Does Unlimited Really Mean Unlimited?

In the web hosting industry, you’ll often see the word “ unlimited ” used to describe a particular limitation in a web hosting plan. Even on our website and marketing material, you’ll find that we use the description “unlimited” at times. But does unlimited really mean unlimited? The answer is “it depends.”

So, why are we using this word? We cannot speak on behalf of other web hosting companies that may advertise unlimited this and unlimited that. But for us, we simply mean that we don’t limit certain aspects of your web hosting package, such as the number of mailboxes (ex. our VPS web hosting plans ) or number of domains (Ex. our Reseller web hosting plans ) you may have. Essentially, the resources included in your web hosting plans will determine your limits. Also, unlimited is much catchier than saying “you’re only limited by your plan’s detailed specifications.”

For example, in our eCommerce web hosting package , we note that the number of products that you can display is “unlimited.” In fact, the limit will depend on the disk space in the plan that you’ve chosen and the amount of disk space that you have allocated for your product images and other data. If you were to utilize a database, the limit will depend on the space allocated for your database. Web-savvy individuals will already know this, but for the uninitiated, it is definitely something to consider depending on how you’ll be utilizing your disk space.

Let’s say that you are currently on our Linux VPS Web Hosting Plan I , which includes 7 GB of disk space and “unlimited” email accounts. This doesn’t mean you can have an infinite number of email accounts. It simply means that you are not limited in how many email accounts you set up based on how you want to allocate your available disk space. For example, let’s say that you allocate more than half of your disk space (5000 MB) for emails. You also decide to make each email account a maximum of 25 MB each. Under this structure, you can have 200 email accounts (5000 MB / 25 MB). In this case we don’t limit the number of email accounts you can have. You decide. In some of our shared hosting plans, you will notice that we have specified a limit in the number of email accounts you can have.

In the web hosting industry, “unlimited” is a marketing buzzword. It is not our intention to trick customers into believing that they have unlimited resources, but simply that we did not limit certain aspects of our web hosting plans given the plan’s specified limits.

Public Relations, Cirrus Tech Ltd.
Toronto, ON – April 8, 2008