What does 'unlimited' web hosting really mean?

Plenty of hosting plans promise unlimited websites, unlimited bandwidth and unlimited storage. No server has unlimited resources, so every unlimited plan has limits somewhere. They are just harder to find.

Where the real limits are

• CPU and memory. Each account gets a share of the server's processor and RAM. When a site uses more, it slows down or shows errors, however much disk is "unlimited".
• Processes. Limits on how many requests your site can handle at the same moment decide how it copes with a traffic spike.
• Files. Many hosts limit the number of files (inodes) in an account, which matters for large sites and email.
• Fair use. Terms of service usually let the host suspend accounts it considers to be using too much.

Why we publish numbers instead

Every Hostripples plan lists what you get as numbers you can plan around. Our shared Starter plan, for example, includes 5 websites, 10 GB of NVMe storage, 10 MySQL databases, 25 email accounts and 250 GB of bandwidth a month, with 1 GB of RAM and one CPU core. Larger plans list larger numbers. You know what you are buying, and when you will need more.

What to compare between hosts

• RAM and CPU per account, not just disk space
• Storage type: NVMe is much faster than older SATA disks
• Backups: how often, how long they are kept and whether restoring costs extra
• The renewal price for the same plan

When you outgrow shared hosting

If a site regularly needs more than a shared plan offers, a VPS gives it its own guaranteed CPU and memory.