im just trying to get a handle on what constitutes a LOT of traffic. would you consider 75,000 unique visitors a month a lot in terms of a webhosting account? does that justify a move to a dedicated server (no e-commerce at all, just a lot of uniques)?

it seems to me that many, many, many sites get way way more than this kind of traffic and are do not need to be on any kind of dedicated machine.

am i wrong?

If you are just serving normal html pages, it would be fine. However if you are running lots of intensive scripts, 75,000 can be a lot. That works out to perhaps 2,000 uniques a day. And assuming they all appears on the same peak hours (plus all the non-uniques), scripts /w database can be under a lot of stress indeed.

its all normal run of the mill HTML. and it is all spread out over a 24 hour day pretty evenly. (lot of international visits)

Then obviously you will be pretty fine there. However depending on your page sizes, make sure you have enough bandwidth to go around.

oh..i know about the bandwidth - the pages are actually pretty light :) my question is this the kind of situation where a host would tell me I need a dedicated server? it sounds like no.

Well, it should be a definitely no if the pages are light.

Knowing what you just said, I would say no. The host is probably trying to get you to switch, so that he can actually justify your bandwidth usage. Chances are he's undercharging possibly, so is surprised at your bandwidth consumed which makes you less profitable for him.

I'm interested to know which site you are referring to when you say it is getting 75,000 uniques a month.

I could maybe exchange banners with them...:stickout: :stickout: :stickout:

75,000 hits a month sounds fine to me.

I think number of unique visitors is not a good indicative if the site is resource intensive. I have a site that is basically a directory of Brazilian Escort links, about 700 links , (adult site) , but no pictures , just text ( asp pages) and have about 60.000, 70.000 sessions a month , consume only 1 gig of bandwidth and I use small Access database to store links , small database (1 Mbyte) , and Access database is running fine, at least I never received a complain of my host because excessive resource usage and the pages load with a good speed.

I was getting 12,000 uniqes per day on average back in August, on shared hosting (360,000+ for the month). I got a dedicated server, because it gives me more freedom to screw around with what I want, and I can try creating sites that will hopefully grow that popular, that are more CPU intensive (more powerful sites).

- Matt

75,000 uniqes a month is great for a site.

i'd say it also depends if your making money from the site, if its your business then why not go for a dedicated server. You get much more control, and it will certainly be faster.

Control or bunden.

Faster: not necessarily so.