Is Unlimited REALLY Unlimited?

Unlimited space as we have discussed is NOT possible, Unlimited bandwidth is also limited by the speed of the connection as the speed is the rate over time.

Unmetered is possible.

The fact of the matter is, is that these words are marketing tools, they are not wrong in themselves, however; a host should consider very carefully if they do not state the fact that the word unlimited is in fact limited by speed and time in the adverts for service.

Thanks all for the comments but we are going round in circles now and the thread is getting mighty long! Nice though if you want to have your say!
 
Bikster.com said:
Unless the company is a hosting provider AND an ISP, and they use the ISP lines purely for the company, then it would be possible.
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No. It would not be possible. Period.
This is a very easy concept. Unlimited is NOT possible.
It wouldn't matter if the person owned every data center on the planet. It's NOT possible.
 
Unlimited space and bandwidth is not possible! Period! People think it is, but it is not. Go to any forum and the entire forum will tell you what HD is.

It is a shame that hosts offer such packages. I don't see why hosts like those can't just tell the truth, and offer realistic packages.
 
The funny thing is we site here under a banner by Hostgator offering just that! Unlimited Bandwidth and Diskspace! How wrong!
 
Unfortunately, unlimited offers of disk space and bandwidth are not going away, so the solution is how to combat this with realistic offers. Educating your prospects is key. Explain how unlimited offers are limited in fact by clauses in that providers Terms of Service or Acceptable Use Policies - in non technical terms. Use analogies to drive home the reality of their offer. Manage their expectations.
 
These offers are just to attract clients who are just starting out with their websites and don't know much. Most of the time it turns out great since they never even use more than 1GB of bandwidth/disk space anyways, so they don't have any problems.

However, there is always that client with a 40,000 member forum that believes these UNLIMITED hosts will be able to support their needs without a doubt... :rolleyes: Some even move away from a dedicated server to a shared account! Thinking they will save $100's a month and then find out they are suspended the first day.
 
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Just want to add some comment :)
People like to think that they've got no limitation
For some "Unlimited" hosting plans are really unlimited :) because they use very little server's resources :)
 
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Great balls of fire-9 pages of this!

WOW I can't believe this is 9 pages long and still at the top of the food chain...we all know it's a gimmick. Just like 100GB disk and 1,000 GB transfer for $1.99

I have had maybe up to 6 or 7 customers ask me about unlimited over the years and I tell everyone the same thing -this is how to answer the question if someone asks. Give them a link to 4 or 5 server providers. Tell them to see if any offer a server with "unlimited" disk space, (don't send them to someone who offers unmetered because that will confuse them. Un-metered can be honestly done...you get a pipe so big and you can pump all the data that pipe can pump in a month. Kind of like buying a 2" water line or a 4" water line and getting all the water you can get for $X a month however some providers don't do it honestly and often those who do are on low quality BW providers.)....Too confusing for regular hosting customers.

But when they see the server offers they will see people sell disks similar to what they see in a PC --250GB, 500GB, 750GB, 1TB etc. nothing unlimited about that and they will see most server providers do 1,000 GB, 1,500 GB or 2,000 GB bandwidth. No unlimited there.
So where could I buy unlimited to offer to you?

That's extreme cases, usually I just ask them to go to Best Buy or Newegg and get me an unlimited hard drive and I'll pay for it... just because I want to see one...they usually laugh.

They really know there is no such thing.

But people make irrational decisions all the time.
How many people get married because of great pre-marital sex & good looks or he makes a lot of money & how many divorces are there because that flame may burn out and wrinkles are a fact of life (no matter what all those cremes promise women) and he get's laid off? ...They overlooked the fact that they basically only had that one thing in common (and forgot the worse part of "for better or worse").

I could go on & on, humans make stupid-irrational -"knew better but did it anyway-sounded too good to be true or no thought about it--could afford the new car payments forgot the insurance" type decisions ALL day every day... even down to I know this is bad for me but I'm going to eat it, take it, drink it, or whatever anyway.
And they can be really smart people; like Bill & Monica or a Senator or CEO caught taking kick-backs when they already had a jet, just wanted a bigger one. Remember Enron? :smash:

GM is broke not because of cars but because all those home loans offered at outrageous deals were through Ditech (commercials every 20 minutes-remember and a division of GMAC-in the tiny fine print) car makers burned on bad home loans when they should have been making better cars-now we get to give them the "bail out". :uhh:

So why a 9 page thread like somebody is surprised human beings will fall for the irrational "unlimited"?... it's human nature . :confused:
 
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New Idea said:
WOW I can't believe this is 9 pages long and still at the top of the food chain...we all know it's a gimmick. Just like 100GB disk and 1,000 GB transfer for $1.99

I have had maybe up to 6 or 7 customers ask me about unlimited over the years and I tell everyone the same thing -this is how to answer the question if someone asks. Give them a link to 4 or 5 server providers. Tell them to see if any offer a server with "unlimited" disk space, (don't send them to someone who offers unmetered because that will confuse them. Un-metered can be honestly done...you get a pipe so big and you can pump all the data that pipe can pump in a month. Kind of like buying a 2" water line or a 4" water line and getting all the water you can get for $X a month however some providers don't do it honestly and often those who do are on low quality BW providers.)....Too confusing for regular hosting customers.

But when they see the server offers they will see people sell disks similar to what they see in a PC --250GB, 500GB, 750GB, 1TB etc. nothing unlimited about that and they will see most server providers do 1,000 GB, 1,500 GB or 2,000 GB bandwidth. No unlimited there.
So where could I buy unlimited to offer to you?

That's extreme cases, usually I just ask them to go to Best Buy or Newegg and get me an unlimited hard drive and I'll pay for it... just because I want to see one...they usually laugh.

They really know there is no such thing.

But people make irrational decisions all the time.
How many people get married because of great pre-marital sex & good looks or he makes a lot of money & how many divorces are there because that flame may burn out and wrinkles are a fact of life (no matter what all those cremes promise women) and he get's laid off? ...They overlooked the fact that they basically only had that one thing in common (and forgot the worse part of "for better or worse").

I could go on & on, humans make stupid-irrational -"knew better but did it anyway-sounded too good to be true or no thought about it--could afford the new car payments forgot the insurance" type decisions ALL day every day... even down to I know this is bad for me but I'm going to eat it, take it, drink it, or whatever anyway.
And they can be really smart people; like Bill & Monica or a Senator or CEO caught taking kick-backs when they already had a jet, just wanted a bigger one. Remember Enron? :smash:

GM is broke not because of cars but because all those home loans offered at outrageous deals were through Ditech (commercials every 20 minutes-remember and a division of GMAC-in the tiny fine print) car makers burned on bad home loans when they should have been making better cars-now we get to give them the "bail out". :uhh:

So why a 9 page thread like somebody is surprised human beings will fall for the irrational "unlimited"?... it's human nature . :confused:
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Great post and I agree with you 100%. What get's me is why everyone seems to think that a host offering unlimited isn't offering a quality service. Unlimited is a marketing ploy, but it doesn't mean that they are stuffing servers with 500 accounts. I offered a few of my local customer unlimited hosting. I asked them "how much storage and bandwidth do you need?" they of course didn't know, so I just told them I wouldn't limit it but if it gets too high in the future we'll have to reevaluate things a bit.

Nothing wrong with that right? I mean, it is on a small scale with much more personal attention than large hosts.
 
The service offered is irrelevant are far as I'm concerned.

Call it a gimmick if you like but you are wrong.
It is a lie. Pure and simple.

Some people choose to do business with liars. I would not, regardless of the service offered.
 
Yes there is no such thing as unlimited space. It's all virtual. Webhosts do this by adding more space when their existing storage space is almost all used up. They don't buy a 100,000,000 TB HDD in the first place, well there isn't one anyway. But they can increase the space as their customer storage span builds up.
 
tim84 said:
Yes there is no such thing as unlimited space. It's all virtual. Webhosts do this by adding more space when their existing storage space is almost all used up. They don't buy a 100,000,000 TB HDD in the first place, well there isn't one anyway. But they can increase the space as their customer storage span builds up.
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There is nothing "virtual" about a hard drive.
It is a physical entity with physical limitations.
You could add every available hard drive in the world to a single server and the space would not be unlimited.
Why? Because it's impossible. It's a lie. Period.
 
Blue said:
There is nothing "virtual" about a hard drive.
It is a physical entity with physical limitations.
You could add every available hard drive in the world to a single server and the space would not be unlimited.
Why? Because it's impossible. It's a lie. Period.
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I wasn't referring the drives as virtual, but the services. If I am a customer I wouldn't care how many hard drives my web host has or how big the drives are. All I want is I am free to use as much as space as I like and never get emails that warn me of using too much space and other crap. That's all I care.
 
All I want is I am free to use as much as space as I like and never get emails that warn me of using too much space and other crap. That's all I care.
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And the majority of clients never will have any problems. The ones that do are generally those that depend heavily on their site for revenue.
 
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