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by Scott Frangos

Yahoo, one of the leading providers of Web hosting services, announced in early February that they are offering the industry’s first “unlimited” hosting plan. Unlimited disk space. Unlimited data transfer. Wow. This is good news for online business people for a couple of reasons, it seems.

The market is moving to offer hosting plans that can handle large ecommerce sites, with enough bandwidth for promotional podcasts, and video marketing, at a very reasonable price.

At a time when online video marketing is on the rise (and that requires a lot of bandwidth), Yahoo is leading the way in removing bandwidth overage charges that can quickly eat away at your online business profits. This could inspire competitors to do the same thing, and that would be capital, wouldn’t it? The price is right — they’re doing all of this for $11.95 a month. Not bad. Just think: if you intend to run an ecommerce website with thousands of products you can do that all for $11.95 a month, and include educational product videos. Right? Well, let’s see.

Above, the Yahoo site underlines in Red the word “Unlimited” three times. Red Indeed. When does “unlimited” actually mean “limited”? When you read the fine print. Or, as Bill Clinton might have said, “it depends on your definition of unlimited.”

I’ve been around the hosting industry long enough to think maybe we should dig a bit deeper. I mean, come on Yahoo, you’re also offering a $39.95 a month “merchant plan,” so why offer an “unlimited plan” at about a quarter of the cost? Ah ha. Browsing a few clicks deeper at the Yahoo hosting site you see clarifications about what “unlimited” reall means. Hmmmmmm. Here’s what Yahoo says in the small print:

“You can now create as large a site as you like (you won’t face an upper limit, or “ceiling”), but we will place some constraints on how fast you can grow. In other words, you can add as much content as you want, but maybe not all at once.” And, “In most cases, if you use our service appropriately, visitors to your web site will be able to download and view as much content from your site as they like. However, in certain circumstances, our server processing power, server memory, or anti-abuse controls could limit downloads from your site. You can also upload as much as content as you like each month, subject only to the rules that control how fast your site can grow (see above).”

Huh? Let me see… That means that “unlimited” is only true if you don’t grow too fast, and if Yahoo’s servers can handle what you intend to dish out from your site. Translation: a lot of video, mixed with a lot of ecommerce could make unlimited become limited. That’s how it reads to me, but I’ll make sure the Yahoo hosting folks have a chance to “s’plain” things, in case I got it wrong. If you decide to host with Yahoo, I recommend you communicate your online Business mission to them, up front, and nail them to specific numbers for any of their restrictions. And, be sure to leave a comment here to advise us on how it works out for you.

Now what about the Bellingham factor? In case you missed it, Microsoft has made a bid to buy Yahoo, which was rejected, and which then caused the folks in Bellingham to become more determined to purchase Yahoo. That means that Microsoft could arrive as the new owners of Yahoo, and make any revisions to existing offerings that they wish. I worked for Microsoft once on a national push to sell hosting and other online services, and they’re all about making money — by tying services to existing products. If we end up with MicroHoo, or YaSoft, then this “unlimited” hosting plan will probably become a different beast.

So, what’s the bottom line here? Has Yahoo raised the Web hosting bar for the industry? Well, depending on the true nature of their restrictions, and if the plan stays consistent even after a Microsoft takeover, then yes — it looks that way. Raised it — yes. All the way to “unlimited”? Not exactly.

The market is moving to offer hosting plans that can handle large ecommerce sites, with enough bandwidth for promotional podcasts, and video marketing, at a very reasonable price. And, already, most good web hosts are increasing their disk space and bandwidth features. Great. Just make sure you read the fine print at your hosting company, and clarify the deal before signing up.

About the Author: Scott Frangos is Managing Editor for WebHelperMagazine.com, and writes the OpenSourceWebMaster.com Blog here. He also builds dynamic Blog and CMS websites with WordPress for WebFadds.com and is a college level instructor for Graphics and WebMaster subjects.