When you start planning a website launch, one of the biggest challenges you face is finding a web hosting plan with adequate resources to help your site perform optimally. There are various kinds of hosting plans available, like Shared Hosting plans, Cloud Hosting, VPS Hosting, etc. With search engines and social media platforms driving the majority of traffic, websites can receive thousands of visitors if one post on a social media platform goes viral or a specific keyword starts trending. Most site owners struggle to manage such traffic spikes since their hosting plans offer limited bandwidth and other resources. To help them manage such situations better, many hosting companies have started offering unmetered bandwidths. Today, we will understand:
(i) what is unmetered bandwidth?
(ii) what are its advantages?
What is Unmetered Bandwidth?
When you start looking buying a Shared Web Hosting plan, you are faced with a lot of technical terms. Two such terms are data transfer limit and bandwidth. They are often used interchangeably by hosting companies causing more confusion for site owners. While we will define them in a particular way, it is important to understand what they mean so that you don’t get misguided by the terms.
- Data Transfer limit is the volume of traffic permitted by your hosting plan. This means that if you have a single-page website that is around 50kb in size and the hosting plan offers a 50MB data transfer limit, then your website can load 1000 times in the month. Post-that your site will be unavailable to users.
- Bandwidth is the speed with which site data is transferred from your server to the user’s terminal. Typically, bandwidth is provided in MBps (MegaBits per second) or GBps (GigaBits per second). Your hosting bandwidth has a direct bearing on the page loading speed and performance of your site. When the site receives heavy traffic, a higher bandwidth processes requests faster and helps manage high traffic volumes with ease.
With these concepts clear, let’s look at what unmetered bandwidth means:
For a site to perform optimally, apart from other resources provided by the Shared Website Hosting plan, it needs a good data transfer limit and bandwidth. Hosting companies charge based on the bandwidth and data transfer limit needed by your site. However, if your site performs above expectations, you can reach the limit, and your site can go down. With unmetered bandwidth, you are charged based on the speed of data transfer than the volume. Hence, you choose the speed based on your requirements, and the hosting company ensures that all requests are fulfilled with the set speed without calculating the number of pages loaded in a month.
Advantages of Unmetered Bandwidth
1. Ease of managing high traffic volumes
Since you are not billed for data transfer and speed is fixed, you can manage large volumes of site traffic with ease. This allows you to focus on growing your website without worrying about the increasing cost of high traffic.
2. Better Site Performance
With a regular (metered bandwidth) hosting plan, if you start receiving high volumes of traffic, you can exhaust your data transfer limit and/or allotted bandwidth. This can impact your site and lead to disrupted services and disappointed visitors. With unmetered plans, you can be assured of a better-performing website.
3. Cost-efficient
If your bandwidth is metered, then a sudden increase in site traffic equates to a corresponding increase in your monthly bill. This is because you will need to purchase more bandwidth. However, with unmetered plans, this is not a concern, making them more cost-efficient.
Summing Up
Every website has specific requirements from the Shared Web Hosting service. Hence, it is important to assess what your site needs before choosing between metered and unmetered bandwidth. Remember, a site’s performance determines the reputation of your brand and your SEO score. Consider all aspects and choose the right hosting plan.
The following video guides you in choosing the best Shared Hosting plan for your site:
