One of the greatest problems in the web hosting industry arises from the competitive nature of the business. Over the years, web host companies have started to offer outrageous amounts of bandwidth and space that cannot be justified by the low price that they charge. Remember! If something seems to good to be true, 9 out of 10 times it is. The internet is littered with thousands of web hosts that oversell their services, frequently claiming to offer unlimited bandwidth and/or unlimited space.

What is overselling? Overselling occurs when a company with FIXED resources offers more than it can immediately supply to its customers in hope that each customer will not take full advantage of their purchase. In terms of web hosting, a company may offer each customer 500GB of storage space when it only really has 1000GB hard drive to share among 20 clients (sometimes a lot more!). Common sense goes a long way when researching for the right host, and it is wise to stay away from companies that offer an exorbitant amount of bandwidth or space.

Another important piece of information that most people usually refuse to look at is the Terms of Service (TOS) and the Acceptable User Policy (AUP) that a web host operates under. Most of us are used to simply clicking “I agree” whenever faced with a long list of legal ramblings over the web, but when choosing a web host it is very important to glance over these two documents. Many times, clever web hosts (the equivalent of a modern day “greasy salesperson”) will include within their legal documents specific restrictions on what you may use your hosting account for. Over the years, I have seen several that are quite outlandish.

For example, I once found a company offering unlimited web space and unlimited bandwidth that placed heavy restrictions on what its customers could host. Specifically, it stated that customers could not host large audio or video files, and that the server could not be used as any type of file or image host for the general public. After reading this I asked myself: How the heck am I supposed to utilize the “unlimited space” that I am rightfully paying for, if I cannot host any files over 10mb? Apparently, I could only upload HTML and PHP files that would hardly take up 100mb even if I purposely tried to make them bloated! Ridiculous.

The overall point of this article is simply that you should be cautious before buying web hosting from an internet company offering too much than it can handle. Unlimited services have a terrible track record in the web hosting industry, and if you stay away from them you will end up much happier then those who have suffered through a horrendous experience with one of these web hosts (like me!).

Many people who are new to the web often naively believe that the tricks used by bad companies in the physical world are not used by web host companies. When you take a quick look, many web hosts seem to provide similar services, but if you read more carefully you will see that they do not. Most web hosting companies have comparable hosting packages because they want to stay competitive, but if you take a sheet of paper and then write down what each company offers you may see some surprising differences.

The phrase, “You get what you pay for”, is especially true in the case of web hosting. There are thousands of companies that offer free hosting. That may sound great (it is for those who are just beginning), but this service should not be used by people who are serious about having a site. They don’t guarantee any percentage of uptime. For any serious webmaster you want a company that can promise an uptime of 95 percent or better.

You also should make a list of what you are looking for in a hosting company. How much disk space you are looking for and how much bandwidth you need. If you have a site that is gaining in popularity or you are hosting videos/games, then you will want a hosting company that can provide you with substantial bandwidth. Also, you would want a company that can accommodate you with server upgrades when/if you need them. When you are shopping for web hosting companies, don’t choose the first one you see because you think they are cheap or may suit your needs at the moment. Think about the future of your site and how much you think your site will grow!