OK,

I know perhaps it's hard for you to share your experience about the following matter :D

We know that a lot of webhost company could offering a lot of bandwith for only a few bucks.
There's a lot of webhost company offering 100MB plus 4 Gigs data transfer for only US$ 5.00 - 10.00 /mo.
Yes, because they knew that in fact major sites will not spend bandwith that much.

My questions is:
On average, how many bandwith does your user spend every month?

Thx.
Soda

'bouts 500Mb-2Gb-ish give or take a byte

Hm... according to the database, each of our domains used an average of 350.7 megs last month. Not a lot, really. The maximum was 24.48 gigs, and the minimum .011 megs.

SQL is our friend. ;)

We know that a lot of webhost company could offering a lot of bandwidth for only a few bucks. Much the same way as people can come home from gambling in Vegas with a lot of money after only spending 2 bucks. Hosts that are offering "a lot of everything" are depending on the odds being in their favor. They are depending on the idea that web sites will not actually use everything that is offered. If the web sites DO actually use it all the host will be in trouble... which in turn will put the site owners in trouble as well.

"lots of bandwidth" costs a lot more than a few bucks. Many hosts are paying "a few bucks" for *each* and every gigabyte used. Quick numbers (I'm a bit too tired at this hour to work the math so when the gurus wake up feel free to correct it). Let's say we can snag a T3 with local loops and admins etc for 40 thousand dollars a month. We can successfully use that T3 at 75% capacity which is about 34MB/s which equals about 10,200 GB of bandwidth. $40,000 divided by 10,200GB = $3.92 per gigabyte. So if the web site is using 4 Gigs of bandwidth, as you note, then they are costing this host $15.68 per month just for bandwidth alone. Here we have not factored in any manpower, software, or hardware costs etc. etc. etc... So if the host is charging "only $5 - 10.00/mo" they are loosing quite a bit of money and unless other sites are making up for that loss they will go out of business.

Obviously this logic has worked for a couple of years though, and as such we do in fact have hosts advertising "a lot of bandwidth" for a small amount of money. At the same time more and more people are getting on the net and these people are getting bigger and better connections everyday. This is making it possible for them to demand more and more connectivity from the hosts and they are able to use much more bandwidth than they could even two years ago. Not to mention the multimedia and dynamic content that has arrived in the past year or two. All of these things making it more and more possible for the websites to actually use every last bit of what comes with their packages and causing the hosts to cut corners anywhere they can (even if it means cutting the web sites) just to stay in business.

It's a gamble...some are winning with it, some are losing, and some are not willing to play the game.

Deb
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Obviously this logic has worked for a couple of years though, and as such we do in fact have hosts advertising "a lot of bandwidth" for a small amount of money. At the same time more and more people are getting on the net and these people are getting bigger and better connections everyday. This is making it possible for them to demand more and more connectivity from the hosts and they are able to use much more bandwidth than they could even two years ago. Not to mention the multimedia and dynamic content that has arrived in the past year or two. All of these things making it more and more possible for the websites to actually use every last bit of what comes with their packages and causing the hosts to cut corners anywhere they can (even if it means cutting the web sites) just to stay in business

Faster connections are letting people put much larger files on their hosting accounts and this is bound to increase costs.

In the UK web hosting is much cheaper but comes with bandwidth as extra (have a look at http://www.webhoster.co.uk/prices.html) or file size limitations (see http://www.easyspace.co.uk).

At the moment the inclusive bandwidth model is working, but as sites get larger hosts may have to move to one of the UK type models.

Gordon

I think I'm stuck in the 90's, heh. Good point Deb and Gordon. When the average site starts using 10 gigs/mo, you aren't going to see the super cheap plans. As people get faster DSL and cable connections they are going to download those 6Mb files, and stream that video. Hmmm...

Are there any industry sites that actually track and compare the average usage that customers used 2 years ago, with that of the average customer who signed up this year? Be interesting to see if this figure would nudge upwards or if it would be made up in volume (sheer number of sites coming on-line).

But you can get a t-3 for far less than 40k a mo. in fact ive seen 12k and ave of about 25k so those numbers of $3. per gig falls off a lot. just a tid bit of info :)

Even if (that's a big if) the average site did use 10 gigs of transfer a month, there would still be those little sites that are using under 2. I can't imagine "most" web sites offering huge downloads. Even when DSL and Cable Internet usage increases, there are still going to be millions of pointless web sites (or even web sites with a point) that use hardly any bandwidth at all. I can see the average going up with the increase of high speed internet, but with the average bandwidth probably below 4 GB, it'll be a long time before it increases 10 GB. And by then, Communications companies will probably be able to lower their price per GB, because there will be a heckofalot more web sites online.

Well, at least I look forward to the day Qwest releases a new promotion "T3 for $29.95 per month!". :-)

Originally posted by comphosting
Well, at least I look forward to the day Qwest releases a new promotion "T3 for $29.95 per month!". :-)

-or free T3 if you just put a banner on your site :)

why not just run that t-3 through all the neighborhoods and lan every house together and just let it be a normal part of your communications/phone/cable bill. its feasable

I'm tired at this point but I'll try to make some sense here too. A T1 can cost anywhere from $1,000 to $2,000. Depending what type of T1 it is (Frame Relay for an example). A datacenter can charge anywhere from $2,000 to $4,000 and up for a 100 mb pipe full duplex both ways giving you 200 mg and of course any bursts that you may get. Which means they will allow you to burst pass your limit but can not sustain it. If you do they charge you for it. So looking at these figures, host give you 4gb bandwidth or whatever. That's a lot. The average site doesn't even use about 20% of that. Most sites just do html with some java and other small databases. These things do not take that much resources and the site is very small. There are techniques that you can do to minimize the amount of bandwidth you spend. I won't get into that, that's more engineering side of things.

To make this short. I will like to see any site in our category that is going to spend that much bandwidth a month. If they do, they won't be with any of us because their business will demand a much sophisticated system than a shared hosting package.

Like the one guy said, it's a gamble and they are winning right now. Have you seen the unlimited bandwidth sites, there's another subject. If everyone used say 10 gb bandwidth a month, that company will be out of business in one day. They can't even dream of paying that bill. Don't get caught up in these figures. Just get a package that you fill will work for you and take it from there. If you happen to use more then upgrade. But don't let that be a deciding factor or the only factor. There are other important things like customer service, uptime and performance. These should be more of your concern. The bandwidth shouldn't matter that much. Get what you need.

But there are always a few sites that use and even break their limit, I have a few using 6-8gig which is no big deal and one using 14gig and yet another using about 31 gig a month. But then there are the hundreds that use less than 1 gig so it does all work out. The sites that go over their limit pay and the ones that use right at their limit well they are fine. So we can have more than just one,two , or even 12 sites break or meet their limits. It just depends on the total number of sites/servers/bandwidth you have as to what you can get away with. Every host is different and they should not be grouped into one standard that all hosts use becuase it doesnt exist. Well I guess this subject is beat into the ground now so Im moving on.......