DreamHost’s Unlimited Policy now carries the label “Legacy.” Its latest version, dated August 27, 2026, covers Shared Unlimited and other legacy plans without defined resource allocations. Current plans such as Launch fall under a separate Resource Allocation Policy, which opens its measurement section with this line: “Every plan covered by this policy operates within finite limits.”

We read the plan pages and limit documents of 10 well-known hosts to see what the word covers today. Every entry plan now has a storage figure. “Unlimited” and “unmetered” survive mainly on bandwidth, and many of the limits that determine what a site can handle sit in help pages and usage policies.

Key facts

  • HostGator: page data for Hatchling read “Unlimited Disk Space” in January 2023, and the plan now lists 10 websites and 10 GB.
  • File limits: on entry plans they run from 200,000 at Bluehost, SiteGround and hosting.com to 1,000,000 at HostGator.
  • Traffic: Bluehost, HostGator, DreamHost, SiteGround, InMotion and hosting.com describe entry plans by monthly visits or page views, from about 10,000 to 50,000.
  • IONOS: its plans list “Unlimited traffic,” and the same page calls unlimited “a tricky label.”

10 Entry Plans, Side by Side

The table shows the entry plan each host lists first on its shared hosting page, with the host’s own wording for bandwidth. Hostinger’s Premium is the first plan on the page we read, and a smaller Web Single plan also appears in its limits table.

Host, entry planSitesStorageBandwidth labelTraffic figureFile limit (inodes)
GoDaddy Economy125 GBUnmetered–250,000
HostGator Hatchling1010 GBUnmetered40,000 visits1,000,000
Bluehost Starter1010 GBUnmetered40,000 visits200,000
Namecheap Stellar320 GBUnmetered–300,000
DreamHost Launch2525 GBUnmetered40,000 visits250,000
Hostinger Premium320 GBUnlimited–400,000
SiteGround StartUp110 GBUnlimited trafficAbout 10,000 visits200,000
InMotion Launch2100 GBUnmeteredAbout 50,000 visitors–
IONOS EssentialUnlimited100 GBUnlimited traffic–262,144
hosting.com Starter515 GBUnlimited50,000 page views200,000

The traffic figures are not all the same kind of number. Bluehost and HostGator describe their entry plans as ideal for 40,000 visits a month, SiteGround and InMotion give approximations, and hosting.com lists a monthly page view “capacity.” DreamHost’s figure is a threshold set in its Resource Allocation Policy.

The storage column marks the clearest change. In January 2020, Bluehost’s Plus plan listed “Unlimited SSD Storage” and GoDaddy’s Economy plan listed 100 GB, and page data for HostGator’s Hatchling read “Unlimited Disk Space” as late as January 2023. Today Bluehost’s Starter and Business plans list 10 GB and 50 GB, Economy 25 GB and Hatchling 10 GB.

Who Owns Europe’s Largest Hosting Markets: IONOS Controls the Leader in Germany, Poland and Spain

Where the Word Survives, and on What Terms

Namecheap’s Stellar Plus pairs “Unlimited websites” with “Unmetered SSD storage.” Its policy page explains that this means customers need not worry about the total size of their files, and then adds: “we have limits set on CPU, Memory Usage, Entry Processes and amount of inodes.” Its acceptable use policy puts the file limit on Stellar Plus at 300,000, and allows a maximum of 10 GB each for multimedia, archive, database and executable files. An account above 25 GB or 200,000 inodes “will be removed from our weekly system backup.”

Hostinger’s Unlimited plan allows unlimited websites within 50 GB of disk, 3 GB of memory and 600,000 inodes. IONOS lists unlimited websites and traffic on all four web hosting plans, with a limit of 262,144 files. Its own explainer on the same page reads: “Unlimited: This is a tricky label, because certain things, such as data transfer speed, are not unlimited.”

At hosting.com, monthly bandwidth is listed as unlimited on all three shared plans, next to a monthly page view capacity. Its service terms describe bandwidth, connection speeds and similar indices of capacity as “maximum numbers.”

The Numbers Behind the Plan Page

Some hosts publish the resources an account can use. GoDaddy’s help page gives Economy 1 CPU core, 512 MB of memory, 20 entry processes and, for plans bought after May 2021, disk throughput of 10,240 KB per second. Hostinger’s table gives Premium 1 core, 2 GB of memory, 40 PHP workers and 12,288 KB per second. Namecheap’s policy gives Stellar a 50% CPU limit, 1 GB of memory, 20 entry processes and 50 MB per second.

Others use a different measure, which makes direct comparison difficult. HostGator sets a limit of 25% CPU usage and 25 simultaneous processes per cPanel account. SiteGround counts CPU seconds, with StartUp thresholds of 1,000 an hour, 10,000 a day and 300,000 a month, on a page last updated in October 2021. IONOS describes plans by CPU priority and performance level. Bluehost’s account limits page applies CPU and process limits to shared accounts and points to separate articles for detail.

File limits matter more than they sound, because the count covers more than web pages. SiteGround defines inodes as “files, folders, and email messages,” so email counts against the same allowance as the website’s files. Email limits have moved too: HostGator’s table listed unlimited email accounts in March 2026 and now lists two.

How Hosting Companies Make Money in 2026: Six Models Compared

What Happens When an Account Goes Over

The documents differ most on consequences. Under DreamHost’s policy, a site that consistently exceeds its monthly visitor threshold “may be required to upgrade to a higher tier.” If the company detects unusual file, inode or storage patterns, it may impose temporary limits at its discretion during an account review.

Bluehost may ask a customer to reduce usage, and in some cases accounts “may be suspended or terminated if excessive usage continues to degrade server performance.” SiteGround relies on early warnings where possible and, for “extreme or repetitive over-usage,” may limit access to a site until the customer acts. Namecheap allows CPU bursts for peaks, and an account that uses them consistently “shall agree to upgrade.” Its policy also reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to respond to unfair or inappropriate usage with immediate suspension or an upgrade.

If an account consistently reaches its capacity numbers, the hosting.com terms allow restrictions, including suspension, termination or reduced bandwidth, “in our sole discretion.” Its acceptable usage policy also names “automated systems, scripts, bots, or AI-driven processes” among the sources of excessive consumption.

Final Thoughts

A larger storage figure does not mean more room for files. HostGator’s Hatchling shares the smallest storage in the table, 10 GB, and has the highest file limit, 1,000,000. IONOS Essential has 10 times the storage and about a quarter of the file allowance.

Bandwidth carries no number on any of the 10 entry plans, so it is a poor guide to traffic. The visit and page view counts that six hosts publish are more useful, and at DreamHost, consistently exceeding that count may require an upgrade.

For a buyer, the useful comparison is the file limit, the process or CPU limit and the traffic figure, then the host’s policy on going over, wherever each one is published.

About the Data

We read each host’s current plan page and published limit documents in early November 2026, and used archived copies only for earlier years. Plans and figures differ by country, product line and plan age, so the table follows the pages in Sources and does not rank hosts. For example, hosting.com also sells separate cPanel hosting plans with other figures. Where a host gives several file figures, such as a soft limit or a backup threshold, the table shows the account limit. A dash means the page we read gives no figure in that form. We did not test whether hosts enforce these limits in practice. The 10 hosts were chosen for recognition, not for any result.