Unlimited Space Web Hosting - Do These Exist in Reality?

t is a sad truth to know that there is not a thing called as Unlimited Web Hosting. People with experience in hosting know that this term is given only for sake. The web space costs big bucks and how do you think that anyone can put a price tag over "unlimited" web space? Even the top companies today don't hesitate to use the word "unlimited" as a promotional jig.

Naturally, when a user sees the word unlimited, he thinks that if he buys that, there will be no future problems for his site. But when you analyze the terms and agreements of the website which offers unlimited web hosting, you will come to know that the unlimited space is only close to 20GB.

Most of the amateur web developers who buy these unlimited web hosting services use only a limited amount of space and they are still unaware of the truth. These fraudulent companies are relying on the naivety of these web developers and one day this sad truth will come back to hit them right on their face.

Although, these companies are cheating by marketing the term unlimited, they are not completely robbing you. Most companies tend to keep to their promise and they try to keep their word by making storage as maximum as possible. They also offer increased customer care for their customers and they offer other incentives like free e-mail addresses and unlimited traffic. These companies are not being entirely honest with you but at the same time, they are not trying to steal anything from you.

So, just make sure to read the Terms and Conditions of these companies properly before registering and make sure that they have concluded about what they mean by the word "unlimited". If they still stand by the literal meaning of "unlimited", the company might be a fake. If you still don't believe it, then take a look for yourself. Big giants like Yahoo! and Google are investing heavily in packages with high bandwidth and storage capacity so if there actually was a thing called as "unlimited hosting", why are they doing all these? They could have hosted their data in these magical unlimited servers rather than spending their money in getting larger servers.

Even after this, if you feel that an unlimited server actually exists, you are clearly delusional. So, rather than going for unlimited plans, create an estimate of the traffic and storage you will get per month and go for simple dedicated servers which are much more safe and reliable.

Free Web Hosting Vs Paid Web Hosting

Free hosting DOES have its set of advantages, such as:

1. For one, you don't have to pay for it. This could turn out to be the biggest criterion for most people.

2. There are no requirements needed. You don't have to know any HTML coding too, since most free hosts offer "What You See Is What You Get" editors to help you out. Sites like Geocities offer a range of template designs and codes to kick start your site.

3. It's the best way to try out web hosting. You can learn the basics of building a site and get thorough with the simple things before moving on.

Think free is the way to go? Wait till you hear the disadvantages:

1. Ads, Ads, Ads: Some companies offer pseudo-free hosting. What they don't charge you to build a website; they recover by putting loads of advertisements on your website. They may be in the form of links, pop ups or banners. They may also give you restricted features to tempt you to opt for a paid plan.

2. Support: Many hosting companies openly declare that they don't support their free services. They put all their resources into the paid versions.

3. You cannot hold them responsible for non-reliability or inconsistency. They put all their bandwidth on paid services and don't care much about free services.

4. It becomes increasingly frustrating when you require advanced options that are not offered for free, like MySQL databases.

5. Some may offer free hosting once you purchase the domain. So you pay for the domain, and so it's not free after all.

On the other hand, paid websites take care of all the disadvantages of free web hosting and offer you top-notch services, and they put up a price for it. The major disadvantage of paid hosting is that it may or may not go well with your budget. But rest assured you are promised a hassle-free hosting, and can hold the host responsible for incompetence.

Recommendations:

Keeping in mind speed, amount of space, scripting options bandwidth, reliability, forced ads, etc, the following are our recommended hosting sites that offer you the best deal:

Top Free Web Hosting:

1. Geocities: One of the oldest and most trusted by users.
2. FortuneCity: Been a hit among free web hosts for a long time.
3. Jumpline: Up to 10,000 MB space.
4. AwardSpace: Extended scripting options.
5. Trap 17: A good trade off in all areas.

Top Paid Web Hosting

1. IPowerWeb: Assortment of deluxe packages to suit everyone's needs.
2. Bluehost: Enhanced multimedia features at affordable prices.
3. HostGator: A huge range of control panel options.
4. DreamHost: An unlikely contender but a hit among many users because of its flexibility.
5. Media Temple: A great site but charges above 20$/month.

find great great web hosting service : Web Hosting

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A Beginner's Guide to Web Hosting

What is web hosting? Whenever you visit a website, what you see on your web browser is essentially just a web page that is downloaded from the web server onto your web browser. In general, a web site is made up of many web pages. And a web page is basically composed of texts and graphic images. All these web pages need to be stored on the web servers so that online users can visit your website.

Therefore, if you plan to own a new website, you will need to host your website on a web server. When your website goes live on the web server, online users can then browse your website on the Internet. Company that provides the web servers to host your website is called web hosting providers.

A well-established web hosting provider sometimes hosts up to thousands of websites. For example, iPowerWeb is a popular web hosting company that hosts more than 300,000 websites. For that reason, a web hosting company need many web servers (essentially, these are computers) to 'store' the website. And all these web servers are connected to the Internet through high speed Internet connection and housed in a physical building called 'data center'. In order to guarantee all the web servers are safe, secure and fully operational all time, a data center is a physically secure 24/7 environment with fire protection, HVAC temperature control, virus detections, computer data backup, redundant power backup and complete disaster recovery capabilities.

What are the different types of web hosting?
There are different kinds of web hosting companies out there with different characteristics. The main types of web hosts can be organized into the following categories:

Shared Hosting

In shared hosting (also known as virtual web hosting), many websites are sharing the space on the same physical web servers. Depending on the web host, a physical web server can hosts a few hundred to even thousand of different websites at one time. You may wonder if a physical web server is shared by so many websites, will the performance of the web server deteriorate? In fact, web servers are usually equipped with high-end powerful computer, therefore it can support up to a certain number of websites without any problem. But when the web server is overloaded and exceeded the reasonable number of websites that it can support, then you will begin to experience a slower response from the web server.

However, a reputable and experience web hosting provider will constantly monitor the performance of the web server and will add new web servers when deem necessary without sacrificing the benefits of the website owners. Since a physical web server is shared (diskspace, computer processing power, bandwidth, memory) by many websites, the web hosting provider can therefore afford to offer a lower hosting price. For the same reason, websites on the shared hosting would have to accept slower server response time. Typically, shared hosting plans start at $5 - $20 per month.

Dedicated Hosting

In contrast to shared hosting, dedicated hosting assigned a specific web server to be used only by one customer. Since a dedicated web server is allocated to only a single customer, the customer has the option to host single/multiple web sites, modify the software configuration, handle greater site traffic and scale the bandwidth as necessary. Therefore, dedicated hosting commands a higher premium and typically starts at $50 per month and can range up to $200 - $500 per month. As a result, dedicated hosting is regularly used by high traffic and extremely important website.

Co-location hosting

In dedicated hosting, the web server belongs to the web hosting providers and customers only rent the web server during the hosting period. While in co-location hosting, the customer owns the web server hardware and only housed their web server within the web hosting provider's secure data center. In this way, the customer has full control over their web server and simultaneously benefit from the 24/7 server monitoring and maintenance provided by the secure data center. Depending on the monthly bandwidth and rack space required, typically co-location hosting range from $500 - $1000 per month.

Reseller hosting

In reseller hosting, a web hosting provider offers web server storage to third-party (i.e. reseller) at a discount price, who then resell the web server storage to their customers. Typically, resellers are web consultants including web designers, web developers, or system integration company who resell the web hosting as a add-on service to complement their other range of services. Commonly, resellers can receive up to 50 percent discount on the price of a hosting account from the web hosting provider. And resellers are allowed to decide its own pricing structure and even establish its own branding (in other words, reseller setup its web hosting company on the Internet and start selling web hosting plans under its brand).

To the reseller's customers, the reseller is the web host provider. In cases when technical problems such as server down and access problem arise, the resellers will have to correspond directly with the actual web host provider. Due to the communication process taken place between customer to reseller and from reseller to actual web host provider and back and forth, undoubtedly problems will take longer time to resolve. Unless you are running your own personal website or non-profit website and willing to take the risks of poor support from the reseller, reseller hosting is generally not a good option.

However, the web hosting market today is filled with resellers that sell lowest price web hosting plans. So, how do you tell between a genuine web hosting provider from a reseller? You don't judge by the availability of toll-free number alone because some web hosting providers even offer their resellers with their own toll-free number for co-branded technical support. When the reseller's customer calls the number for technical support, the web host uses the reseller's name so the customer thinks that the support is coming from the reseller directly. Likewise, don't be fooled by the professional designed website alone because it is extremely easy to create a professional looked business website nowadays.

In general, resellers can be distinguished from their hosting price and company information. In most cases, a genuine web hosting provider has solid company information such as iPowerWeb.com where they publish its financial background, offices and data centers. In contrast, resellers usually do not have solid company background (here is just an example out of thousands out there). Moreover, the hosting price by resellers is generally below $5 per month. So, why settle for resellers when you can find genuine web hosting providers offering superb quality web hosting at the hosting price ranging between $7 - $10.

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