When comparing the feature sets of a different hosting company plans, resellers have to always be vigilant to conduct an 'apples-to-apples' comparison. Too often, misleading advertising and an unaware reseller lead to bad choices.
Unlimited bandwidth is one of the biggest marketing ploys since 'unlimited e-mails'! Web hosting companies that advertise "unlimited bandwidth" are, essentially, falsely advertising their through-put limitations. Since our humble beginnings in 1997, we have never seen any broadband company offering an internet connection as "Unlimited Megabytes Per Second." So how could a web hosting company, which normally doesn't even own its own access lines, advertise to customers that it will give them "unlimited bandwidth"?
An average web page is 30-50K which gives an average of 50,000 - 70,000 page views per month. In Today's world, the average gigabyte of bandwidth on a shared hosting plan ranges from $1.50 to $20.00 (depending on where you're data center is located). If a "high bandwidth" site (i.e. 200 Gigs per month) were to sign up for an "Unlimited Bandwidth" plan, it would end up costing the web hosting company anywhere from $300.00 to $4000.00 to maintain these "high bandwidth" sites. This range far exceeds the average web hosting plan monthly fee (avg. is about $19.95). How can this be?
Most of the time, high bandwidth sites on these "Unlimited" plans will be disconnected, and no refund given. The web hosting company will say that the site violated its Acceptable Use Policy or Terms of Service. The fine print here basically stipulates that you cannot use more than 5% of their system resources, or cause any other 'problems' on their servers. Bottom line, these plans are not really 'unlimited', but they're throttled by the capacity of the box and the link to the Internet.
Whenever you visit a site promoting "Unlimited Bandwidth" as one of the account features, be sure to visit the Acceptable Use Policy, or the Terms of Service. Read the fine text about the so-called "Unlimited" disclaimer.
We have noticed that many hosts are now using a theory that not all customers will use the same amounts of bandwidth, meaning that they will be able to provide customers that use bandwidth, the extra needed. That is true, but what happens if the host has many customers that seem to be using over the bandwidth averages? If the box is loaded down with domains, you can bet that one or two high bandwidth sites could easily slow things down for the rest of the domains on the server.
Bottom line, you know that bandwidth is a commodity. The basic factors that need to be considered in your choice of a 'bandwidth provider' to host your sites are both the quality of that bandwidth, as well as the amount being provided. If anyone's offering you 'unlimited' bandwidth, consider that a warning sign that the web host in question may not be giving you a straight deal.
