ShoutCheap has a leadership position as the fastest-growing company in Shoutcast and Icecast Hosting. We commit to providing the best and most affordable Internet Radio Solution. At the same time, we have helped grow the Internet Radio Community by building strong relationships and trust between ShoutCheap and our clients.

Numerous websites claim to offer ‘unlimited’ services; the purpose of this article is to expose these scams and hopefully prevent people from being ripped off by such offers. That being said, let’s begin.

“Unlimited”

Unlimited is a very powerful word in marketing; with the unlimited word, you can almost sell a refrigerator to an Eskimo. In the Internet radio marketing world, it is a very common word, unlimited listeners, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited auto DJ space you named. But as a customer, you have to be wise at the time to choose your “unlimited” company.

Usually, what these companies really mean by “unlimited” is, you can use the service unless you become a problem. When you become a problem, that means you are compromising the service’s quality affecting other clients’ services.

Do not get me wrong, you can find unlimited services, but with a control point, for example, unlimited bandwidth, the control point will be a fixed number of listeners. This way, the hosting provider has quality control and is not overcrowding the server.

Doing research online, I found a user asking this question at Winamp Forum:

Can hosts offer unlimited listener slots?

First response: uh, no, and if they did I would be suspicious of them.

Second Respond: Well actually, it may be possible. Some hosts you buy the bandwidth from them instead of the monthly slots, and they offer whatever bitrate you want and however many listeners, but once you use up the bandwidth, your outta luck.

Third Response: if you can ‘use up’ something that sorta doesn’t make it unlimited

Forth response: Well they let you have as many slots as you want, and your bitrate can go as high as you want, but you have an allotted bandwidth limit. You still can have unlimited listeners, but for how long is the question, which depends on the bitrate

And many more answers, but what really got my attention was the answer to another responsible company like ShoutCheap:

Oh, stay clear of all hosts who offer any of the following:

– Unlimited listener slots
– Unlimited bitrate (what you gonna stream at 100,000kbs?!)
– Unlimited bandwidth
– Unlimited Disk Space

WHY?….simply because there is NO SUCH THING!

EVERY server has its limits. Those stream or webhosts who offer unlimited assets, are lying to you!

Personlally, I wouldn’t do business with anyone if I knew they were fibbing to me?!

That is the truth everything has a limit, a CPU limit, a limit on RAM, a limit on Hard Drive space, and a bandwidth limit. In the business world, that means everything has a cost. It all comes down to how responsible the hosting provider is to give something for free without compromising quality control. Unlimited? Maybe but I agree with what that friend from another company said:

Oh, stay clear of all hosts who offer any of the following:

– Unlimited listener slots
– Unlimited bitrate (what you gonna stream at 100,000kbs?!)
– Unlimited bandwidth
– Unlimited Disk Space

Let’s define what these “Unlimited” services really means:

• Unlimited listener slots
  The server bandwidth connection limits this. If the server internet connection is enough to stream only 1,000 listeners at 128kbps, the “unlimited listeners” connection will be shared with all the server users. When the server has 50 clients/users with “unlimited listeners” service, no one client will get 1,000 listeners.

• Unlimited bitrate
  Useless, very rarely do people stream above 128kbps; 128kbps is near cd quality. Above that listening, on a small computer speaker, you will not notice the difference between 128, 192, and 256. If you plan to stream to smartphones, your listener will not appreciate a constant buffering from a 256kbps feed.

• Unlimited bandwidth
  This is the only one that is worthwhile. It will give you peace of mind; you will pay the same amount at the end of the month, every month. No surprises because you went over your limit. But unlimited? No, it is unlimited for you, but the server has a limit, and it is the responsibility of the hosting provider to not overload/overcrowd the server. If the server’s bandwidth goes over the limit, he will be responsible, but this is the only one that will not affect the server performance.

• Unlimited Disk Space
  The size of the hard disk limits this. Can you upload anything you want? Well maybe. If the hard disk has the space you need, and the disk is not almost full because other users have uploaded all their music libraries before you, then yes, you can upload all your files. In other words, you could be buying a bus ticket to get somewhere on a bus with an almost empty tank. Even Godaddy, a large web hosting provider, claims unlimited Disk Space but goes to the small letters: “Plan provides unlimited storage subject to availability of space on a single clustered server.” 

These companies advertise Unlimited Listeners, Bitrate, and Space plan because they know they seem to be more attractive to people. But they are Overselling/overcrowding the servers, which will lower quality performance for your audio streaming service.

Overselling is definitively something to avoid! (unless you want a bad audio streaming experience or you want to end up moving everything to somewhere else later and lose your IP and port) Good hosts will not overcrowd their servers and keep the user limits suggested by the server manufacturer to give you great, fast, and non-intermittent service.

The next time you see “Unlimited All” stay away from that, “Unlimited All” means that the company doesn’t care about quality and service; in other words, it is a  “we just want to sell”. Look for a company that really cares about quality and service. Internet Radio is growing very fast, and there are only a few companies with a real commitment to helping to grow the internet radio community.