| the web hosting plans available today claim to offer | | | | makes extensive use of databases and/or server |
| unlimited disk space and data transfer (also known as | | | | side processing, it will bring a shared server to its |
| bandwidth), but do they really? In a nutshell, yes. | | | | knees in a hurry, perhaps even crashing it during peak |
| Back in the early days of web hosting, hard drives | | | | times. |
| were relatively small and bandwidth was expensive | | | | I host a number of websites on a "Reseller Account" |
| for the hosting companies to purchase. Therefore, | | | | which for all practical purposes is simply a collection of |
| they put strict limits on the amount of those | | | | sites running on a shared server. My sites all run very |
| resources that each customer could use every | | | | well, even though several of them are pretty large |
| month. But in today's world massive hard drives are | | | | and receive a lot of traffic. |
| the norm and bandwidth is a lot less expensive | | | | So while disk space and bandwidth are indeed |
| thanks to upgrades in the infrastructure of the | | | | unlimited, you'll still need to keep an eye on how |
| Internet "backbone". | | | | much CPU and RAM usage your website consumes |
| This is great news for you because you can now | | | | and consider upgrading to either a VPS or a |
| host as many pages, files, images and such as you | | | | Dedicated Server at the appropriate time. Until then, |
| wish without limitation. There is one caveat however. | | | | just enjoy the low cost of a shared web hosting |
| The amount of strain your site puts on the server is | | | | plan. You can always upgrade later when the need |
| NOT unlimited. If you have a really busy site that | | | | arises. |