Beware of ‘Unlimited’ term in web hosting industries

The term ‘unlimited’ is often heard with broadband offerings. In an unlimited broadband package, you get the option to download any amount of data (limited to the space of your hard disk), but with a limited speed. If you want to increase the speed of your broadband connection, you need to pay extra.

Nothing is unlimited. Do you have unlimited Money? Do you have unlimited disk space on your computer or laptop? No.. Everything has a Limit, like 80GB, 160GB or 250GB hard disk space on your computer or laptop.

Come to the point: can a hosting provider offer ‘unlimited space’ or ‘unlimited bandwidth’ for hosting a Web site? When the provider itself is limited by the space in his hosting server, how can he boast of offering ‘unlimited’ space to his clients? The term unlimited bandwidth does not make sense since they have purchased a limited speed package from the market. The bandwidth also varies from one provider to another depending on the technologies they are using; however, the fact is that there is a limit. Despite these limitations, there are many such unlimited offers flying around us, targeting the not-so-educated customers. Beware!

Everyday we listen to stories of innocent users falling victims to such things. If you ever happen to see such offer, take a deep look at their Terms of Service, especially for clauses that reads like “PROVIDER will not restrict the bandwidth used by the CLIENT as long as the use is in compliance with the policies set by the PROVIDER.” Following this, there will be a huge list of clauses, which a normal user will find difficult to gulp down.

By claiming unlimited bandwidth or unlimited space, the provider is limiting the service on other criteria. Experienced customers say they have been victims to such offers. One of the common traps in these offers is the restriction to number of files. Though the provider does not limit the user by disk space, there is restriction on the number of files uploaded! All of us know that it is impossible to create ‘limited’ number of files with ‘unlimited’ memory.

To make situations worse, some providers do not mention these limitations openly anywhere. The customer comes to know about it only when they activate their account – the restriction on file numbers will be mentioned in their file manager control panel. Some hosting provider claims that they offer unlimited space to its users, provided at least 90 percent of the Web pages are linked with files (images, flash, video, etc.). Web sites that have several unlinked files will face penalty or they may be deleted from the hosting server.

Similarly, in the unlimited bandwidth offer, the service provider limits the speed of the service. For example, one of these ‘unlimited bandwidth’ providers in the market say they offer 512 Kbps (connect speed) which is actually 64KBps (transfer speed). In some cases, the speed will be so slow that the Web page does not open in less than 20 sec. A normal user won’t wait for more than 20 sec for a Web page to open. Ultimately, this will affect the page ranking of the Web site.

Marissa Mayer of Google states “Speed Wins” you will gain an better understand of how important Google believe speed to be.

Google Vice President Marissa Mayer (Vice President, Search Products & User Experience) last spoke at the Web 2.0 Conference and offered tidbits on what Google has learned about speed, the user experience, and user satisfaction. Marissa started with a story about a user test they did. They asked a group of Google searchers how many search results they wanted to see.

Users asked for more, more than the ten results Google normally shows. More is more, they said.

So, Marissa ran an experiment where Google increased the number of search results to thirty. Traffic and revenue from Google searchers in the experimental group dropped by 20%. Ouch. Why? Why, when users had asked for this, did they seem to hate it?

After investigation Marissa explained that they found an uncontrolled variable. The page with 10 results took .4 seconds to generate. The page with 30 results took .9 seconds.

Half a second delay caused a 20% drop in traffic. Half a second delay killed user satisfaction.

This conclusion may be surprising — people notice a half second delay? — but Amazon.com had a similar experience. In A/B tests, they tried delaying the page in increments of 100 milliseconds and found that even very small delays would result in substantial and costly drops in revenue.

Being fast really matters. As Marissa said in her talk, “Users really respond to speed.”

Marissa went on to explain how the same effect was tested and observed on Google Maps. When Google trimmed their page load time down by about 30 percent, they experienced a 30 percent increase in requests. “It was almost proportional,” said Marissa. “If you make your site faster, you get back that in terms of increased usage almost immediately”.

It’s a situation between the devil and deep blue sea. The only option left for the distressed customer in this situation is to upgrade the service to a costlier plan or withdraw from their service – the last thing they would opt for, owing to the complexity of the process and the expenses involved in hiring a new provider.

It’s business after all. Customers have to be aware of such deals. The very fact that a concept like ‘unlimited bandwidth’ or ‘unlimited disk space’ does not exist reveals the extent of trickery spreading in today’s highly prospective hosting market. This is simply the fight for survival, but it’s clearly the violation of the minimum ethics that should be followed by a responsible provider.