value. It isn’t what you sell, it’s what a customer thinks they are buying. Targeted customers feel they are getting more for less. Unmetered bandwidth is supposed to provide more than fixed quota.

Another reason that customers sometimes give is they don’t have to worry about getting charged when they exceed their allotment of bandwidth. It is a kind of guarantee that getting a higher amount of traffic to their website won’t result in higher charges. Once again it’s risk reversal. At least that is how certain customers see it.

The ultimate sales proposition: worry free hosting. Just sign up and you won’t ever have to worry over hosting again. You will get everything that you need for one fixed fee.

This type of service/product offer has a target market. It isn’t hard to realize that the market that is targeted is individuals who have websites that won’t take full advantage of the offer.

In order to ensure that things stay manageable, certain kinds of websites usually aren’t eligible to receive unmetered bandwidth:

* Websites offering file downloads (mp3s, video, software)
* Websites hosting image galleries (notorious for high server resources and high bandwidth usage)
* Websites with popular forums
* Portals and other kinds of social communities
* Adults websites
* Chat sites

Another common restraint to see is that 90% of files have to be linked from HTML, ASP or PHP kinds of pages, meaning that the website needs to be content driven.

Some hosting companies have more restrictions than others, meaning that in order to protect themselves they go to much greater lengths. Others take on more chances.

A lot of these restrictions also are used by hosts who offer unlimited bandwidth. That isn’t surprising since unmetered bandwidth for shared hosting comes from the unlimited bandwidth concept.

If these restrictions are examined, it’s have to imagine any website using up large amounts of bandwidth, and therefore taking advantage of the offer of unmetered bandwidth, that doesn’t fall into one of the above categories. So what is the point?

The point is actually a simple one. Unmetered bandwidth would take overselling to an entirely new level. Because hosting companies need to ensure profitability as well as long term sustainability they take some serious safety precautions. However, the more restrictions there are the more it feels like empty talk. They make it almost impossible for any customer to actually be able to take the host up on their offer of unmetered bandwidth.

It’s not just due to the above limitations. If a website was able to get through all the rules and somehow be eligible to receive unmetered bandwidth, the hosting company would still stop them from taking advantage of this offer.

One clause gives hosting companies all the power. That clause is the one called server resources abuse. If your website happens to use up too much memory and CPU power to the point that it affects the performance of the server’s other websites, the hosting company will suspend it.

A question you may be asking yourself is why a hosting company would go through so much trouble to specify which kinds of websites aren’t eligible if they have that clause.

In order to answer the question we need to look at what effects those limitations have. The only websites qualifying for the offer have a very little chance of going over more than few GBs each month. There is also very little chance of these websites going over the threshold for resources abuse. That means the clause hardly ever needs to get used. This is great from the hosting company’s point of view.

Customers usually have no idea what is contained in the TOS. The clause is shocking to them, particularly since with most of today’s control panels there isn’t any way of verifying the claim made by the host. Out of shock, these customers might voice publicly their dissatisfaction that their website was suspended and that they are being blackmailed into upgrading their hosting account. Most hosts could do without this type of publicity.

How do hosting companies explain this? One of the ideas is that limits on bandwidth aren’t meaningful anymore. What is more meaningful are things like memory and CPU usage. In terms of unmetered bandwidth what ultimately limits consumption of bandwidth is how much of the server’s resources are used.

I wouldn’t have a problem with this change as long as:

1. Hosting companies didn’t monitor individual consumption of data transfer

2. Resource usage was visible and measured inside the control panel, allowing users to know at any given time if they had used too many resources for the given time period. In addition, users should have a guarantee of a certain level or share of resources.

The whole idea of unmetered can be called into dispute if the above first condition isn’t met. If you offer unmetered and then meter all your users consumption then why are you calling it unmetered? Some may say that’s just semantics. Maybe.

However in terms of semantics, unmetered bandwidth in the way it is advertised currently is basically unlimited bandwidth that has been repackaged into a somewhat nicer and less deceiving wrapper.

Bandwidth allowances have become so huge that the quota war on bandwidth has started to not make much sense, particularly since this war has been fueled through overselling and not real cost decreases.

Instead of monthly bandwidth increases, in an attempt that is never ending to be cheaper than competitors or to just try to keep up, some people might come to the conclusion to just call it unlimited or unmetered and just be done.

In part this is what has happened in the trend towards unmetered bandwidth. The overselling limits have been pushed many times, along with the bandwidth quotas. “No boundary” will become the next limit that is used.

An idea that I do like is limiting shared hosting based on resources used rather than bandwidth. Unfortunately it is tough breaking the bandwidth measurement standard.

Plans being limited based on resources instead of bandwidth would move the industry forward. It would make a huge difference between what has been advertised as unlimited bandwidth and a new idea that could be referred to as shared hosting that had unmetered bandwidth as well as specified server resources.

Let’s see if we can weigh unmetered bandwidth and benefit from it as customers.

The cost of unmetered bandwidth is usually about $10 from hosts that specialize in low cost shared hosting. The major benefit that unmetered hosting provides is not having to worry that small websites will exceed their quota and have to pay a huge amount for excessive bandwidth.

However since most sites qualifying for unmetered bandwidth are not likely to exceed 5 GB data transfer in a month, you could achieve the same effect by purchasing a hosting plan that offers 10GB worth of monthly data transfer for around $10.

Experience tells us that hosts that charge more for every GB of data transfer provide better overall service. The $1/GB ratio of data transfer often is considered the point at which a host is able to still make profit and not oversell.

The only other possible way to get more from a plan that has unmetered bandwidth is by having a website fitting the restrictions and managing to consume a high bandwidth amount while at the same time using low server resource amounts.

Personally, I am not in favor of the current form of unmetered bandwidth plans. If I had to choose between a plan suiting the needs of my website and one that came with unmetered bandwidth, definitely I would choose a plan that fit my bandwidth needs.

Everyone can choose their own point of view and priorities. To me unmetered bandwidth for sharing hosting isn’t currently the revolutionary breakthrough that I was expecting. I am not waiting around for the ultimate offer in budget hosting. I am waiting for changes to be made in how server resources are sold.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.