Web Hosting Tutorial Series

Video #7: Read the contract when considering an unlimited hosting plan

You can never be too careful when shopping online. When searching for the perfect web hosting provider, take the time to look closely at every detail including the terms of service before agreeing to any account. Precaution will land you an honest and reliable company with reasonable limits.

The Internet is full of web hosting providers that have pieced together enticing offers that truly seem too good to be true. What you need to realize is these companies are masterminds for putting together plans that are irresistible on the surface, but end up being nothing more than a marketing ploy to trick customers.

By now you have certainly run into that web hosting provider that is feeding up to 500 gigabytes of space and 2000 gigabytes of bandwidth for just $3.95 a month. Or better yet, an unlimited amount of space and bandwidth for just $6.95 a month. Just remember, if it seems too good to be true it might be. Conversely, there are some hosts that are still able to provide a good product at a very affordable price while offering unlimited web hosting.

Providers are capable of offering these remarkable pitches because of overselling. Companies are well aware of the fact that most customers will use very little space and bandwidth. And for those that do, the company may or may not be able to afford the costs. If they can, you are fine and dandy. The problem is more often than not these companies cannot afford the high costs.

These are the companies you need to be wary of as they will often have a plethora of hidden terms of service agreement stating you can only use a certain percentage of your space or bandwidth. Their whole goal is to get you to buy into the plan without realizing your account could be suspended for abusing the limits.

Another thing to keep an eye on is poor customer service as this is a key attribute of over-sellers. If the company is a scam, sadly your web sites and downloads will face slow run-times and may even go down from time to time. This is when you know it is time to head elsewhere.

It is upsetting to see the industry turn to this as overselling has become a real problem over the past five or six years. There are still large hosting providers that have an honest reputable image they have built up over the years. But with these companies in constant competition with each other, the average space and bandwidth limits have skyrocketed thus making it incredibly difficult for the legitimate companies to compete.

As with a lot of things in the economy today, hard drive and internet transit prices have plummeted. However, this still compares little to the number of rate hosting offerings have gone up.

The bottom line is you can never be too careful when shopping online. When searching for the perfect web hosting provider, take the time to look closely at every detail including the terms of service before agreeing to any account. Precaution will land you an honest and reliable company with reasonable limits.

Up Next:

Learn about the consequences of exceeding web hosting disk space or bandwidth quotas.