When you buy an unlimited hosting account, you probably think that you actually get an unlimited amount of bandwidth. However, this is not a true portrait of what unlimited bandwidth is. With HostPapa, you can buy shared unlimited bandwidth, but is this enough for your website? Or, should you get a virtual private server? This article will explain exactly what unlimited bandwidth is with HostPapa, and it will help you decide whether this is enough for you or not.

What is Unlimited Bandwidth?

Unlimited bandwidth means that HostPapa does not put an arbitrary limit on the amount of bandwidth you can use per month. Instead, it allows your website to grow naturally. But, that doesn’t mean that huge websites with a lot of traffic can use unlimited hosting.

As part of shared hosting, your website and hundreds of others are hosted on the same server. If your website does not interfere with the speed and bandwidth of the other websites, then you are fine. If your website does take up a lot of bandwidth, then preventative measures will be taken.

What Websites Use Unlimited Bandwidth?

The types of websites that best use unlimited bandwidth are blogs and small websites that are mostly filled with content. If you are running a small business online, then unlimited bandwidth should be enough for you. If you are running an enterprise-level website, or if you have millions of visitors a month, then unlimited bandwidth, as in shared unlimited bandwidth, may not be enough.

Bad Files

Normal websites have some graphics and text, and these use a little bit of memory and bandwidth to load. However, there are many memory-heavy files that shouldn’t be used on an unlimited bandwidth website. HostPapa strictly says that users cannot load these files in their terms of service.

Game servers, large game files, large videos and proxy servers take up a lot of memory. If you load these files, and HostPapa does not catch on immediately, then your website may be prey to preventative measures when it starts taking up too much bandwidth.

Preventative Measures

HostPapa is a little vague about what their preventative measures entail, but most hosts take similar actions against websites that use up too much bandwidth. A low-level measure would be sending you an email, telling you that if you keep using too much bandwidth there may be problems.

After that, your website is usually depleted of any bandwidth, so it will not load until next month. If you repeatedly use too much bandwidth, your website or entire account may be suspended.

What is Too Much Bandwidth?

HostPapa, as with most shared hosts, does not directly disclose this. This is because it depends on how much bandwidth all the websites are using on the server. If you ensure that you don’t upload memory-heavy files, then you shouldn’t run into this problem.

Conclusion

Unlimited bandwidth is not exactly unlimited, but it does have some great advantages. You can build your website without worry about arbitrary bandwidth amounts, and the price is much cheaper than buying a virtual private server. If your website reaches a point where it starts getting a lot, and we mean a lot, of visitors, you might have to migrate to another server.

To learn more about HostPapa, read our HostPapa Review or visit HostPapa.ca and make sure to use the HostPapa Coupon Code below before ordering a plan: