Bandwidth or data transfer is one of the important issues when it comes to webhosting, because it detain the amount of data or stuff that can be downloaded or transfer from your website, forums or blogs by the people who visit and browse your website. The more images you have on your website or blog, the more you need lots of data transfer per month for your visitor's to be able to browse and open your site. All web hosting providers keep record of data transfer on a monthly base for every customer's, which mean you have limit access to a number of data transfer every month and ones you have exceeded the amount of data transfer in a month, your website will be locked down by the provider server automatically. And no one we be able to access your website, till the bandwidth is reset at the begin of the following month. This will be clearly display on your website that you have exceeded your bandwidth, if you find your website in this situation and you cannot wait for the following month for the bandwidth to reset automatically, you can contract your hosting provider to add some bandwidth to your account pending the time it is rest or you can buy more bandwidth or upgrade your hosting package as the case may be.

It is very important that you keep track of your bandwidth every month, in other to be sure that you have amount of bandwidth that can support your website every month in order to have your website up and running fine for any amount of traffic for a particular month.

Hope this help new users!

Also most people worry too much about bandwidth for a single site.
Unless they have a VERY busy web site or a LOT of customers on a Reseller, VPS or Dedicated server these days bandwidth is plentiful and the "average" web site will never get close to what most hosts allow..

Few sites are very "bandwidth intensive" so they won't use a lot unless they become wildly popular or unless they contain many videos or downloads which would use a lot of bandwidth. (Perhaps you have a product and all the 40 page owner's manuals for 50 different models are available for PDF download) or you are a church that "streams" their worship services with video & audio in "TV" definition. (The higher the definition the more bandwidth depending on the compression software used)

Also many people overestimate how much a forum or blog or site like WordPress or Joomla will use. Even a forum with 2,000 members and 60-100 visitors a day won't usually consume a huge amount of bandwidth, some not much at all, depending on how many advertisements come from "off site" like Google Ads, and how many are on site like banners or animated items (and for some free forum software the "add-ons" can be bandwidth hogs) which might use more. But we have some forum customers with VERY active boards who don't use 10GB per month and some who average 5-10 users at a time during the day that don't hardly break 5GB.

My point is you should keep an eye on it but if you are a shared customer you will hardly ever have to worry about it; if your site gets that popular you will probably need a VPS or bigger plans because of other limits.

Probably more than anyone else; Reseller and VPS users who are new to selling hosting space (starting a company or whatever) need to watch bandwidth limits. Your host has to limit these amounts in order to assure all resellers or VPS clients on a server get what's advertised in their plan.
However you can end up with one customer hogging most of your bandwidth allowance for the month and your ability to sell more accounts so decide on your bandwidth allowances and stick too them or you will end up with someone on your cheapest plan using the most bandwidth and you not making the profits you should.

Most dedicated servers come with plenty of bandwidth but checking the rates for extra if you think you might need it isn't a bad idea.

These days most hosts allot more than enough bandwidth with a dedicated for the specifications of that server... use up the included amount and you should be making enough for another server as you grow.

There are a lot of choices available in front of the users to select the kind of host providers they require. As specified in the previous reply it is the reseller which has to be much particular about the disk space or the bandwidth.

A website requiring a serious business attention with less interaction or other web 2.0 factor needn't really worry about the disk space or bandwidth. They might consider the quality of the service and experience the provider in the industry. Still you can get it cheaper rates.

If people pay much attention on the exceeding bandwidth or disk space the unlimited hosts are the ultimate choice for them. You may require to pay more, but just a few more.

The ultimate choice for them? Not a chance! There are always TOS clauses that address clients that use more than normal bandwidth or disk space. It's better to work with a provider with set limits that you're reasonably sure will accomodate your needs - with the flexibility to upgrade if needed.

I agree unlimited hosting is becoming some what of a joke these days. In life you have to set limits on things not everything is unlimited. I believe the same way when it comes to webhosting.

Personally I'm of the opinion that staggered shared hosting plans with realistic limitations are vital for firstly running a stable service, maintaining performance and being honest with your client base.

The main reason behind such a view is simple in terms of practicality, a sever in itself can only provide x number of accounts with y number of requirements (memory, bandwidth, CPU, Disk space....) and despite how a company chooses to advertise their accounts/packages, they ether ensure margins are high enough per server with realistic requirements or utilise hidden clauses such that they can utilise volume sales and market on price.

Relating this back to bandwidth, it is like anything in the above statement there is a "catch 22" such that if an account has for example a high bandwidth allowance and decidedly runs 3 high profile blogs and 2 forums, within their bandwidth limitations. They will still potentially have their site suspended due to the CPU or memory load due to the number of concurrent users or socket requests or similar putting a strain on the server.

And there are numerous other examples that can be used, really the best idea is to choose a potential provider, start small and move up the packages or change provider if necessary.

Hi,

Everytime i seen a host posting ads like Unlimited Space and Bandwidth i ask them when they start making Unlimited Hard Drives? also when they start making Unlimited ANYTHING?

When bandwidth becomes a problem for shared hosting then it's time to get a VPS or dedicated server.

I'd say Bandwidth limits are out of the equation at this point... It all comes down to CPU usuage, MySQL requests, and other server resources.

Webhero is an unlimited everything host. Basically the TOS says: "Dont cause problems for other customers and dont serve copyrighted material"

We really ARE unlimited bandwidth hosting.

I agree, things agree that server resources are an important factor in web hosting/sites. But, I don't think that "unlimited" is 100% correct because I have had issues and so have customers with this type of an issue and problems caused with their websites.
-ladesignandcoding-

Bandwidth is crucial so far traffic your site is concerned. Remember unlimited bandwidth is a deception to you and do not exist practically. Beware please of such web hosts that offer unlimited resources which is a myth.

Bandwidth is indeed so important to a web site ,but when it exceeds the bandwidth limitation,your web site will be suspended by the hosting provider. Maybe it signifies you should make the bandwidth bigger,so you could upgrade the hosting plan .

Many webhoster offers more than enough bandwith.. and if you really reach the limit.. then there are easy solutions

yslow (firefox addon that can compress your site)
image hoster - host your images on a free image hoster
freehoster you can host flash css javascript files on a freehoster

I agree. Hosting should be about the company you are doing business with. Do you want a ton of bandwidth in a plan but the company is trying to push 1000 clients on a 100 mbps pipe? Do you want so much bandwidth that the company can't pay for what it provides and goes out of business? In many of these posts you see so many people looking for the lowest price, and I have to think they are not a real-business and instead people looking to spam or do other things. A real business would ask... where can I get the best value, and price is a part of the value. A hosting companies reputation, stability, datacenter, people, and equipment are also very important. I always laugh when a customer will tell me they have a 25 million dollar company and then come back and wants to spend $100 on a dedicated server with no redundancy. Like anything in life you get what you pay for and put into it. If you want to find the best host don't ask people you don't know on a forum, instead do some research yourself on the phone, BBB, references and determine who the best host is based on your needs. If you just need a cheap server for playing around then go with the cheap ones but if your running a company then good luck with that route.