There is lots of space and bandwidth talks going on these days with hosting companies trying to surpass each other, customer running after space and bandwidth, seems more of a fashion than any one really knowing what he/she needs in this area, May be this needs to be discussed:-

How much Space you need:


Think of your web hosting account as a sub-directory (or folder) on your hard drive. To determine how much disk space you will need, In Microsoft windows simply open explorer or my computer and click on the folder that contains your web sites files. Create a new folder for your web site if you don't have one and then move all of files you plan to host on the web server into that folder. All you have to do now is right click on your folder to check the size of that folder and now, you know how much disk space you will use on the server. This entire site is around two megs.

How much monthly (bandwidth)Data Transfer do you need:


Try using the following formula to estimate your site's monthly data transfer.

[Average size of your web page(s) + any graphics included within] * [number of visitors you expect each day * number of pages each visitor will view] * [30 days in a month] = Total Monthly Data Transfer Usage.

For example: if we had a site with 30 pages averaging 8 KB each, 50 KB worth of images in each page, and 50 visitors each day who viewed an average of 4 pages, you would have the following formula:[8 KB + 50 KB] * [50 visitors * 4 pages] * [30] = 348,000 KB So we would be using 348,000 KB, or approximately 340 MB, of bandwidth each month. Well within the limitations of our hosting plans.

It's hard to generalize how much data transfer a site will use without looking at it specifically, but in most cases it is very rare for a personal or small business site to use more than one gigabyte (GB) of data transfer in a month. Starting with a data transfer limit of one gigabyte per month is probably appropriate for most new sites. If your average web page is 20Kb in size. 1 Gig of transfer allows for well over 50,000 hits per month at that size! If your average page size is smaller obviously more hits per month.

Moved to Web Hosting Tutorials.

Average size of your web page(s) + any graphics included withinImages are often cached by the browser, so if they're repetitive, only the first visit results in data being transferred.

One of easiest way to know how much you need is testing it. :D

I would recommend getting a DreamHost account using $97 discount coupon found in DreamHost forum or everywhere.
It would only cost $22.40 for 1 year of hosting.
And you can put your site and test.

As DreamHost offers lots of bandwidth and CPU resources,
most site that can be hosted on average shared hosting account would have no problem, at all.
So, you can test without worrying, most probably.

Also, DreamHost provides CPU% log.
With it, you can know how heavy your site is, as far as CPU time goes.

Once you know what you need, you can choose another host,
and use the DreamHost account as a backup until the end of the term.
(You can cancel within 97 days. But I don't think it's fair to get an account with the intention of cancelling.)

Mor importantly, you should remember that CPU/memory are more precious resource than simple bandwidth.

Sure, bandwidth limit can be something to worry if you don't get an account with enough safety margin.
But it's more often other resources that dictate if you can stay within the limit of particular account/plan.

Also, by optimizing the site/script, it's often possible to use less expensive accounts/plans.
Agressive caching technique can really save your money and also make the site more resistant to traffic surge and potential attacks.

Mathematical formulas could show how much you might need and that depending on the included variables (many more than I saw here) . Statistics do fairly show how much you need :)

Good tutorial, with forums 30 gigs + of bandwith is more than enough for a member base of around 200 and around 15 - 20 gigs for homepages.

thanks for the tut buddy

If you are starting and currently run a site that is heavy on Multimedia files or will feature video/audio streaming than having 150+ gigs of space would definitely be desirable.

If you have a high traffic site (or plan on becoming a high traffic site) than a large alottment of bandwidth would be recommended so you can protect yourself from overages.

But for a small 10 page static html web site with a few pictures and a standard template or even a medium sized site or blog you would be more than fine with 200mb-1gig of space (to be safe) and 1-10 gigs of bandwidth.

What you won't ever be fine with no matter what the size of your website is, is going with a company who way oversells their servers and haven't made significant investments in their data centers. Also watch for companies that don't actively monitor their servers to keep out nefarious hosting accounts running scripts that will bring the loading of your site to a crawl.

If your site takes up to 10 seconds before it loads on someone's broadband connection, your website might as well not be there.

Definitely do your research.

But even if you do use half your account bandwidth usage most companies oversell so your account is suspended when your nowhere near your limited so theres no point uusung this formula

But even if you do use half your account bandwidth usage most companies oversell so your account is suspended when your nowhere near your limited so theres no point uusung this formula
That shall be bad selection of hosting service provider, nothing to do with working out your requirement.

You are right in the context of some sites needing more, one can go on seeing what all he needs and this is just one food for thought.

bro... the site need space upon there activite if u think your forum will have a lot of post u should think about good amount of storage and also bandwith

Yes absolutely right.
The point is out of the total sites hosted globally how many are forums.
What in your opinion is average size of a personal or a small business.

consider videos and other pictures, although do video's from sites like youtube take your bandwidth or is it a direct connect.5

Thanks for the great tutorial - it gives me some basics on how to determine (at least) the minimum amount of space I should be considering for my web hosting plan.

Lucille

The first tutorial was really informative. But then I still see some clearly misleading posts talking about 200 to 1gig for personal websites and 30gigs for forums. That is just ignorance and it annoys me to see people post like that especially when there are lots of people who don't know any better.

One way to look at it is most websites (including forums) have mainly TEXT now how much space does a word use??? If you have a personal website and you are using up to 1gig of space, then i'll seriously want to see what you have on that site cause it's not easy to fill up 1 gig pf space. Unless you are hosting albums and albums of mp3s and full length videos, why should your personal site use up to 1gig. Also bearing in mind that a 12 song Album in mp3 format is about 50Mb so to fill up your 1gig space, you would need to upload 20 Albums. Now why would anyone want to do that??? It's illegal anyway!
On the subject of forums weighing 30gigs, i'll be suprised if this particular forum, which can be easily considered a very busy forum uses even anywhere close to that. Lets remember the forum is full of TEXT!! I have an article directory that has over 12k articles on it and it only uses 40MB of space. That is at least 12,000 pages of text only using 40MB.
I also have an account with 5 websites on it and in total they use 350MB of space.

Don't go telling people thinking about getting websites to get 1Gb space or go with some comapny that is offering 1Tb of space, it's misleading cause they could find out that all they need is just 50MB. but they a paying 14.95 or more to some company overselling them 100Gb of space.
Think about that ok!!!

Montypaks is right a long way down the road. But if you have dynamic content or lots of complex calls to a database, its always better to be on the safe side.

Monty wrote:
Unless you are hosting albums and albums of mp3s and full length videos, why should your personal site use up to 1gig. Also bearing in mind that a 12 song Album in mp3 format is about 50Mb so to fill up your 1gig space, you would need to upload 20 Albums. Now why would anyone want to do that??? It's illegal anyway!

What if its your own band hosting their two albums. Only ten downloads a month a piece, but then suddenly you break through, get airplay, rotation and get on MTV... Sure would suck if the two days were 200.000 people want you album, they can't get it.

A backup plan is always good. Either host your music two or more places ie on myspace or if you host a download site, have a few packages on some filehosts.

Lucillef wrote:
Thanks for the great tutorial - it gives me some basics on how to determine (at least) the minimum amount of space I should be considering for my web hosting plan.

I think the point of minimum is crucial here. What if your traffic explodes and you have a dynamic page - depending what you are doing you need to be able to handle your site suddenly being a large succes. Maybe this is a more dominant point regarding hardware: RAM and cache if you have a dedicated server. But also watch out for fixed limits/caps and so on.

In general, and not being an expert, I'd multiply all by four. And then take into account what kind of money i really what to spend!

Another things to consider, other than contents, are the logs, mails and backups.

If you want to keep track of visit patterns, you may want to keep raw logs,
as well as the data produced by awstat, analog, or other stats programs.

Many users are known to keep huge amounts of mails on the server ... it's not that I would recommend doing that nor I like seeing it, but many people do it, anyway.

And backup IS very important (Host may account it within the quote). :)

I think the point of minimum is crucial here. What if your traffic explodes and you have a dynamic page - depending what you are doing you need to be able to handle your site suddenly being a large succes. Maybe this is a more dominant point regarding hardware: RAM and cache if you have a dedicated server. But also watch out for fixed limits/caps and so on.

In general, and not being an expert, I'd multiply all by four. And then take into account what kind of money i really what to spend!

This is a good point - you just never know when business is going to suddenly take off! I definitely want to be able to handle any surge in business. I will definitely consider this when I (finally) choose a hosting company.

Lucille

And backup IS very important (Host may account it within the quote). :)

What do you mean by this? Are you saying that a host may want to charge you extra money to do backups for you? Or are you talking about the extra space that you may need to keep your backups separate from your hosting account?

Lucille

What do you mean by this? Are you saying that a host may want to charge you extra money to do backups for you?

There are some hosts who offer that possibility.


Or are you talking about the extra space that you may need to keep your backups separate from your hosting account?

Lucille
A host may calculate the space needed for the backup (snapshots, for example) in the offered disk space.
They may keep past N days of snapshots, and it may reuire N times more than actual data, in these cases.

However, with a host who offer lots of spaces, we don't have to worry about these details.
You need to think all these if you want to use up everything your host offers, which isn't a good way, IMO, since you may never know how quick your need grow.
Operating on the edge is risky.

You guys are now talking about two different things. If you have a business that has the possibility of suddenly 'taking off' then you wouldn't be on a 'cheap host' in the first place. A business doesn't just 'take off' like that!! The businesses that you have seen 'taking off' have all been as a result of the owners doing smthing.

Think about it, do u really think all of a sudden, 500,000 people, or lets even say 5,000 people would all of a sudden wake up one morning and decide - "oh lets go visit this business on the net and use their service all at the same time" That desn't happen in the real world my friend. A website suddenly 'taking off' would be as a result of something like maybe a successful PR, or a radio interview or smthing similar. And if the website owner cannot anticipate this sort of 'take off' and make appropriate arrangements to deal with it, then sorry they shouldn't be in business in the first place.

@ PJ1s,
A band that starts off with a 'cheap host' and myspace or smthing, and then has that sort of publicity and all and still remain with the same 'cheap host' instead of getting their vps or smthing can't be that good at managing themselves.

With regards to backup, the norm (which also applies to good/decent 'cheap host') is to have a separate backup drive or server. What's the point of a backup if it sits in the same drive as the original files. Doesn't make sense.

So far all the points I've seen in this thread to discredit so called 'cheap hosts' are all extremely short sighted and flawed!!

consider videos and other pictures, although do video's from sites like youtube take your bandwidth or is it a direct connect.5
I'm a newbie and I know almost nothing about website operation.
How exactly does an embeded video work (such as one from youtube)?
Does it take up your bandwidth?
Thanks for any help!

@Montypaks (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/member.php?u=164709) :agree:

Funny you dont think surges in traffic takes down even large sites...

I guess it has never happened that CNN and Fox linked to or mentioned a product or news from a specific site and brings the host to its knees.

It has probably never happened that the local public transportation company got a surge in traffic due to high interest because of the blizzard og hurricane.

If this has never happened, then I guess no bands have ever had problems with a web host that advertises with unlimited bandwith for 3$ a month when one days comes and national radio plays their track and says it free for download at www.onegreatband.info (http://www.onegreatband.info). and the site gets removed instantly.

And if this actually did happen, it was because they were idiots...?

-----

I'll stand by that if you host a filehost, audio/video streaming/downloads or the likes - you might have a problem on a very cheap host from the start. But no one wants to pay for a massive clustered solution if your never gonna use it. Point is you have to find a decent compromise to start with and read the small print.

And btw Monty. I like my webhotel, its cheap, easy, has great support, no problems with bandwith and up all the time. Very much :cool:

edit: added very much ;)

The whole concept of the post is that most of us do not need what we pay for. The hosting companies with tetras and gigas may not apply to most web sites so know what you need and do not unduely get impressed with mega offers.

thank you very much for this hepful information :)

best regards!

DNTraderz

@pj1s

You are missing the point. Muneer is right. I wouldn't think a local public transportation company site would host on a $3 a month host. Nor would any major company or government agency.

However, in terms of a Band just starting out, if they decide to go for a $3/month host, thats ok but they'll need to monitor their traffic and publicity. If suddenly they get invited to a major radio or tv station, then they'll be pretty silly not moving to a VPS or dedicated considering the surge of traffic they'll receive after their broadcast.

The whole point I'm trying to make is why would you want to make the rich richer by getting a service that you wouldn't be using anytime soon. Remember that upgrading can usually be done instantly and if it's between hosts, then in 2 days.

i think i cant finish 1G space on the first year after all.
i only got 1 blog site this moment. :-)

thanks for the article

i think i cant finish 1G space on the first year after all.
i only got 1 blog site this moment. :-)

thanks for the article

Hi Cindy, how much space does your blog use within your 1Gb space??

My Article directory (www.bylamoarticles.com (http://www.bylamoarticles.com)) (13k+ articles) at this very moment uses 68Mb

For the average website (which covers over 90% of sites on the internet), your main priority should be server specs not disk space and bandwidth. But ofcourse, Common Sense is required as well. A government website or any main stream website that goes for shared hosting deserve to have their site offline 90% of the time.

I rarely visit this forum but the actual TOPIC caught my eye!
There needs to be more discussion like this in the main forums. I wish they would do a "sticky" where users can post what they actually use and what they purchased. :D
People would start thinking twice then! :D

There have been a few threads here and there on this but they fade away quickly.

Montypaks, makes some especially good points that are KEY! 90% of the time users just do not know what they need but assume since the majority of hosts OFFER space/BW in the GB and up fashion then thats exactly what they are going to need and use. The reality is far from it. :rolleyes:

I couldn't agree more! I think the more we can do to educate people on what they really need, the better off everyone will be.

My personal experience as a member of hosting company from last many years is that customer use 5 to 10 times less than what they purchase. Thats the key to all the overselling, lowering of prices and all the GBs flying around in Pennies, the customer does not know what he needs. So hosting companies are fooling around making money.
They (hosting comaies) know that if they can safely sell 5 to 10 servers at the cost of one server to them. Otherwise if you simply ask the same hosting compay offering 10Gb in dollar 3 that whats the cost of an 80GB server they will tell you something like $150 and above. Just do a bit back calculation and find how the same company is selling 10GB in $3 (80 GB shall be than in $30).
Isnt it funny.

Well that depends on what is "bandwith". ixwebhosting counts bandwith as everything that remotely checks your site. Like a backlink checker, it might check your whole site, well then ixwebhosting counts every page it checks as a view. I personally think ixwebhosting is a scam!

My personal experience as a member of hosting company from last many years is that customer use 5 to 10 times less than what they purchase. Thats the key to all the overselling, lowering of prices and all the GBs flying around in Pennies, the customer does not know what he needs. So hosting companies are fooling around making money.
They (hosting comaies) know that if they can safely sell 5 to 10 servers at the cost of one server to them. Otherwise if you simply ask the same hosting compay offering 10Gb in dollar 3 that whats the cost of an 80GB server they will tell you something like $150 and above. Just do a bit back calculation and find how the same company is selling 10GB in $3 (80 GB shall be than in $30).
Isnt it funny.

Yeah that's funny! Came across a host that sells 150GB space for less than 6 bucks a month. That must be one uber server they must have!

If you are a photo maniac and upload a gazillion of them I don't think 30GB is enough...

thanks dear

In all reality you can do as many calculations as you wish but do you really think sites like youtube and myspace ever expected to get to be what they are now?

The best bet is to talk to your hosting provider, any good provider will give you a reply that doesnt look like it was copy and pasted from a manual.

We offer unlimited bandwith but also operate a fair usage policy, not to say if you use too much we kill your site, but if you do overuse bandwith we will discuss the situation with you and come to an amicable agreement that suits both host and client.

thanks for this article. i have never been able to accurately predict how much bandwidth a site may need, so thanks for the info.

#1 rule of thumb when choosing a webhost

1. NEVER trust a site that says "unlimited bandwidth"

that is probably THE #1 rule, for any customer to keep in mind. :)

I actually have other such rules that I follow, which are more my own personal preferences then anything else, such as...

#2 NEVER trust a host that doesn't accept paypal.

Well, its not that I don't trust a host with my credit card number, well I don't but thats beside the point. The reason I think paypal billing is so important, you never know what the person on the other end is using your Credit Card # for. Maybe not the host, but datacenter, or a bad employee that works for the host, I mean you never know. I had my credit card number stolen from a host web before, and it was NOT fun getting all those charges off my credit card, especially when all I had was a debit card. With debit cards, there is no fraud protection, so once charges are made, its gone, end of story, so for that reason, I don't trust ANY host anymoore with my credit card. paypal or NOTHING in my book :) or pay by check with snail mail, but NEVER by credit card.

#3 always do your homework. Pick a host that is fairly close to your geographical location. If you live in Chicago Illinois USA for example, and the majority of your user base is located in the United States somewhere also, don't pick a european or russian or UK host, for example, because not only will your visitors complain about the speed of your site, but you won't like going to your own site either, so pick a host thats fairly close to your geographical location, who has the backbone speed that you need.

#4 and of course, this is my personal favorite, esp for newbies, since newbies generally switch hosts ALOT trying to find one that suits them best.. get a host that uses CPANEL, and Fantastico, and RVSkin. I absolutely cannot stress that enough. Reason being, cpanel has a very nice "site transfer" script that you can use to transfer your site over to a new host, just in case you run into problems, and have to switch hosts for some reason. It could be, the host goes out of business, or the customer support isn't what you expected. Whatever the reason, its always a good idea, not only to keep backups, but a way to transfer a host to a new server at any time. Even if you stick to the same host your entire life, its easier for the host to transfer your account to a new server if something goes wrong on their end, if you have Cpanel, so definitely get cpanel, I can't stress that enough.

#5 and lastly, pick a host you like. Talk with a represenative, ask him about the company, read reviews from others on what the customer service is like. I don't think its necessarily important to pick a host that has 20 minute guaranteed response times, or anything crazy like that, but at least pick one that gets back with you within the same day, who always lets you know whats going on, even if their working on the problem, its always a good idea to send out a quick email to the user to let them know the status, even if its not completed yet. that way the user isn't left hanging in wait, which usually ticks people off, especially if their site is down for any reason. People don't so much mind their site being down, so long as the line of communication is open.

those are my recommendations.

Tom

#1 rule of thumb when choosing a webhost

1. NEVER trust a site that says "unlimited bandwidth"

that is probably THE #1 rule, for any customer to keep in mind. :) Unless your google, or a celebrity, or someone with a very large user base, chances are your not going to use more then a few gigs of bandwidth anyway, so don't ask for, or expect, what the web host probably cannot deliver. I like the idea of starting out with 1 gig. Even if you go over, at least you'll know how much you need, thats better then estimating anyday.

Most hosts do not suspend your account if you go over anyway. Most of the decent ones just charge you more for the extra bandwidth at the end of the month, and leave you a friendly email recommending you upgrade to a new plan, so its never a big deal.
If a host suspends your account for going over, I'd suggest switching hosts. As much competition as their is now, with consumers getting into the web hosting biz, its not worth it, you can always find someone better then that.

I actually have other such rules that I follow, which are more my own personal preferences then anything else, such as...

#2 NEVER trust a host that doesn't accept paypal.

Well, its not that I don't trust a host with my credit card number, well I don't but thats beside the point. The reason I think paypal billing is so important, you never know what the person on the other end is using your Credit Card # for. Maybe not the host, but datacenter, or a bad employee that works for the host, I mean you never know. I had my credit card number stolen from a host web before, and it was NOT fun getting all those charges off my credit card, especially when all I had was a debit card. With debit cards, there is no fraud protection, so once charges are made, its gone, end of story, so for that reason, I don't trust ANY host anymoore with my credit card. paypal or NOTHING in my book :) or pay by check with snail mail, but NEVER by credit card.

#3 always do your homework. Pick a host that is fairly close to your geographical location. If you live in Chicago Illinois USA for example, and the majority of your user base is located in the United States somewhere also, don't pick a european or russian or UK host, for example, because not only will your visitors complain about the speed of your site, but you won't like going to your own site either, so pick a host thats fairly close to your geographical location, who has the backbone speed that you need.

Also, make sure the host is an actual company, and not just some little kid playing "web hostie" with his dads spare computer lying around. Any decient web designer can make up a webpage looking like an actual web hosting company. An 11yr old could probably do it with frontpage 97 more the linkely. hehe. With routers and home networking, this pops up all the time, so remember to do your homework throughly. If its possible, call the websites number, talk to people over the phone, go visit the company, if possible, make sure the host is who they say they are.

#4 and of course, this is my personal favorite, esp for newbies, since newbies generally switch hosts ALOT trying to find one that suits them best.. get a host that uses CPANEL, and Fantastico, and RVSkin. I absolutely cannot stress that enough. Reason being, cpanel has a very nice "site transfer" script that you can use to transfer your site over to a new host, just in case you run into problems, and have to switch hosts for some reason. It could be, the host goes out of business, or the customer support isn't what you expected. Whatever the reason, its always a good idea, not only to keep backups, but a way to transfer a host to a new server at any time. Even if you stick to the same host your entire life, its easier for the host to transfer your account to a new server if something goes wrong on their end, if you have Cpanel, so definitely get cpanel, I can't stress that enough.

#5 and lastly, pick a host you like. Talk with a representative, ask him about the company, read reviews from others on what the customer service is like. Even if you talk to the host on the phone and visit the location, talk to others who have been with that host and ask them how their experiences are/were. I don't think its necessarily important to pick a host that has 20 minute guaranteed response times, or anything crazy like that, but at least pick one that gets back with you within the same day, who always lets you know whats going on, even if their working on the problem, its always a good idea to send out a quick email to the user to let them know the status, even if its not completed yet. That way, the user isn't left hanging out to dry, which usually ticks people off, especially if their site is down for any reason, they want to know whats going on. People don't so much mind their site being down, because problems always come up noone can guarantee 99.9 to 100% site uptime, thats just crazy, so long as the line of communication is open, customers really do understand. Personally, I think when customers do start yelling, or getting angry at the customer service reps, is almost always due to a lack of communication on the hosting providers part. it almost always is. I see it all the time.

those are my recommendations.

Tom

I have to say thank you Muneer for posting the following formula:

[Average size of your web page(s) + any graphics included within] * [number of visitors you expect each day * number of pages each visitor will view] * [30 days in a month] = Total Monthly Data Transfer Usage.

That will help many people including me determine my total monthly data transfer usage.

Thanks again!

mine is all text base and i havent posted more than 1 post a day and still bothered to take plans offering 200GB space and monthly bandwidth of 2000GB :P

#1 rule of thumb when choosing a webhost

1. NEVER trust a site that says "unlimited bandwidth"

that is probably THE #1 rule, for any customer to keep in mind. :) Unless your google, or a celebrity, or someone with a very large user base, chances are your not going to use more then a few gigs of bandwidth anyway, so don't ask for, or expect, what the web host probably cannot deliver. I like the idea of starting out with 1 gig. Even if you go over, at least you'll know how much you need, thats better then estimating anyday.

Most hosts do not suspend your account if you go over anyway. Most of the decent ones just charge you more for the extra bandwidth at the end of the month, and leave you a friendly email recommending you upgrade to a new plan, so its never a big deal.
If a host suspends your account for going over, I'd suggest switching hosts. As much competition as their is now, with consumers getting into the web hosting biz, its not worth it, you can always find someone better then that.

I actually have other such rules that I follow, which are more my own personal preferences then anything else, such as...

#2 NEVER trust a host that doesn't accept paypal.

Well, its not that I don't trust a host with my credit card number, well I don't but thats beside the point. The reason I think paypal billing is so important, you never know what the person on the other end is using your Credit Card # for. Maybe not the host, but datacenter, or a bad employee that works for the host, I mean you never know. I had my credit card number stolen from a host web before, and it was NOT fun getting all those charges off my credit card, especially when all I had was a debit card. With debit cards, there is no fraud protection, so once charges are made, its gone, end of story, so for that reason, I don't trust ANY host anymoore with my credit card. paypal or NOTHING in my book :) or pay by check with snail mail, but NEVER by credit card.

#3 always do your homework. Pick a host that is fairly close to your geographical location. If you live in Chicago Illinois USA for example, and the majority of your user base is located in the United States somewhere also, don't pick a european or russian or UK host, for example, because not only will your visitors complain about the speed of your site, but you won't like going to your own site either, so pick a host thats fairly close to your geographical location, who has the backbone speed that you need.

Also, make sure the host is an actual company, and not just some little kid playing "web hostie" with his dads spare computer lying around. Any decient web designer can make up a webpage looking like an actual web hosting company. An 11yr old could probably do it with frontpage 97 more the linkely. hehe. With routers and home networking, this pops up all the time, so remember to do your homework throughly. If its possible, call the websites number, talk to people over the phone, go visit the company, if possible, make sure the host is who they say they are.

#4 and of course, this is my personal favorite, esp for newbies, since newbies generally switch hosts ALOT trying to find one that suits them best.. get a host that uses CPANEL, and Fantastico, and RVSkin. I absolutely cannot stress that enough. Reason being, cpanel has a very nice "site transfer" script that you can use to transfer your site over to a new host, just in case you run into problems, and have to switch hosts for some reason. It could be, the host goes out of business, or the customer support isn't what you expected. Whatever the reason, its always a good idea, not only to keep backups, but a way to transfer a host to a new server at any time. Even if you stick to the same host your entire life, its easier for the host to transfer your account to a new server if something goes wrong on their end, if you have Cpanel, so definitely get cpanel, I can't stress that enough.

#5 and lastly, pick a host you like. Talk with a representative, ask him about the company, read reviews from others on what the customer service is like. Even if you talk to the host on the phone and visit the location, talk to others who have been with that host and ask them how their experiences are/were. I don't think its necessarily important to pick a host that has 20 minute guaranteed response times, or anything crazy like that, but at least pick one that gets back with you within the same day, who always lets you know whats going on, even if their working on the problem, its always a good idea to send out a quick email to the user to let them know the status, even if its not completed yet. That way, the user isn't left hanging out to dry, which usually ticks people off, especially if their site is down for any reason, they want to know whats going on. People don't so much mind their site being down, because problems always come up noone can guarantee 99.9 to 100% site uptime, thats just crazy, so long as the line of communication is open, customers really do understand. Personally, I think when customers do start yelling, or getting angry at the customer service reps, is almost always due to a lack of communication on the hosting providers part. it almost always is. I see it all the time.

those are my recommendations.

Tom

Wow great stuff Tom.I think i recieved this one a bit late.I should have been here.Without Cpanel its like wandering in forest.It seems very complicated.Great post i think this should go as thread.

#1 rule of thumb when choosing a webhost

1. NEVER trust a site that says "unlimited bandwidth"

that is probably THE #1 rule, for any customer to keep in mind. :) Unless your google, or a celebrity, or someone with a very large user base, chances are your not going to use more then a few gigs of bandwidth anyway, so don't ask for, or expect, what the web host probably cannot deliver. I like the idea of starting out with 1 gig. Even if you go over, at least you'll know how much you need, thats better then estimating anyday.

Most hosts do not suspend your account if you go over anyway. Most of the decent ones just charge you more for the extra bandwidth at the end of the month, and leave you a friendly email recommending you upgrade to a new plan, so its never a big deal.
If a host suspends your account for going over, I'd suggest switching hosts. As much competition as their is now, with consumers getting into the web hosting biz, its not worth it, you can always find someone better then that.

I actually have other such rules that I follow, which are more my own personal preferences then anything else, such as...

#2 NEVER trust a host that doesn't accept paypal.

Well, its not that I don't trust a host with my credit card number, well I don't but thats beside the point. The reason I think paypal billing is so important, you never know what the person on the other end is using your Credit Card # for. Maybe not the host, but datacenter, or a bad employee that works for the host, I mean you never know. I had my credit card number stolen from a host web before, and it was NOT fun getting all those charges off my credit card, especially when all I had was a debit card. With debit cards, there is no fraud protection, so once charges are made, its gone, end of story, so for that reason, I don't trust ANY host anymoore with my credit card. paypal or NOTHING in my book :) or pay by check with snail mail, but NEVER by credit card.

#3 always do your homework. Pick a host that is fairly close to your geographical location. If you live in Chicago Illinois USA for example, and the majority of your user base is located in the United States somewhere also, don't pick a european or russian or UK host, for example, because not only will your visitors complain about the speed of your site, but you won't like going to your own site either, so pick a host thats fairly close to your geographical location, who has the backbone speed that you need.

Also, make sure the host is an actual company, and not just some little kid playing "web hostie" with his dads spare computer lying around. Any decient web designer can make up a webpage looking like an actual web hosting company. An 11yr old could probably do it with frontpage 97 more the linkely. hehe. With routers and home networking, this pops up all the time, so remember to do your homework throughly. If its possible, call the websites number, talk to people over the phone, go visit the company, if possible, make sure the host is who they say they are.

#4 and of course, this is my personal favorite, esp for newbies, since newbies generally switch hosts ALOT trying to find one that suits them best.. get a host that uses CPANEL, and Fantastico, and RVSkin. I absolutely cannot stress that enough. Reason being, cpanel has a very nice "site transfer" script that you can use to transfer your site over to a new host, just in case you run into problems, and have to switch hosts for some reason. It could be, the host goes out of business, or the customer support isn't what you expected. Whatever the reason, its always a good idea, not only to keep backups, but a way to transfer a host to a new server at any time. Even if you stick to the same host your entire life, its easier for the host to transfer your account to a new server if something goes wrong on their end, if you have Cpanel, so definitely get cpanel, I can't stress that enough.

#5 and lastly, pick a host you like. Talk with a representative, ask him about the company, read reviews from others on what the customer service is like. Even if you talk to the host on the phone and visit the location, talk to others who have been with that host and ask them how their experiences are/were. I don't think its necessarily important to pick a host that has 20 minute guaranteed response times, or anything crazy like that, but at least pick one that gets back with you within the same day, who always lets you know whats going on, even if their working on the problem, its always a good idea to send out a quick email to the user to let them know the status, even if its not completed yet. That way, the user isn't left hanging out to dry, which usually ticks people off, especially if their site is down for any reason, they want to know whats going on. People don't so much mind their site being down, because problems always come up noone can guarantee 99.9 to 100% site uptime, thats just crazy, so long as the line of communication is open, customers really do understand. Personally, I think when customers do start yelling, or getting angry at the customer service reps, is almost always due to a lack of communication on the hosting providers part. it almost always is. I see it all the time.

those are my recommendations.

Tom


Simply superb post bubazoo. I agree with you.

My big site pulls about 250 GB bandwidth/Month not to big of a bandwidth hog though....

My big site pulls about 250 GB bandwidth/Month not to big of a bandwidth hog though....

And you are on shared hosting?

No I have 17 dedicated servers

As a comment to #4 in bubazoo's big post there. Cpanel really isn't the best control panel, it's just what most people seem to be used to. So if you're not used to anything yet look around at other things too. For the rest I pretty much agree, get what you need, don't let big numbers seduce you or just the looks of a site, read everything, research it and verify it.

If you're just running a handful of forum sites without videos and streaming media, then you need not worry of having a 100 GB of monthly bandwidth.

nice intersting find

I've been haunting lots of the threads here, but I think y'all might have the best answer(s) for me. I'm a rookie at administering Forums (visit a few regularly) but I'm far from computer illiterate and am willing to put in the necessary work - and tap all my more knowledgeable friends and acquaintances.

I am wanting to set up a forum to go along with a very popular webcam hosted by one of our project partners. We have alot of traffic to this webcam (live-streaming bird cam) and used to have a blog but we couldn't post all the questions/answers to the blog everyday, so there were lots of duplicate posts etc due to the time-lag which exponentially increased our workload. I have been searching for an alternative method of dealing with the questions/answer problem, but it seems this is the most effective/efficient method. Problem is I don't know how to guess-timate what resources I would need - particularly bandwidth. Additionally, the forum would only be necessary for about 4-5 months a year.

I do know that only a some of the people who visited the webcam also visited the blog, and fewer actually posted to it. Registration would be necessary to post and if I can, I would happily limit the number of people on the forum at one time (if that's possible) - say for argument's sake, 300 people at a time. No videos, some photos, avatars and banners maybe but users would have to have the latter hosted on their own sites.

My partners can contribute some money but none of us have much available, I have a hosting company for the rest of the project website (excluding the webcam) and am happy with their service (or at least haven't had problems) over the last 5 years but haven't tried a message board with them. I have one of their smaller plans so there is room to upgrade, would just be nice to know how far (approx) I need to consider upgrading.

Any ideas/suggestions/advice ? Including what I should be asking my current hosting company ...

Thanks in advance for any/all help!
Claire in Canada

thanks for this tutorial
I know now what to look for

Very good tutor for new bees. Most of the new comers are astonished by the space and bandwidth announced to be offered by big hosting companies. But, in reality they need very little.

What about video or live streaming how do you calculate?

As a comment to #4 in bubazoo's big post there. Cpanel really isn't the best control panel, it's just what most people seem to be used to. So if you're not used to anything yet look around at other things too. For the rest I pretty much agree, get what you need, don't let big numbers seduce you or just the looks of a site, read everything, research it and verify it.


Hmmm... what in your opinion would be a better hosting panel than cpanel that has the level of flexibility and multiple domain hosting that cpanel offers?

Well H-sphere is my personal favorite, but it is more expensive. Depending on your purpose there are better and worse ones of course.

Though H-sphere gives you an all-in solution, billing, support desk, etc... So if you plan to do webhosting it will end up cheaper. For personal servers there's h-sphere cheaper single-server edition as well, but it is of course still intended as a webhost solution.

Actually - if you do a TCO (huh?) of H-Sphere vs. just about any non-integrated control panel + the additional software required to make it work the same -- you would be spending alot more money.

Let's take cPanel since that seems to be the favorite around here:

$20/mo. - Partner NOC cPanel License
$49.95/mo - ModernBill 1000 User License
$35/mo - Cerberus License for 5 Users.

Total: $104.95

(All pricing taken from their vendor websites as of today).

We haven't even figured in the server costs, just software (since they will most likely be the same server in either scenario). Even with this setup, you still don't have a true, fully integrated system like H-Sphere which can support Linux/Windows/FreeBSD/Dedicated Server/Exchange/Sharepoint Support and more.

Typically, H-Sphere licenses (directly from Psoft; list price) run about $4/one time per account (instance of CP/billing). The ROI on that $4 is *much* quicker than all of the above list as it is an *ongoing* cost, which does not even support multiple platforms/environments.

However, you can also *rent* H-Sphere licenses for as little as $0.50/month from some providers which lowers the cost of entry to most providers quite significantly.

Hope this helps....

Well H-sphere is my personal favorite, but it is more expensive. Depending on your purpose there are better and worse ones of course.

Correct -- however, you really need the full edition to unlock H-Sphere's full potential :).

Though H-sphere gives you an all-in solution, billing, support desk, etc... So if you plan to do webhosting it will end up cheaper. For personal servers there's h-sphere cheaper single-server edition as well, but it is of course still intended as a webhost solution.

you are comparing apples and oranges. The reality is you need to have multiple solutions from multiple vendors tailored to your own organization to make it work. - H-Sphere is now part of Plesk, or Parallels oh so is modernbill - so it goes for now and by next week the constant of change will take effect and who know what else will be out there --

What a great post (OP). Many folks just don't realize how little space and bandwidth they really need.

Really nice tutorial.

I have 5 GB, completely useful.

Actually - if you do a TCO (huh?) of H-Sphere vs. just about any non-integrated control panel + the additional software required to make it work the same -- you would be spending alot more money.

Sure, but if you're talking about any of those licenses "as-a-service" (like you quoted for our pricing), then your TCO should also consider the fact a hosted service is like having an extra server, more storage space and possibly no bandwidth bill.

The redundancy that allows you to still talk to your customers (helpdesk, live chat, billing) while your main server is down is quite a bit of value on the other side of your TCO example.

I'm a bit biased when it comes to our app, of course. But for us I'd say the same thing about Campfire, Ubersmith or Salesforce. We could host it all ourselves and pretend it's cheaper if the licensing alone was the TCO. It's not. ;)

the safest place to know How Much Space and Bandwidth You Need to Host Your Site is...
1.by contact the host for suggestion,
2. negotiate the price for discount when it is possible.

so if i have 25+ domains on a server and have a couple of pages for each etc with ads etc how much space will it take up and how fast will my bandwidth go?


(trying to convince myself that clicking the wrong button and ordering 60gb of bandwidth and 6gb of space isnt a total waste of $12 over 30gb of bandwidth and 3gb space.

so if i have 25+ domains on a server and have a couple of pages for each etc with ads etc how much space will it take up and how fast will my bandwidth go?


(trying to convince myself that clicking the wrong button and ordering 60gb of bandwidth and 6gb of space isnt a total waste of $12 over 30gb of bandwidth and 3gb space.

yes. but what is it for? then?

It is about a kilobyte of disk space per page of text (and code), images and downloads are what take up disk space and even images dont take up much normally, unless you are running some kind of photo site. To calculate bandwidth just multiply the size of the pages+images people will see with how many times they will see it.

wow, thanks. i never really payed attention to the bandwith sections. but, what happens when you go over your bandwith? does it like go down?

Most hosting services providers will suspend it and ask you to upgrade. They may inform you when you are nearing the limit as sort of early warning.

thanks for such great share^^

Is there any good book or other resource out there that can help shed some light on how much bandwidth AND what kind of hardware any given site might need? Can't give any details on what I have in mind because it's currently in development. It's a RoR site, not sure on expected hits, etc...

scol - PM me and I will coach you through it or we can do it here in the open forum for everyone

-Chris

1gb space and 5gb bandwidth is enough for me

To be honest most people do not need even half as much of what their hosting plan offers them, hence why hosting companies are even able to oversell on their servers so easily.

In my opinion if you're just starting out you shouldn't jump in the deep end with such a large hosting plan. The chances are that you will be wasting money for at least the first couple of months until your site really starts to pick up momentum.

So my advice on choosing how much disk space and bandwidth you should look for in a hosting plan is this.

- For disk space, consider the total file size of your site and multiply it by 5.

- For bandwidth, I personally use the rule that your bandwidth amount should be at least 10 times the total combined file size of your site.

It's always worked for me in the past.

I think in most cases you tend to find out that you usually over compensate how much you need. Most clients I talk to say they need 8gigs of space, then they turn around and only use 100MBs - I guess it's always nice to have a little leeway - sure - but if you're not using it, then you're wasting it.

Simply That depends on your requirement. Just don't rush behind this and see what you exactly want.

#1 rule of thumb when choosing a webhost

1. NEVER trust a site that says "unlimited bandwidth"

that is probably THE #1 rule, for any customer to keep in mind. :) Unless your google, or a celebrity, or someone with a very large user base, chances are your not going to use more then a few gigs of bandwidth anyway, so don't ask for, or expect, what the web host probably cannot deliver. I like the idea of starting out with 1 gig. Even if you go over, at least you'll know how much you need, thats better then estimating anyday.

Most hosts do not suspend your account if you go over anyway. Most of the decent ones just charge you more for the extra bandwidth at the end of the month, and leave you a friendly email recommending you upgrade to a new plan, so its never a big deal.
If a host suspends your account for going over, I'd suggest switching hosts. As much competition as their is now, with consumers getting into the web hosting biz, its not worth it, you can always find someone better then that.

I actually have other such rules that I follow, which are more my own personal preferences then anything else, such as...

#2 NEVER trust a host that doesn't accept paypal.

Well, its not that I don't trust a host with my credit card number, well I don't but thats beside the point. The reason I think paypal billing is so important, you never know what the person on the other end is using your Credit Card # for. Maybe not the host, but datacenter, or a bad employee that works for the host, I mean you never know. I had my credit card number stolen from a host web before, and it was NOT fun getting all those charges off my credit card, especially when all I had was a debit card. With debit cards, there is no fraud protection, so once charges are made, its gone, end of story, so for that reason, I don't trust ANY host anymoore with my credit card. paypal or NOTHING in my book :) or pay by check with snail mail, but NEVER by credit card.

#3 always do your homework. Pick a host that is fairly close to your geographical location. If you live in Chicago Illinois USA for example, and the majority of your user base is located in the United States somewhere also, don't pick a european or russian or UK host, for example, because not only will your visitors complain about the speed of your site, but you won't like going to your own site either, so pick a host thats fairly close to your geographical location, who has the backbone speed that you need.

Also, make sure the host is an actual company, and not just some little kid playing "web hostie" with his dads spare computer lying around. Any decient web designer can make up a webpage looking like an actual web hosting company. An 11yr old could probably do it with frontpage 97 more the linkely. hehe. With routers and home networking, this pops up all the time, so remember to do your homework throughly. If its possible, call the websites number, talk to people over the phone, go visit the company, if possible, make sure the host is who they say they are.

#4 and of course, this is my personal favorite, esp for newbies, since newbies generally switch hosts ALOT trying to find one that suits them best.. get a host that uses CPANEL, and Fantastico, and RVSkin. I absolutely cannot stress that enough. Reason being, cpanel has a very nice "site transfer" script that you can use to transfer your site over to a new host, just in case you run into problems, and have to switch hosts for some reason. It could be, the host goes out of business, or the customer support isn't what you expected. Whatever the reason, its always a good idea, not only to keep backups, but a way to transfer a host to a new server at any time. Even if you stick to the same host your entire life, its easier for the host to transfer your account to a new server if something goes wrong on their end, if you have Cpanel, so definitely get cpanel, I can't stress that enough.

#5 and lastly, pick a host you like. Talk with a representative, ask him about the company, read reviews from others on what the customer service is like. Even if you talk to the host on the phone and visit the location, talk to others who have been with that host and ask them how their experiences are/were. I don't think its necessarily important to pick a host that has 20 minute guaranteed response times, or anything crazy like that, but at least pick one that gets back with you within the same day, who always lets you know whats going on, even if their working on the problem, its always a good idea to send out a quick email to the user to let them know the status, even if its not completed yet. That way, the user isn't left hanging out to dry, which usually ticks people off, especially if their site is down for any reason, they want to know whats going on. People don't so much mind their site being down, because problems always come up noone can guarantee 99.9 to 100% site uptime, thats just crazy, so long as the line of communication is open, customers really do understand. Personally, I think when customers do start yelling, or getting angry at the customer service reps, is almost always due to a lack of communication on the hosting providers part. it almost always is. I see it all the time.

those are my recommendations.

Tom

nice share Tom, it helps me for web host. Thanks for sharing Tom:)

Wow great tutorial

Really nice tutorial, hope it is going to reduce the amount of bandwidth and space users are asking for because some requests are really crazy.

Thanks for the tutorial, very useful

Thank you for that Bandwidth formula its really helpful in determining the bandwidth any site must have.
Everybody must know this.:agree:

most space gets taken by media. upload photos to flickr, video to vimeo, and embed from there.

basically we need only 100-200 MB of storage for a normal website.
We should differentiate between Web Hosting and File Hosting.
Just upload and run your main pages/scripts on your host and upload all other files, movies, pics, videos etc. to various free file hosts.

This will save the valuable bandwidth and disk space of your website and doesn't overload the CPU/HDD of the server. :)

How much monthly (bandwidth)Data Transfer do you need:


Try using the following formula to estimate your site's monthly data transfer.

[Average size of your web page(s) + any graphics included within] * [number of visitors you expect each day * number of pages each visitor will view] * [30 days in a month] = Total Monthly Data Transfer Usage.


There are some obvious limitations to this formula which I feel greatly understate how much one might potentially use.

Mine: [20kb + 0] * [2000 * 100] * [30] = 14.3051147 gigabytes
It is understated by quite a bit as I go through almost 50 gigs a month.

1) Average size of a webpage is a bad base because people tend to view larger pages more often. Those pages attract more search engines since they have more keywords and people usually leave more comments and posts. You are better off taking your largest page and using that to multiply with as those large pages are seen the most often.
Sidenote: Remember that when you check how big your page is that it should also include css, javascript, and other offsite includes that may only be downloaded once but some browsers don't handle that correctly or you may get a lot of newer users. Also, some new people may forget that the filesize on the server is not the size of the page sent if it is a dynamic site and the difference can be quite large.

2) Inbound traffic is not recorded here. Most people don't think about it but almost all hosts record inbound and outbound traffic (and sometimes even ftp traffic from the owner). People posting on forums or uploading an image/video can use a decent amount of bandwidth without even realizing it. Even static sites still have overhead in sending a page and receiving a request. And if there is ajax that could be sending information back and forth without you even knowing.

Finally, if you are running something other than a static personal site that will probably just sit there or a local business site that is only informative I would use something much more lenient:

I would take this formula and times the expected number of users by 2 (or more to allow for a little growth or a good month!), take the largest page on your site (as that is the one most likely being viewed the most), and put them into the formula. Then take about 20% for overhead/inbound and add that on. The more dynamic the site the more I would allocate extra as they usually grow pretty exponentially.

I'm actually in huge need of alot of space. I used vpsland but then there were capacity stuff and ram/space/bandwidth.

It all depends what you are want to do with your website. If you are going to blog every day, add photos or videos, and how much traffic you are planning on receiving. Yes, you can come up with a ball park estimate, but in the end, you never know exactly how much you are going to need each and every month.

#2 NEVER trust a host that doesn't accept paypal.

Well, its not that I don't trust a host with my credit card number, well I don't but thats beside the point. The reason I think paypal billing is so important, you never know what the person on the other end is using your Credit Card # for. Maybe not the host, but datacenter, or a bad employee that works for the host, I mean you never know. I had my credit card number stolen from a host web before, and it was NOT fun getting all those charges off my credit card, especially when all I had was a debit card. With debit cards, there is no fraud protection, so once charges are made, its gone, end of story, so for that reason, I don't trust ANY host anymoore with my credit card. paypal or NOTHING in my book :) or pay by check with snail mail, but NEVER by credit card.
Tom

I know this post is kind of old, but I caught the above statement baffles me. Is this the norm? Is this what people expect? I cringe at the thought of doing business with PayPal!! In fact I was not going to accept PayPal when I get my hosting company up. You have very little rights through PayPal and they are not even regulated by US Gov't


Regulation
The law is unclear as to whether PayPal is a bank, narrow bank, money services business or money transmitter. PayPal could also be subject to state regulation, but state laws vary, as do their definitions of banks, narrow banks, money services businesses and money transmitters. The most analogous regulatory source of law for PayPal transactions comes from P2P payments using credit and debit cards.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal

Nice tutorial.

I think that most of us use around 20% of what we pay for. I think this is what most hosts are banking on: consumers not knowing and overpaying :) So what does that mean? Hosting companies are currently getting paid for 5 times as much as what you are using.

They should be ashamed of themselves.

Great post, very informational for anyone that's new looking for a host and is not sure what they will need.:)

This is an important topic, I've often had to explain to friends looking into getting hosting that:

1) there is not such thing as unlimited hosting (nothing is unlimited)
2) if they did manage to get a site that actually needed 50gb+ of bandwidth they would likely have a booming business or HEAVILY trafficked blog on their hands, in which case they could certainly justify decent hosting!

That being said, I wouldn't emphatically agree that all "unlimited hosting" plans are bad. Its just that they have the potential to be. I've hosted with Bluehost for years, with very few issues, and ive recently signed up with Justhost and Dreamhost and also not had any problems, though Dreamhost is slower than the others imho.

A reputable unlimited bandwidth host is fine, my advice would be to place less emphasis on how much storage/bandwidth you're receiving and more on the quality/reputation of the company.

This is an important topic, I've often had to explain to friends looking into getting hosting that:

1) there is not such thing as unlimited hosting (nothing is unlimited)
2) if they did manage to get a site that actually needed 50gb+ of bandwidth they would likely have a booming business or HEAVILY trafficked blog on their hands, in which case they could certainly justify decent hosting!

That being said, I wouldn't emphatically agree that all "unlimited hosting" plans are bad. Its just that they have the potential to be. I've hosted with Bluehost for years, with very few issues, and ive recently signed up with Justhost and Dreamhost and also not had any problems, though Dreamhost is slower than the others imho.

A reputable unlimited bandwidth host is fine, my advice would be to place less emphasis on how much storage/bandwidth you're receiving and more on the quality/reputation of the company.

I agree about the more emphasis on quality and reputation as well as service offerings, support, and security.

Plan provisioning for the most part is just a marketing ploy and perhaps even a insult to the avg consumer intelligence. Honestly - one would have to question someone who selects a host that notes 1000 email address over 250 thinking well the more the better vs really how many are they going to use for their domain.

Storage and Bandwidth are taken advantage of all over the place.

As more and more consumers are educating them selfs - the quality hosting providers will prevail.

Then you see the other side of the coin and those hosts that attempt to gain market share based on price point alone.

2 to 3 bucks a month or the price of a good cup of coffee for the true value of quality hosting is sad.

The client must ask them selfs "how much" is my business class hosting worth to my business.

I think the consumer should ask them selfs the same -

Anyway - observations to ponder but remember this is IMHO

Peace,

Dave

Absolutely Dave, excellent point.

I guess the other thing to consider is that over selling doesn't just happen with unlimited hosting providers.

A provider offering 100gb of bandwidth/storage can still oversell their server capacity knowing full well 95% of people won't use that much.

Really then, it comes down to the integrity of the company rather than any figures cited in their promotional materials.

Nice one, thanks.

I didn't read the OP, but I want to reply anyway.
How little disk space/bandwidth one needs never ceases to amaze me.

I have almost 200 websites on my VPS,
And we're using around 10 GB of disk space and 40 GB of bandwidth.

I have a server with approx. 1000 domains - the web space usage is approx 200GB and monthly bandwidth of the whole server is 350GB-400GB.

One of easiest way to know how much you need is testing it. :D

I would recommend getting a DreamHost account using $97 discount coupon found in DreamHost forum or everywhere.
It would only cost $22.40 for 1 year of hosting.
And you can put your site and test.

As DreamHost offers lots of bandwidth and CPU resources,
most site that can be hosted on average shared hosting account would have no problem, at all.
So, you can test without worrying, most probably.

Also, DreamHost provides CPU% log.
With it, you can know how heavy your site is, as far as CPU time goes.

Once you know what you need, you can choose another host,
and use the DreamHost account as a backup until the end of the term.
(You can cancel within 97 days. But I don't think it's fair to get an account with the intention of cancelling.)

Mor importantly, you should remember that CPU/memory are more precious resource than simple bandwidth.

Sure, bandwidth limit can be something to worry if you don't get an account with enough safety margin.
But it's more often other resources that dictate if you can stay within the limit of particular account/plan.

Also, by optimizing the site/script, it's often possible to use less expensive accounts/plans.
Agressive caching technique can really save your money and also make the site more resistant to traffic surge and potential attacks.

this makes sense.

why bandwidth always look expensive

Ok where to begin bandwith gets used when someone comes to your website or when you send messages. It needs to download the bandwith so if you have a lot of people going to your website it will use a lot of bandwith. It also depends on what kind of website you have? we have plans that have unlimited bandwith so you will never have to worry.
Its like when you drive down the road you share it with others.

I always worry some user can't access my website depends bandwidth, so I always looking unmetered bandwidth

when I drive down the road I'm using road on my own, like I'm selfish ppl

bytheway example premium bandwidth 100MB, this 100MB mean user download/open our website or user contribute by upload file/artice on our website??

why bandwidth always look expensive

Because it costs a lot to run/buymaintain servers, routers, fiber optics, backup generators, hurricane proof buildings, instant backup systems, engineers, security systems, power, and so on.

No such thing as UNLIMITED
all that means is that its as much as the pipe can hold but trust me bandwidth costs money either at wholesale or as a reseller.
What you should be looking for is uptime, service, connections to peers (like level 3 or qwest, nttverio etc) and network

I always worry some user can't access my website depends bandwidth, so I always looking unmetered bandwidth

when I drive down the road I'm using road on my own, like I'm selfish ppl

bytheway example premium bandwidth 100MB, this 100MB mean user download/open our website or user contribute by upload file/artice on our website??

I means the server can handle 100mbps
megabyts per second.
most smaller hosts start at 2mbps (example, godaddy basic)
fine for HTTP images and text websites
100mbps good for video
gigabit routers even better, but you will pay for the connection perhaps at least $1500 a month.

everyone is basically selling the same product/service at the end of the day it comes down to service that you provide and your reputation

I talk about hosting gv premium bandwidth 100MB not port speed 100Mbps

everyone is basically selling the same product/service at the end of the day it comes down to service that you provide and your reputation


Well said. I would add that if you have a standard website content versus video then dont overpay

For most sites, it really doesn't take much disk space and bandwidth at all, especially for articles and simple graphics. You will want to keep page loads quick so overloading your pages with graphics is not a good idea anyway.

In the end, I would go with quality over quantity every time. Also make sure the host is established enough to have the infrastructure in place to quickly resolve any problems that come up. Generally once they make it in the hosting business for about 2 years, they are definitely there to stay.

why bandwidth always look expensive

Many web hosts charge about $1 a month for 10GB of traffic.

To put that in perspective, that would support maybe 2000 mp3 site downloads.

That's one twentieth of a cent per song; do you really regard that as expensive?

What I want to know is, how come bandwidth is so cheap?

Mainly, Most companies these days offer great amount of disk space and bandwidth. Some people may think they are good at what they provide and all but in the end you need to look at the uptime and the support you get. No one wants a company that offers good disk and bandwidth space but has big downtime along with bad support times and lagyness on the server. Well, I know I don't how about you?

What kind of host should you use if you run a large scale site, like millions of users? Should you use 2 hosts for the files and for the database?

Hmmm... what in your opinion would be a better hosting panel than cpanel that has the level of flexibility and multiple domain hosting that cpanel offers?

There isnt really anything that beats cPanel for features / usability. Except they all beat it in terms of performance - if that matters :)

it entirely depends on the size of the media you will use on the website and traffic. By meadia i mean videos, flash, images etc.

Many web hosts charge about $1 a month for 10GB of traffic.

To put that in perspective, that would support maybe 2000 mp3 site downloads.

That's one twentieth of a cent per song; do you really regard that as expensive?

What I want to know is, how come bandwidth is so cheap?

According to my knoledge, bandwidth is more cheaper than this now. For example, godaddy will ask around 7.50$ to 1500GB bandwidth, means that 200GB per 1$.
Also if you consider about 100tb dedicated servers, it only ask around 200$ for a dedicated server with 100TB (100000GB) bandwidth that is more cheaper.

it was good post to know something well regarding web space.

Thanks for the information.... This is informative for new webmasters....

Thanks mate

According to my knoledge, bandwidth is more cheaper than this now. For example, godaddy will ask around 7.50$ to 1500GB bandwidth, means that 200GB per 1$.
Also if you consider about 100tb dedicated servers, it only ask around 200$ for a dedicated server with 100TB (100000GB) bandwidth that is more cheaper.

It generally is not the best idea to host with a registrar. Those bandwidth prices are very unrealistic. They are just overselling like many hosts with small packages. Assuming CPU usage clauses in their ToS will save them from anyone using their allowance.

In the same way getting a single dedicated server with 100TB bandwidth for $200 should also be impossible. That is 100% usage of over 300mbps. If you take a quick look at prices in reasonable datacenters you'll see that real bandwidth (in mbps) will cost a lot more. While it may have cheapened up over the years you won't get anywhere near that price.

Sure, bandwidth limit can be something to worry if you don't get an account with enough safety margin.
But it's more often other resources that dictate if you can stay within the limit of particular account/plan.

As incredible1 said, do not settle for a host that claims unlimited bandwidth and space. Everything has a limit and when they notice you are using too much resources from the CPU they will start searching a reason to suspend or to ask for up gradation which may cause problem for your sites continuous operation.

Agree with much of what you said originally. It's interesting how little of the resources in hosting plans people are actually using huh ? That opens the door to welcome in overselling the hades out of shared hosting.

Thus why they do the "unlimited" hosting. They know the vast majority are never going to come close to using it. Plus the ones that do or try ... My understanding they have plenty of gotcha's in the TOS/AUP to deal with them.

No doubt such users will quickly get the ... You need to move up to our X plan. You're using too many server resources. We had to suspend your acct to prevent it from effecting our other users emails, lol.

Most of them have ways to govern and allocate resources for shared hosting. That's why one of my favorite questions atm is how many max users on your shared boxes ? What are the server specs ? Then I want X amount of the CPU and RAM consistent with that.

Don't mind if the guy beside me on the server installs 200GB's ( and 2,000 websites) on his part of the disk. As long as he's only getting 1/200th of the CPU and RAM installed for each hosting account ... Then get's throttled. If he can make it work for him, then great.

Just don't want the hosting plans I'm dealing with bogged down by a resource hog. Nor do I want a host who's constantly lowering what I'm supposed to get to accommodate overselling. If I pay to have 1/200th of the server resources, I want them and want them constantly standing by to serve what I've got up on that shared server.

That's just my take on it. You should get what you pay for. Think pretty much all shared hosts are overselling. Which is fine with me, more or less. Though the seek time and speed of the HDD's could become an issue if they go overboard with it.

Well I don't like the "unlimited" hosting thing they have going. It's kind of sleazy advertising something as unlimited. When they know damn well it's not. Almost think it's grounds for legal action as deceptive advertising. Anybody wanna discuss a class action ? :D

That part of it imo is BS. Falsely advertising something. Then they make you ( the consumer ) have to dig through the TOS/AUP to uncover the scam. Feel sorry for the people who don't do their homework on the subject and run into problems, expecting to actually get what the host advertised.

I understand it though. From a hosting companies perspective ( I think anyway.) But I do look down on hosts doing this "unlimited" crap. All these sleazy marketing practices in the hosting industry leave a bad taste in my mouth. Being in marketing myself ... And not to blow my own horn. But consider myself to be light years ahead of the marketers many of these hosting companies seem to be using.

I recognize all the gimmicks, bs tricks and hollow marketing glamour immediately and from a mile away. I can't count those hosting companies out right away though. Some of them are still good companies apparently.

You just have to do your homework to separate the good/bad ones. Does make things way more complicated than it should have to be though. Sighs, the 21st century blows. Long gone are the days when a persons word was their bond and you could actually deal with people honestly w/o having to read the fine print 4 times to make sure people aren't trying to screw you. I mean there's still plenty of above board honorable people in all walks of life.

Just takes so much time and energy digging through all the crapheads to figure out who's who.

Pointless elaboration, sighs I actually need to get to some stuff.

I'm sure many hosts have elevated overselling to a science. Bet many of them devote more energy to figuring out how to cram 34 more accts onto a server. Than they actually do about providing good web hosting and that's sad.

I'm doing any and everything I can to find good web hosts. Gone above and beyond the call in many respects. If despite all of that, I still somehow pick a bum host. All I have to say is, they shall feel my wrath. It shall hurt, they shall definitely wish they had lived up to their end of the bargain. LONG before Im done with it.

Something else I find really annoying about this TOS/AUP crap many hosts have going. At the end it says summin like "we reserve the right to change these with or w/o advanced notice", lol. Why don't they just have us sign a blank paper saying we agree to anything and everything ?

lol ... what a load. :D

This is a great tool thanks!

nice post.

"Use dreamhost and get $100+ of hosting for $22.40" - awesome tip!

If a website has 30 pages averaging 8 KB each, 50 KB of images in each page, and 50 visitors/day who viewed an average of 4 pages, you would have the following formula:

[8 KB + 50 KB] * [50 visitors * 4 pages] * [30] = 348,000 KB

[Average size of your web page(s) + any graphics included within] * [number of visitors you expect each day * number of pages each visitor will view] * [30 days in a month] = Total Monthly Data Transfer Usage.

I like the formula. Does it worl 100%?

The formula shows the basic principles. If you upload files yourself or have files for download it should be taken into account as well of course. And any backups you may make or interactions with external servers.

If you have static pages and repeating images those should only be downloaded once per user as well as they will cache in their browser. This may slightly lower the bandwidth usage given by that formula.

Definately. Applies also to video.

Another things to consider, other than contents, are the logs, mails (imap...) and backups.

I'm currently hosted with a UK Based company, SimplexWebs Limited, and i've got the following spec;

5GB Diskspace
500GB Bandwidth
Unlimited features

Now, the diskspace isn't much but for a site with hardly any visitors the bandwidth and features is perfect.