In common sense it's impossible to offer unlimited space or bandwidth to anyone, but the term "unlimited" is now widely referred to as one being able to use without being limited at a fixed quantum. Obviously, every web hosts are not expecting every client to use as much as the server's maximum resources, if ironically (not impossible) one client does have about a total of few hundred GBs of disk space, I suppose that the host is ultimately responsible to provide them as stated in their hosting description.
I want to say thanks to saptakmandal because what he write is totally true, and this is the end for all the cheapest web hosting in this world but the worst thing is that people search on google, regularly, for this kind of providers, they scrub entire forums to find the cheapest one, like for $1m, for unlimited resources and this is provoking an huge injury on not so famous hosting companies. I (but don't take it as advertisement) receive, every time I am going to close a contract for hosting, a typical ticket/email/chat of users that got scammed by hosting companies: Unlimited doesn't exist, it's like the classic "Eat as you can buffet" - Some restaurant label it as "Unlimited Buffet" - Yes, you pay a modest fee, then you'll eat how much you can but when the buffet arrive to the end... you are not going to eat more. Not at all. Now, if there are 5 person on that buffet, you can eat a lot. If there are 200 persons, I bet you are not going to eat more than in a regular restaurant, just a first, a second, drink and dessert. Same for hosting, yes... exactly the same. But with Restaurant we are used to listen the owner saying "Ok, for tonight is everything, we finished. Good night!" - Then you need to see who is going to administer an hosting, and maybe you don't know that many TOS are just copy-and-paste-without-knowledge from other hosts so they just allow people to signup, they oversell, then they don't monitor the clients usage of the subscribed package and guess what! Disk space 0byte available. Did you know what happen? Probably the server will go offline because Apache is requesting more memory and there's no way to create swap space, also reaching the server via SSH will be useless because the service can't start so things are two, maybe three: 1) If the server is in Colocation, the owner must go there and work directly with the machine, can restore the service, remove the abusing customers and learning the lesson. 2) If the server is property of a datacenter (more common) the hosting owner need to call the datacenter, paying a lot of fees allowing the server to return operational but in the meantime the server is almost one week offline or the owner don't want to pay the DC fees to return operational and he simply disappear. But, surprise surprise, the point 3. 3) Someone use a reseller/master/alpha reseller account! Easy to manage, an automatic cash generator... if you know how to use it but not to call yourself an hosting! Abused anyway and many super cheap hosting use this kind of accounts and happen (commonly, very commonly) that the machine owners get tired of non competencies, tired of abuses, tired of 5000 clients on 250gb shared hard disk... that they suspend the reseller account - aka the cheap hosting will disappear. Mmm... ok, I believe I said too much. The "hosting" business can be really gold-pot but unluckily there are many kids and many not competent owner that transformed this business in an hell. Morale della Favola (Moral for this Tale): Spend time searching before buying a $2/m unlimited everything hosting because unlimited it's a fairy tale that can become an ugly nightmare. Sorry for my english and sorry for my long fairy tale.
I know some resellers are better than the actual web host because if their intention is good then they will provide you actual personal support .In most cases large web hosts cannot provide personal support because of their large customer base .So if a person got a reseller account which costs around 50$ per month and he is selling 20 accounts at a rate of 5 $ .He will earn 50$ per month.and that is okey . BUt most resellers sell almost 300-400 accounts per reseller account and after taking your money they will just disappear . As described by YoGem..
I think that depends on the each particular web hosting company. I would not say about such facts in general.
Of course, WebIntellects - Rob is right that's why I say that the most important thing is to know a bit of story about the hosting you are going to buy! I will prefer a 2+ years old Hosting instead of a two months webhost. And look I started with a reseller account that I still use for my old clients, now I have also VPS and dedicated servers but the master reseller account that I have is still there, working!
We killed a couple of all-you-can-eat virtual shared hosts back when our web traffic was really very low. We moved to a better host (pair) that offered less stuff for more $$ and were very very happy with it for a number of years. We eventually clogged up our account on that host - it got so slow the sites were starting to fray at the edges - and are just moving to a VPS now. But that last host we were with was very very good for a reasonable traffic website.
There's a lot of useful information in the original post. This has happened to many: They set up a blog and choose an "unlimited" webhost to be prepared for traffic growth. The blog gets popular, they hit the CPU limit, the account gets suspended. I'd also recommend to avoid the "unlimited" webhosts. Obviously, there have to be limits. Providers who don't limit bandwidth and disk space for marketing reasons have other limits in place, like the aforementioned CPU limit.
the websites that offer unlimited are doing something that is often reffered to as over-selling, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overselling#Web_hosting)
resellers does not means the worst. sometimes they do offer some interesting offer.But i personally suggest you to go for a popular host only after talking to them. Your website is not for 1 month .so if you want it to be alive for years please do ask them about each complicated terms they wrote in their tos. Recently i come to know that host gators 100$ adword coupon is for us,uk and canada only ..So if u are \there for a coupon be careful.
Well well very interesting stuff to read... ok unlimited bandwidth really exist..You will not believe but it really does. For example the reseller or hoster or what ever you want to call have a server with 1Mbps of network speed this works out to 320GB a month. If the hoster give to the user unlimited bandwidth he will makes sure that users will not waste (YES IT TRULY MAKES SURE). So, in another words unlimited bandwidth is a truly marketing trick with the limited time. I mean is the hoster is really and truly busy getting service to the top quality level I do not see any problem about it. Anyway you can notice and let's face it that many web hosting companies do offer everything unlimited just pay the money and we will talk about it later on (as you will notice some sarcasm in their TOS). Some of the companies limit CPU usage that will gives the opportunity to provide 5 x unlimited bandwidth hosting, because with low threshold of CPU your web hosting account will consume a little peace of bandwidth... So everyone can provide unlimited bandwidth the only thing you need to understand (as the customer) that you have limited connection and you will not be able to up/down data more than X amount of GB per month.
@saptakmandal Glad that you agree with me. Anyway, what have you got common with web hosting and what made you to write this article?
@casius I was searching for a decent host who will at least notify me before suspending my account for over using cpu limits.And soon i am going to a host a review website so i contacted all popular webhost and discussed about their tos in details .
That is major problem even with big web hosting. The most important thing that big web hosting services do not care about you in general. If you talk with one guy over their support they will say "Yes, we will surely notice you if something will be wrong", but after a few moments your account gets suspended and you can't get any explanation from them why it has been suspended. It's really very tricky to have a decent hosting that is friendly to you.
They must know that they are talking with human.Not a bot .Most of the time they like to use pre written answers .That not good . @casious Can i pm you about your free host ?