Whether you are looking for powerful web hosting (Opens in a new tab) A provider to start a website or looking to switch your current web hosting solution to a better one, you will have to consider a couple of things.
For starters, you’ll want to choose a great web hosting company with a proven track record and without any major security incidents in the past. Next, you’ll want to have a wide variety of web hosting solutions to choose from – from simple shared hosting (Opens in a new tab) to a virtual private server (VPS (Opens in a new tab)) hosting solutions.
When choosing a web hosting plan, you will need to consider the value for money that it provides as well as the resources that you will have at your disposal. They are the number of CPU cores, amount of RAM, SSD storage space in gigabytes, and available bandwidth.
The last of these, bandwidth, can be viewed in terms of traffic (the maximum number of visitors per month) or terabytes of data transferred. Also, although bandwidth isn’t one of the first things that comes to mind when you’re looking for a web hosting solution, it is critical to your site’s speed performance and customer satisfaction.
In this guide, we’ll explain what bandwidth is and what metered, unmeasured, and unlimited types of bandwidth really mean.
What is bandwidth in web hosting?
In general, the amount of available bandwidth corresponds to the maximum amount of data that can be transferred in a predetermined period of time – usually megabytes or gigabytes per second – megabytes per second or gigabits per second. The higher the Mbps, or gigabit per second, speed, the greater the amount of data that can be transferred—sending and receiving—at the same time.
In terms of web hosting, the amount of available bandwidth is the maximum amount of data your server can transfer each time a user tries to access it. For example, if the hosting plan you choose promises 100Mbps bandwidth, that means your server can transfer up to 100Mbps of data — fast, but not lightning fast.
In simpler terms, bandwidth is a combination of speed (megabytes or gigabytes) and time (in seconds), and you need it to satisfy your visitors. The more bandwidth you have, the more people can visit your site and the less valuable traffic you lose.
What is the rated bandwidth?
Simply put, metered bandwidth is a type of bandwidth connection that is monitored and metered by its provider – i.e. your web host.
This means that you will pay up front for a certain amount of bandwidth that you plan to use – it should be measured in gigabytes or terabytes per month. For example, if you purchased a web hosting plan that supports up to 100GB of bandwidth per month, that would work out to 10,000 to 20,000 visitors per month – good for a small to medium sized site. So, that 100GB is the upper limit of the bandwidth you are allowed to use per month.
If you exceed the upper limit, three scenarios can play out, all of which could be harmful to business. At first, your site will simply stop working and you will have to contact your service provider’s support team to solve this problem. The second and third scenarios are pretty much the same: one involves paying extra for the extra data you used and the other involves a web hosting plan that automatically upgrades to one that supports more bandwidth usage.
The metered type of bandwidth is best for small and medium-sized businesses that don’t have global ambitions in mind and plan to use a single site. Also, you will work with personal online projects such as blogs.
What is unlimited bandwidth?
If unlimited bandwidth sounds too good to be true, that’s because it really is. The first thing you should know about him is that despite what his name suggests, he’s actually surprisingly limited.
Firstly, the speed is limited – so if you’re hoping to get “unlimited speed”, you’d better guess again. However, this is not your fault, as some web hosting companies are not upfront about it.
In a sense, unlimited bandwidth is a lot like metered bandwidth but with a higher cap that is sometimes cleverly hidden in the SLA (Opens in a new tab) (Sudan Liberation Army). For example, if your hosting has a bandwidth metered data cap of 100GB, that would be close to 500GB – remember it’s not unlimited after all.
The main reason companies don’t bother telling you this up front is because they assume you won’t use more than 500GB – or the amount specified in the SLA.
So, don’t forget to check the small print before signing up for unlimited bandwidth hosting.
What is Unmetered Bandwidth?
Unmetered bandwidth is more true to the term “unlimited bandwidth” than actual bandwidth that is not limited at all. With uncapped bandwidth hosting, you can use any amount of data you want – the amount of data transfer is not monitored and there are no limits associated with it.
It also means that you can be confident that you won’t suddenly be charged if you go over the upper limit, and that your hosting plan won’t be upgraded to a more expensive plan behind your back. So, if you own a site that has an increasing amount of data being moved around, this shouldn’t turn into an issue.
So, one of the advantages of using uncapped bandwidth hosting is that you get a completely flat price for speed – so, you don’t have to worry about price spikes. If you choose a hosting package that allows 50mbps, your speed will be limited to 50mbps, and that’s it. Also, you will not need to worry about data exhaustion again.
Fixed price for a set speed – This is the essence of unmetered bandwidth hosting. The amount of data your server transmits is not your concern.
Scale vs. Uncalculated vs. Unlimited: Which is Best for You?
While metered bandwidth is easy to understand, unlimited bandwidth and unmetered bandwidth hosting tend to get mixed up — and companies are partly to blame for this. Since we’ve already sorted out what these are, let’s also make it clear which one is the best out of the bunch.
Well, there is no direct answer to this dilemma as it depends on your professional needs as well as the amount of money you are willing to invest in your web hosting solution.
If you run a personal blog or small business website, metered bandwidth may be the best option for you. However, if you own a business website that consumes a huge amount of traffic – such as an e-commerce platform (Opens in a new tab)Or an online news or gaming site – unrestricted bandwidth is your best bet. However, be prepared to pay a pretty penny for it.
Given the term “unlimited bandwidth” is misleading, don’t sign up for anything before you check out the mini version. It’s a lot like metered bandwidth hosting but it’s less clear about it.