Hello Mates, I have seen many web-hosting service provider who provides unlimited domains hosting, unlimited disk space and bandwidth at very low rates. May be in future i am planning to start my own web-hosting biz but i am not able to understand, how much bandwidth and disk space normally each account would consume? On an average what do you think each customer would use in terms of disk space and bandwidth??? Thanks in advance Robert
Unlimited space and bandwidth offers is marketing trick. Nothing more. Be accurate with such offers especially if you have huge web site.
Each host will be different, but if you offer unlimited everything for very little cost then you will attract the customers you deserve i.e. those who will either be new to hosting and don't know any better, or those who constantly chase cheap deals in the perpetual hope that "this one will be different", or those who are "experts" and have been with lots of hosts but these hosts have been liars, useless, gone out of business, had poor support, or rubbish servers, and who can't understand why their forum with 10,000 members consuming 1000GB of data transfer and using 20GB of database space can't run on a shared hosting plan. They will be the ones who actually expect you to provide unlimited everything including unlimited resources, 24/7 telephone support answered within 10 seconds, fast servers, will demand that you fix their scripting issues because "it worked at my last host so it must be your servers!", and all because they are paying you the princely sum of $3 per month. Then, when you realize that supporting customers who take up lots of support time, or who use excessive CPU, RAM and I/O resources, or who upload scripts that max out the CPU, or who actually consume lots of diskpace and bandwidth, are uneconomical and causing you to lose money and you're better off without them, they will trash your name all over various forums because your support is lousy, your servers can't cope with 5000 visitors, and complain that you are a scam and the worse host ever. Be warned. Price your plans appropriately. Most people know there are limits somewhere so make them clear. Be upfront, be honest, do a good job and you'll keep customers for life. If you're in it for a fast buck then don't expect to last much longer than a few months at best. And if you're wondering if that really does happen, then all I can say is, "Duh!"
Our corporate brand runs several entities including one with limited space and bandwidth and one with unlimited space and bandwidth. They both encounter the same problems with users using CPU and memory like it's a dedicated server. That will be a problem no matter the allocations you set aside poorly made PHP scripts are poorly made if the user has 1MB space or unlimited space. Now for the average user allocation. If we're selling 3GB space or unlimited space they all seem to use around the same amounts. Usually less than 1GB of space. So the user ends up paying saying two to three times as much and they use the same amount of space. The same can be said about bandwidth. So basically you have the majority of users who use next to nothing and a few who try to use more space and bandwidth. In the end it all works out due to the fact you're playing the percentages. It's difficult to play the percentages though with a single server that is one thing to keep in mind. It's a lot easier to do the unlimited model when you have thousands of servers at your disposal. It's much easier to deal with the fact one user is using 100GB of space.
Based on my web hosting company,many of my client only using 10GB of space and around 300GB bandwidth per month.