What does the term scaleability mean when referring to web Hosting?

Answer 1

Scalability in context to webhosting
****************************************
Scalability and future expansion are other major criteria to consider while hosting an application. A web site is dynamic. Usually, a web site starts with a few pages of html and grows over a period of time to suit the customers requirements. It is preferable to design a web site keeping this requirements in mind.

A web site designed for compatibility with a Linux/Unix &Windows NT based web server meets the scalability requirement easily without making any site wide design changes.

hope this helps
Cheers:)

Answer 2

Scalability when referring to your hosting company means the ability for you to increase or decrease your maximum bandwidth and disk space when you need it. For example when you start a site you might have a few users and a few webpages, but when your site grows in popularity, and when you start adding lots more content (such as pictures, video, etc.) then you need to be able to change hosting plans to allow for more bandwidth and disk space. This is not usually a big concern with normal websites but in certain cases it can be. Like the Olympics site had to have scalability because the site was going to start small and then could have an unpredictable maximum limit. Another example is Myspace, when they started out they had a limited number of users, but as time goes on they had to be able to adjust their amount of bandwidth and disk space to an unpredictable amount that could change from month to month.

Answer 3

It refers to the ability of the setup to handle high load, or the existing ability to upgrade it easily to handle high load.

For example, the last Winter Olympics site had scalability as a major concern, as it had to handle millions of requests per few minutes during peak usage times.