The market for web hosting is changing with the times. Once primarily a platform for distributing text and pictures, websites have evolved into full-fledged applications or media distribution platforms with large disk space and bandwidth requirements. While many web hosts commoditise both, some are beginning to remove limits entirely. If you're wondering why you may wish to opt for such a host, here are a few points to consider.

Anticipating the amount of disk space you may need for any given site is a challenge. If you're running a business, you may wish to use video or other large media files as part of your marketing strategy. Similarly, personal users may find that web space is a convenient way to store videos, photos and audio files such that they can be accessed and viewed from anywhere.

If anticipating disk space is a challenge, determining how much bandwidth is needed is even more so, making the previous task easy in comparison. It is fairly simple to track how much disk space has been used, to remove unused files and organise accordingly. Bandwidth use on the other hand is incredibly variable. While it may be completely manageable one month, sudden spikes in popularity may cause you to exceed your allotted limit the next.

Furthermore, predicting how much bandwidth is necessary to respond to increased requirements can be challenging. You have no guarantee that the need for bandwidth levels will grow at a reliable rate, as sudden spikes can be caused by many factors; from a misconfigured web application to the popularity of a new marketing campaign. Furthermore, in the latter instance, little you can do will resolve the situation. Either your business or service becomes unavailable when your bandwidth quota is used up, or you're stuck paying steep overage charges.

From a practical perspective, commoditising bandwidth and disk space use makes little sense. The cost of both drop more rapidly than hosting costs can account for, and if you're paying for limited hosting, you're typically paying prices that don't make sense for the quotas you're given. Furthermore, very few users actually reach the limits offered by most web hosts, and those who exceed them are usually compensated for by the ones who do not.

On top of all this, web hosts survive by hosting large numbers of users, so from a purely practical perspective, even occasional periods of heavy use by several users are an overall drop in the bucket when compared with the light use of many more. Charging fees for overuse in such a situation, while a good business move, is not best for you as a consumer. Even if you'll likely never reach the limits set for you, why would you work with a company who places artificial limits on how large you can grow or on how successful you can be?

Of course, you should not select a hosting provider simply because they lack bandwidth or disk space limits. There are many criteria against which a good host must be evaluated, cost and quality being but a few. However, the concept of imposing bandwidth and disk space limits is quickly becoming antiquated in the web hosting industry, and any host who requires them should be examined more critically.