Before you start looking for the web hosting plan, it’s better for you to figure out what kind of features that you need or how much you’re willing to pay for it. If you already get it, move on and purchase the web hosting.

One of the most popular webs hosting type is the shared web hosting. It’s because the shared web hosting is cheaper, affordable for small business or people who just starting an online business, and they could upgrade the plan to a better one as they like. Shared web hosting is much recommended for personal and small business owner since you could test your market first with it.

You could test how much visitors that visit your websites or how much disk space and bandwidth that you need. After you figure this out, you could move on and purchase bigger plan that could accommodate your online business needs.

After you get the shared web hosting plan, the next thing you need is a domain name and a website or blog. You could purchase the domain name from the web hosting provider. They often bundle it in a package that allow you to pay both of them in yearly basis for a small fee.

Usually, you will be charged for this yearly, so, prepare your credit card for it. The website itself could be build using the website builder that being prepared by the web hosting provider. If you don’t have the ability or don’t want to waste your time by building the website, you could hire a web designer to do it for you, and put it in your web hosting.

After all the things are setup, it’s time for you to promote your website. There are so many ways you can do to promote your website. Some of them are Adwords and banner advertising. Both of them are very powerful since they reach your target market and attract only targeted visitors. This proven to lower your marketing costs while getting highest profits.

If you’re ready to build your website using the shared web hosting plan, then by all means, do it. Money loves speed. As soon as you build your website, it’s better for you to promote it so that people could visit your website and purchase your products and services, and eventually make you more money.

So what exactly are the dangers of overselling Unlimited Space & Bandwidth?

” Overselling is a term used in the web hosting industry to describe a situation in which a company provides hosting plans that are unsustainable if every one of its customers uses the full extent of services advertised. The term is usually referred to the web space and bandwidth transfer allowance ( source).”

That basically means, a web hosting company will sell you a service that it really cannot offer. This can be called false advertising, however, not one person has been able to prove a web host wrong because of three main factors:

1. The first reason why no one has successfully revealed a web host wrong that offers unlimited disk space is because the web host will suspend that individuals account as soon as it appears to be using more than the allocated space (usually 1GB) that web host may have set that you as a customer do not know about.
2. Secondly, all web host that provide unlimited space and bandwidth will have in their terms of service many restrictions that most customers simply bypass without paying any attention to. These restrictions usually include all types of websites that use up a large amount of space such as the following:
   • Backup websites
   • Warez or Illegal Content websites
   • Streaming videos or music
   • Downloading software, movies, music etc websites
   • Sites that offer free resources to the public
   • and the elongated list goes on…
3. Lastly, when it comes unlimited bandwidth you have to be careful about that as well. “Bandwidth refers to the amount of data that website visitors can download from a website (source).” Most unlimited bandwidth provides will claim they have unmetered bandwidth which can be true, but, the tricky part is, if your website consumes too many CPU resources your account will be suspended. Most host give your individual web hosting account a 10% CPU resource limit, but if you go over that limit your account will be suspended. Most customers have no idea how to prevent this from happening, and lack the knowledge of rather or not their type of website is suitable for such an shared environment.As you know, you are sharing the server you are placed on with other individuals just like you. If one person uses too many CPU resources or creates a high server load at any given time, that effects your website as well, which causes downtime or slow response time to your website. Many web host that provide unlimited bandwidth will eventually face this horrible factor.

Andy Anderson, an individual currently involved in the web hosting market had this to say about overselling disk space and bandwidth:

How much room do you actually need for a site? Looking through my server logs most people use 500MB (megabytes) of disk space and about 5GB (gigabytes) of bandwidth. That is plenty of room for the average person with only 1GB of disk space. But most people will not ever look at how much space they are using. They only look at storage space when they are looking for a host. The hosting market these days are very competitive. Web Hosts bank on your lack of knowledge and promise you TB (terabytes) of space and bandwidth. If you look at burst.net they have a terabyte hard drive for $400.00 a month per host. So think for a minute, how can a host offer you a $1.95 month web hosting plan for a terabyte of space? Mathematically they cannot possibly do it, and yet, they know about it and lie to your face that they can. They also hide behind their TOS (terms of service) saying you must have active sites etc. Do you think Google.com would pay for 1,000′s of servers if they could host at DreamHost, who oversells web space, for $7.95?

The bottom line is, if you are serious about the future of your website, it is best to do your own research and actually pay for what you receive. If the offer looks too good to be true, more than likely it is.

Written By: Robert Smith (CEO of HastyHost)