What is Bandwidth?

This term is used to measure the amount of data being transferred from your web space. This does not directly relate to the number of ‘hits’ (views) a web site receives. One single hit to a web page that is 100 KB in size uses the same amount of bandwidth as 100 hits to a 1 KB page. And if you have more visitors you need more bandwidth. E.g. If you have on your hosting mp3 file with size 4MB and 1000 people download it, you need around 3.9 gigabytes for bandwidth. So choose wisely.

Term "unlimited bandwidth" or "unmetered bandwidth" as a major selling point of hosting plans. Hosts use false advertising because other hosts do it. They figure that the majority of consumers do not understand how little bandwidth they really need, and will never know that it is not really unlimited. Unlimited bandwidth is one of the biggest marketing ploys since ‘unlimited e-mails’! Web hosting companies that advertise "unlimited bandwidth" are, essentially, falsely advertising their through-put limitations. Some hosts outline in their Terms of Service that you can have unlimited bandwidth as long as you qualify for it. i.e. Your site must use less then, let’s say 100 GB of bandwidth in order to qualify for the unlimited bandwidth feature. As soon as your site goes over that limit they either start charging you for it or cut off your downloads altogether.

So you can stay away from host with unlimited bandwidth, consider that a warning sign that the web host in question may not be giving you a straight deal. But remember, that nothings is free and bandwidth is a commodity. So the simple truth is that bandwidth costs money.

Unlimited bandwidth or data transfer do not exist and they cannot be truly delivered, even though they are offered. Ask your host how limited is you unlimited bandwidth.