One of the largest web hosting companies just removed data transfer quotas from their hosting packages. 1 & 1 Internet serves 9 million customers has been in what has been termed an “arms race” for market share. This arms race has lead to constant expansions on the provided disk space and data transfer of their hosting packages over the past three years. Even Yahoo introduced an unlimited plan in early 2008. Godaddy also created a hosting plan advertising no quotas on monthly disk space or data transfer.

Some have criticized this general push towards unlimited services. Second tier web hosts have been the first to gravitate towards this marketing tactic since such companies are promising more than they can deliver.

Customers have routinely criticized service tiers based on disk space and transfer quotas as confusing and overly technical. Cheap, shared hosting has been extremely attractive to new customers even though some prominent leaders in the hosting industry have predicted a decrease in cheap, shared hosting. “Over the next for five years, shared hosting as we know it will be made obsolete by the cloud” – Rackspace Cloud general manager Emil Sayegh.