Choosing a Web Host: Beware Marketing Tricks
Web hosting market is very competitive. The competition is
becoming more and more aggressive every day. Web hosts are
offering wide range of attractive plans. Some web hosts use
marketing tricks to attract (or sometimes deceive) customers.
How to avoid this situation?
Read Terms and Conditions A lot of customers ignore
reading the details of host's terms and conditions. They depend
on the brief and attractive write up of the hosting plan. Most
web hosts are able to deceive customers because of this. To
avoid being tricked or deceived by these marketing tricks, take
your time reading the terms and conditions carefully.
Unlimited Space and Bandwidth A lot of hosts offer
"unlimited" space and/or bandwidth in their plans. This is the
most widely used marketing trick. In reality, there is no such
"unlimited" space or bandwidth. Any person with a little
background about web hosting must know that a web host is
actually a computer, similar to the PC you are using now. No
matter how powerful the web host is, its hard drive space is
limited, and it can only transfer limited amount of data during
a given period of time.
Whenever you see a hosting plan offering "unlimited" features
you must remember it's not real. This, however, does not always
mean that those hosts are bad. First thing you should do is to
read their terms and condition. If they claim they are providing
"unlimited" features without any conditions then avoid
registering with them, they are lying to you.
Most hosts that offer "unlimited" space and bandwidth will put
restrictions on some file types and sizes. For example, they
will disallow you to put video, audio or executable files on
your site. In other cases they will allow any file type given
it's not exceeding certain size (e.g. 500KB). Sometimes they use
a generic condition to prevent consuming their resources. An
example condition will be: "we may find a customer to be using
server resources to such an extent that he or she may jeopardize
server performance and resources for other customers. In such
instances, we reserve the right to suspend that site
immediately".
Unmetered Space and Bandwidth The term "unmetered" is
closer to reality. They imply to you that the offered
space/bandwidth is limited but not watched. This is, however,
not 100% true. It's just another way to attract you to their
plans. In most cases terms and conditions will be more or less
similar to those of "unlimited" space and bandwidth.
Unlimited Websites Or sometimes it's called "unlimited
domains". This probably is the most honest marketing phrase,
although it's sometimes confuses na