How to read a hosting plan without getting tricked
Hosting plan pages are written by marketers, not engineers. The same features can mean completely different things at different hosts — and sometimes the loudest selling points hide the most significant limits. Here's how to read past the spin.
"Unlimited" everything
Unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited databases — this is the most common piece of hosting marketing language, and it is never literally true.
What "unlimited" actually means: you are sharing a pool of resources with hundreds of other customers, and you won't be charged per GB. But every host has an Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) or a clause in their terms about "excessive use" or "adversely affecting other users." If your site grows large, uses a lot of CPU, or transfers a lot of data, they will throttle you or ask you to upgrade.
What to check instead: Search the terms of service for "excessive," "abuse," "inode," or "CPU." Look for inode limits (the number of files you can store) — a limit of 250,000 inodes sounds like a lot but a WordPress site with backups can hit it.
The intro price vs the real price
This is the single biggest gotcha in the industry. A plan advertised at £1.99/month is often only available on a 36-month commitment — and when it renews, you pay £8–£12/month. That's 3–6× the advertised price.
What to check:
- Look for a "renewal price" line in the plan detail, or in the basket before checkout.
- If it's not shown, check the terms of service or email pre-sales.
- Use our renewal price comparison to see what each host actually charges after the intro period ends.
- Calculate the monthly cost of the total commitment, not the headline figure.
Bandwidth and data transfer
"Unmetered bandwidth" and "unlimited bandwidth" are slightly different things.
- Unmetered means you won't be charged per GB but the connection speed may be throttled.
- Unlimited means neither a cap nor throttling — in theory. In practice, see the AUP caveat above.
For a normal website, bandwidth is rarely the thing that limits you. CPU and RAM throttling is far more likely to be your constraint on shared hosting.
"Unlimited email accounts"
Almost always true in terms of the account count. The limits that bite instead:
- Total mailbox storage — each mailbox may be limited to 1–5 GB, or there's a total allocation across all mailboxes.
- Sending limits — shared hosting plans typically cap outbound email at 200–500 emails/hour. If you're sending newsletters or transactional email at volume, you'll hit this fast. Use a dedicated email sending service (Mailgun, Postmark, Amazon SES) instead.
- Spam reputation — shared IP addresses mean you're at the mercy of other senders' behaviour. If deliverability matters, get a dedicated IP or use a separate mail service.
Daily backups — where and for how long?
"Free daily backups" is standard marketing on most plans now. But three things vary dramatically between hosts:
- Where are the backups stored? On the same server? The same data centre? If the server has a catastrophic failure, an on-server backup is useless. Off-site backups (different DC, or cloud storage) are what you want.
- How many restore points? Some hosts keep 7 days, others keep 30. Some only keep the most recent backup.
- How do you restore? Self-service one-click restore is very different from "contact support and wait 24 hours."
Also check: is backup restoration included free, or is there a per-restore charge? Some hosts charge £5–£20 per restoration even with a backup plan.
"99.9% uptime guarantee"
99.9% sounds like almost-perfect. Mathematically it allows for 8.7 hours of downtime per year. 99.99% allows 52 minutes.
More importantly, check what the "guarantee" actually entitles you to. For most UK hosts, it means a pro-rated credit on your account — not a cash refund, and only if you notice the outage and file a claim within a set window. It is almost never worth claiming and won't compensate lost revenue.
A more useful question: look for independent uptime monitoring reports on sites like HostingAdvice or TrustPilot reviews that mention downtime.
"24/7 support"
The phrase covers a huge range of actual service quality:
- Some hosts have live chat and phone 24/7 with knowledgeable staff.
- Others have live chat 24/7 that's handled by a bot or a first-line script-reader who can only create a ticket.
- Others have a ticketing system that's "open 24/7" but responses take 8–12 hours overnight.
Test it before you buy: Open a live chat at 11pm on a Sunday and ask a slightly technical question (e.g. "Do you support Redis object caching on the starter plan?"). The response quality tells you more than any marketing copy.
Quick-scan checklist
Before buying any hosting plan, find the answer to each of these in the plan detail or terms:
- What is the renewal price on the same term?
- Is there an inode limit or a "fair use" CPU clause?
- Where are backups stored, how many restore points, and is restore self-service?
- What is the outbound email sending limit per hour?
- Is the UK a default server location, or do I have to select it?
- What does the uptime SLA actually pay out, and how do I claim?
- Is the free domain (if included) renewable at a fair price, or at an inflated rate?
- What is the money-back period and does it cover the full first payment?