I’m a big fan of the “more is better” belief, but when it comes to web hosting, this isn’t always the case. Web hosting is an example of an industry that has continually expanded, offering more bandwidth, more disk space, more FTP accounts, etc. Yet, while the amount being offered has grown, the amount of resources available have been unable to keep up.

There are few things on the internet that can be described as finite. The amount of information is ever growing, as are the capabilities of the online world. However, commodities such as disk space and available bandwidth are finite, meaning that there is only so much available. Though these finite commodities are growing in size and availability, the demand for these resources has skyrocketed in the last several years as online business experienced its second renaissance.

Disk space – This is referring to the actual amount of space available on your web server’s hard drive that is available to host your website. Just as your computer has a set amount of space available on its hard drive, there is only so much space on your web hosts hard drives.

Yet, mysteriously, web hosts continue to offer low priced packages with increasingly larger amounts of disk space. Five years ago, $5.99 a month got you 500 megabytes of storage, which was (and still is) quite a bit for a website. Today, $5.99 a month will net you gigabytes of storage, which is probably overkill for most. What could you possibly do with 4 gigabytes of storage if all you’re doing is running a website for your business?

So, therein lies the dilemma: a web host feels pressure by its competitors to increase how much disk space it offers at the same low price point, yet it only has so much space available to offer. And, as if that weren’t bad enough, the low price points mean low margins, making adding web servers or hard disks unfeasible. So, what do most web hosts do to get around this problem?

Easy: offer more than they have and hope you’ll never use it. Most web hosts know that the average web master will never use anywhere near the 5 gigabytes of storage that their plan allots them, so they feel comfortable in offering 100 accounts 5 gigabytes of storage, when they may only have 250 gigabytes of space available on their hard disk.

What does this mean for you in the long run? Slow, unresponsive, limited hosting. I’m not going to name specific companies here, but I will say that I have encountered this problem a few times with a couple of very well known web hosts, and though it is frustrating, there isn’t much that can be done about it.

Breaking Away From The Traditional Industry Path

The smart thing to do is to find a host that offers realistic disk space at a realistic price. By limiting how many accounts are associated with each server, these hosts are able to continually offer high performance hosting that is both economical and reliable.

Your website probably will never need more than 1 gigabyte of storage unless, of course, you plan on setting up your own online empire, so why frustrate yourself with poor quality hosting that promises more than it can deliver?

Want to get connected with a web host that delivers? Read the review of DSBHosting.com here.