I am getting my site set up and all and am trying to figure out what sort of packages to offer. I can look everywhere else and get size ideas, but I struggle with bandwidth.

Anyone know of a good rule of thumb for allocatin bw? Also what are typical bandwidth usage patterns for different sites. I know forum sites use lots but what can one expect froma typical business advertising site, or maybe a small business card type site. ANY information is appreciated.
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I think you will find, and am sure that responses to follwo will prove it out, that there are many different opinions on this. Many will say that bandwidth should be 3 or 4 times the size of the disk space.

I would suggest looking at other sites located at the same host to see what they are doing. Also post in thier forum, if they have one.

Good luck and have fun!

Also what are typical bandwidth usage patterns for different sites.Based on what some hosts have posted, most sites use under 2GB of data transfer per month.

I don't think there are many hosts taking into account the type of sites though.

I don't think there's really a bandwidth level # to disk space # formula that works as a one size fits all.

It really does depend on your client's needs. If you cater to software developers or musicians/artists, you'll need higher bandwidth allocations to accommodate their needs since they'll likely be offering downloads of their products.

If your customers are mostly small businesses using the site for promotion or even as an online storefront, they'll probably have lower bandwidth needs.

You need to evaluate what the starting needs of your target market are and then build your plans accordingly. Also, it's wise to have upgrade options other than just "move up to the next plan" in place as well. Sometimes a client will need more disk space but not bandwidth, or more bandwidth but not disk space. It's a good idea to have those options available and listed up-front.

Hope this helps,
Scott

great answers all. Thanks very much.

Keep em coming.

One simple rule of thumb is to figure out how many customers you think you can gain over your start up period, and how much the average customer needs to pay you for your business to succeed and be profitable. If you sell plans too cheap, you may sell a lot but when you're server's full you may realize you're not making any money. And if you sell them too expensive, you may find out you can't sell any or very few, so you never fill up your servers.

So, prepare a range of plans where the average price will get you where you need to be and don't be afraid of obsoleting old plans and adding new ones anytime you think you need to shift the average. Don't offer too much of your server resources for the lowest price plans. If the price is low, people will sign up anyway, regardless if it is 2 GB of 20 GB of transfer. Then you always give them a few options to upgrade, and introduce new plans with new options to upgrade to every few months. That will promote not only that you are working hard to offer your customers new features, but also give them a good reason to upgrade from the low priced package to the higher priced package. Don't change the lowest priced package to give away more resources. Instead give them an incentive to upgrade.

i think you use the WHT Quote option to get more or hosting offer forum is the best place to get it,

after that you get the best option about BW