Earlier this month, I made a post about choosing a web host. A commenter made a great point by advising others to not go with hosts that promise unlimited bandwidth.

Many hosts oversell their shared hosting services. They load a too many websites onto a single server, which is what causes the websites to load slowly and other hosting errors. It can cause the server to become overloaded and crash frequently.

Many hosts offer shared plans with massive amounts of bandwidth and disk space. They do this because they know that most users look at those numbers to see how good of a deal it is. However, the hosts are offering more bandwidth and disk space then they have because they are counting on the fact that most users will only use a tiny amount of the disk space and bandwidth included in their plan.

Firstly, consider what it says about a company when the company makes promises it knows it cannot keep! Generally speaking, I recommend you do not work with companies that make promises they know that they cannot keep because that is a sign of dishonesty. More importantly, going onto these overloaded servers will make your website’s hosting slow and unreliable.

Don’t measure the value of a shared hosting plan by how much bandwidth and disk space it offers. If anything, promising high amounts in the plans is probably a sign of a company that is overselling and will provide even less than companies not promising so much.

I recommend looking at companies that guarantee a lot of uptime, such as 99%, and offer a refund of some sort if they do not provide it. However, if a company promises 100% uptime, that is almost certainly a lie. There is no way a company can guarantee 100% uptime. No matter how good the host is, sometimes servers will crash or have to be taken down for maintenance or a reboot. Additionally, I recommend only going with a host that has some sort of satisfaction guarantee or free trial in which you can get a full refund if you are not satisfied with the hosting after a certain amount of time.

Most importantly, research the host before buying hosting. Check for unbiased reviews from previous customers. Doing a simple search using a search engine such as Google can help you find out whether or not a certain company is offering a worthy product.