Curious... you dont offer 20 gigs of bandwidth on 100 megs of webspace or 500 megs of webspace/10 gigs of bandwidth. I guess you could under a custom deal but, how do *you* manage your webspace against bandwidth ?

I try to provide a lot of both. Not overselling, of course, if all my clients used all their bandwidth and quotas I'd still have a lot left. The reason I will give out so much is because myself, and friends, we all run sites that offer downloads, forums, and have a lot of active users so I understand you need space, and bandwidth, not skimped on either.

I can't give you an exact ratio on how I do it, but generally you'll get 1gig of trasnfer from me for $1 and about 20-40mbs of space per $1 (this is pre-made packages ONLY not customs/extras) buying additional of course is more ($2 per 100mb quota, $2.75 per 1gig of bandwidth)

Most sites probably use around 1-2% disk space of their bandwidth, but this is just a guess. Although most people will want more to grow. Of course, files and multmedia would increase the size dramatically and so would the trnafers unless it was a private directory in which case you'd probably need a custom plan anyway to fit the needs of someone.

So...
1 Gigabyte Bandwidth = 15 Megabytes Space
10 Gigabytes Bandwidth = 150 Megabytes Space

There's no hard and fast rule to this. A few suggestions:

1. If there's operating history, take a median of the space used, and the bw. Create plans for Extreme and Light users. Voila :D

2. It will be good to take some costing into accounting (e.g if your bw cost $1 per GB, you know it is suicidal to offer 20gb bw for 5$) Make sure you cover all your overheads + profit. (Or else why are you offering hosting ... ;) )

3. This is not a scientific method and is not recommended to be used in isolation. Create it from a marketing standpoint. Think about who is your target customers, their needs, and cater a package you think will meet those needs (taking cost in consideration) Eg. If you are intending to host only personal sites, probably b/w and space is minimal but cost may be a larger factor.

4. Lastly consider (don't flame me guys) "studying" the hosting plans of major competitors. Either match or outdo them if the economics allow you to. You are in this for business, so I guess you need to be competitive too :D

we give approx. 100mb per GB

But we keep our servers loaded very lightly so a 60gb HDD can be shared with a larger share per customer :)

Originally posted by UH-Matt
we give approx. 100mb per GB



same here. BW xfer= approx. 10X HDD then adjust for your typical clientelle and then fudge a little for your target plan.

You'll have to factor in costs and your limitations when providing space and bandwidth, but personally, if a plan doesn't provide 'breathing' room then I won't take it unless it's financially sound. Usually there's a high cost to exceed the allotted resources so if I have a low traffic site and expect to use 3GB bandwidth then the minimum I'd accept in a plan is 5GB so I don't get stuck with $3/$5 or more per GB extra traffic. Same for space. Personally, I think some of these tiny accounts, such as those 10MB and under or those that provide less than 1GB traffic, are useless especially when I can get that free from an ISP. You may consider base planning and use add-on options for flexibility. For a developer, they may need tons of space but very little traffic but for a busy forum they may need very little space but may produce high volume traffic.

I was looking at this place that gave 60 gigs with 300 gigs of bandwidth, i was thinking, you wouldnt use that much diskspace with that much bandwidth.... guess im thinking 4th dimensionally :)

I was looking at this place that gave 60 gigs with 300 gigs of bandwidth, i was thinking, you wouldnt use that much diskspace with that much bandwidth.... guess im thinking 4th dimensionally

Sounds like you're looking into managed/dedicated servers. Many people use these for reselling. That space and bandwidth would get divided up between all the hosted accounts so it should even out after you figure in all the other factors including any overselling.

This isnt for my site or anything, just for curiosity sake and discussion, how you ratio in disk space and bandwidth :)

I have used the following ratio successfully:
100MB/5GB

Examples:
100/5
200/10
300/15
400/20