Is 'unlimited' or 'unmetered' bandwidth in hosting plans truly limitless?

[Support.MainVPS]

Have you ever opted for a hosting plan that advertised 'unlimited' or 'unmetered' bandwidth? I'm curious to know about your real-world experiences. Did you find these terms to be genuinely limitless, or were there unexpected limitations when your website experienced high traffic or increased data usage?

 

[Terrum]

Commonly, fair usage policies take place when products are described as unlimited or unmetered. But when ordering any of these services, I have never really had any problems with the unlimited/unmetered part of the product at all regardless of the provider.

I actually think there is a difference between 'unmetered' and 'unlimited' though. From what I understand, 'unmetered' is where your usage is not metered, but can be subject to terms/policies, and 'unlimited' is truly unlimited without any catches - although this is of course not how most providers use this term.

We use 'unmetered' for products where policies exist, and 'unlimited' for products that are truly unlimited.

 

[pratik08]

The terms 'Unlimited' or 'Unmetered' bandwidth in hosting plans are marketing claims. While there is no fixed data limit, hosting providers have practical constraints. Excessive resource usage may trigger interventions, such as speed throttling or upgrade suggestions. User should review the terms of service and plans for scalability as websites grow.

 

[scottweb]

Few hosting companies provides truly unmetered bandwidth and some companies provides with capping like after certain bandwidth uses, the port speed becomes in Mbps from Gbps. Some provides 100TB bandwidth. Unmetered cost additional charges. So check the bandwidth requirements and accordingly talk with the service provider.

 

[bigredseo]

Having hosted hundreds of dedicated servers at data centers, I have had contracts for "unmetered" connections. We purchase a set throughput, and there are no limits at that point (other than the throughput). So, when we purchased a 10Mbps connection to a single server or bank of servers, that was our limit. We can use (and did use) 100% of the bandwidth. At that point, any NEW bandwidth was either rejected or queued.

"unlimited" is a different thing. There is no tangible feature with "unlimited", but that doesn't mean you can send 1 Billion requests to the server. The server is limited in what the hardware (and software) can achieve.

Depending on the contract, unlimited does have its place in the world.

All that said, when you see "unlimited hosting for $1.99," that is not even close to being in the same realm of what I'm talking about regarding datacenters. There is no way for a company to stay in business offering such a low rate for every feature in the world, or when they say "lifetime." If I decide to upload 1TB of data, I will quickly find that I've either run out of space, or the hosting company has limited my connection as I'm using too many resources.

 

[easyhostmedia]

All that said, when you see "unlimited hosting for $1.99," that is not even close to being in the same realm of what I'm talking about regarding datacenters. There is no way for a company to stay in business offering such a low rate for every feature in the world, or when they say "lifetime." If I decide to upload 1TB of data, I will quickly find that I've either run out of space, or the hosting company has limited my connection as I'm using too many resources.

Yes and that is the scenario of you paying your provider $200 a month for a server and selling Unlimited hosting for $1.99 as technically someone could take out your $1.99 plan and use the whole server resources.

 

[asiadev]

Unlimited bandwidth is possible, and is now widely implemented by ISPs. For standard shared hosting, the largest bandwidth usage I have ever found is around 400TB-600TB and this is not difficult for the ISP to provide.

 

[Greenhost.cloud]

When it comes to unlimited and unmetered bandwidth, the data center should be taken into consideration. Typically, hosting services that claim to provide unlimited bandwidth either never actually reach the maximum amount allocated by the data center, or they rely on a data center that offers unlimited bandwidth.

In my opinion, if an individual is aware that their bandwidth requirements exceed a certain limit, it would be preferable to choose a service that is hosted in a data center with unlimited bandwidth provision.

 

[hostkoala]

For larger hosts, they may host something like 200,000 accounts.

On average, each account might only use 1-2 GB Bandwidth a month, so a couple of heavier users that use 100TB++ would not affect the cost of operation much.

Furthermore, not many 100 TB ++ sites might actually toe the line with the hosts ToS OR other limiting factors like resource allocation ", they might actually need to upgrade to a better plan for the site to function ( Eg. A normal Wordpress site that has 100TB + Bandwidth will probably need a lot of CPU/RAM resources to run it ).

 

[easyhostmedia]

Furthermore, not many 100 TB ++ sites might actually toe the line with the hosts ToS OR other limiting factors like resource allocation ", they might actually need to upgrade to a better plan for the site to function ( Eg. A normal Wordpress site that has 100TB + Bandwidth will probably need a lot of CPU/RAM resources to run it ).

If a site is using 100TB + then it needs a dedicated server as not many shared/reseller/VPS plans would accommodate such a site.

 

[ITivan80]

“Unlimited hosting” often refers to hosting plans that offer generous resources without strict limits. However, they usually have fair usage policies that might restrict excessive usage, aiming to maintain a stable service for all users. It’s always a good idea to check the provider’s terms and conditions to understand their definition of “unlimited” and any limitations that might apply.

 

[easyhostmedia]

“Unlimited hosting” often refers to hosting plans that offer generous resources without strict limits. However, they usually have fair usage policies that might restrict excessive usage, aiming to maintain a stable service for all users. It’s always a good idea to check the provider’s terms and conditions to understand their definition of “unlimited” and any limitations that might apply.

so therefore not unlimited if limitations ae imposed