The Dark Side of “Unlimited” Hosting: Why I Switched in 2025 (And Never Looked Back)

I was the perfect sucker for “Unlimited Everything” hosting.
Unlimited disk space. Unlimited bandwidth. Unlimited domains. Unlimited email accounts. All for $2.95/month.

For nine straight years I bragged about how little I paid for hosting. Friends called me cheap. I called myself smart.

Then, in March 2025, reality hit me like a freight train.

This is the full story — the one “unlimited” hosting companies hope you never read.

How I. The Bait: How “Unlimited” Actually Works

Here’s the dirty little secret buried in every “unlimited” host’s Terms of Service (usually section 6.2 or 9.4):

“You may not exceed reasonable resource usage as determined solely by us. We reserve the right to suspend or throttle your account at any time without warning if you impact server performance.”

Translation: “Unlimited” = “Unlimited until we decide you’re using too much.”

They can (and do) change the definition of “reasonable” whenever they want. No warning. No appeal.

II. My Personal Nightmare – March 17, 2025

I run an e-commerce site selling print-on-demand fitness apparel. Normal traffic: 8–12k visitors/day.

On March 17 we launched a viral TikTok campaign. Traffic spiked to 87,000 visitors in 6 hours.

At 2:14 PM my phone started exploding with messages:

• “Site’s down!”
• “Checkout not working”
• “502 Bad Gateway”

I logged into my $2.95/month “unlimited” host’s control panel. Account status: SUSPENDED – Excessive Resource Usage.

Support ticket response 9 hours later:

“We detected high CPU usage. Your account has been restricted to 5% CPU until the next billing cycle. Please upgrade to VPS ($69/month or optimize your site.”

We lost an estimated $28,000 in sales that single day. The campaign died overnight.

III. The Hidden Throttling You Never See

Even when your site is “working,” most unlimited hosts silently throttle you using:

Throttling Method	What You Experience	Real-World Impact
CPU limiting (usually 10–25% per account)	Slow dashboard, delayed emails	Abandoned carts ↑ 40%
Inode limits (150k–500k files)	Can’t upload new images	Media library breaks
MySQL query throttling	Search & checkout take 10–20s	Conversion rate tanks
I/O throttling	Backups fail silently	No restore point when hacked
Concurrent connection limits	Site crashes during traffic spikes	Exactly what killed my launch

These aren’t bugs. They’re deliberate business decisions to keep 5,000 accounts crammed onto one $800 server.

IV. The Performance Lie – Real 2025 Benchmarks

I ran the exact same WooCommerce store on five different hosts in January 2025. Same theme, same plugins, same cache settings.

Host Type	Price/mo	TTFB (US)	TTFB (EU)	Max Concurrent Users (before 500 errors)
“Unlimited” Shared (HostIUsed)	$3.95	1.84s	3.21s	28
SiteGround GrowBig	$12.99	0.31s	0.49s	400+
A2 Hosting Turbo	$11.99	0.28s	0.61s	500+
Kinsta Starter	$35	0.19s	0.33s	1,200+
Cloudways DO Premium	$26	0.22s	0.41s	900+

The “unlimited” host was 10× slower and died at 28 simultaneous visitors.

V. The Security Disaster Waiting to Happen

Because unlimited hosts pack thousands of sites on one server, one hacked neighbor = everyone at risk.

In 2025 alone I personally saw:

• Three mass infections via outdated PHP 7.4 (host refused to disable it)
• Two ransomware attacks that spread server-wide
• One case where a crypto-mining script on a neighbor site maxed out the entire server for 11 days before the host noticed

Modern hosts use containerization or CageFS — your neighbor literally cannot touch your files. Unlimited hosts? Almost none do.

VI. The Support Horror Stories

When things go wrong on unlimited hosting, you’re on your own.

Meanwhile, on proper hosts in 2025:

• Kinsta – Average response time: 1 minute 42 seconds (24/7 chat)
• SiteGround – Average first reply: under 8 minutes
• A2 Hosting – Phone support in under 60 seconds

VII. What Happened When I Finally Switched (April 2025)

I moved all 28 of my sites to a combination of Kinsta (high-traffic) and SiteGround (smaller sites).

Results after 8 months:

Page load time	2.9s → 0.61s	↓ 79%
Monthly hosting cost	$47 → $218	↑ 364%
Monthly revenue	$31k → $79k	↑ 155%
Support tickets opened	47 → 3	↓ 94%
Sites hacked	4 → 0	↓ 100%
Hair loss from stress	Significant → Minimal	Priceless

The extra $171/month in hosting costs paid for itself in under 6 days.

VIII. The 2025 “Unlimited” Host Red Flag Checklist

Run — don’t walk — if your host has 3 or more of these:

IX. Where I Moved My Sites (And Recommend in 2025)

After testing 27 hosts in 2024–2025, these are the only ones I trust with real businesses:

• Kinsta – Best overall. Google Cloud, containerized, stupidly fast, incredible support.
• SiteGround – Perfect middle ground. Great for sites under ~100k visits/month.
• A2 Hosting Turbo – Insanely fast LiteSpeed servers at shared-hosting prices.
• Rocket.net – If you want Kinsta-level speed but cheaper.
• Cloudways – For developers who want full control + Cloudflare Enterprise.

Final Verdict

“Unlimited” hosting is the cigarette of the web hosting world.

It feels great at first.
It’s socially acceptable to brag about how little you pay.
Everyone around you is doing it.
Then one day you wake up with stage-4 business cancer.

I smoked that brand for nine years.

I will never go back.

— Alex M.,
Former “Unlimited” Hosting Addict
December 2025