Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : Web Hosting Tutorials : How Much Space and Bandwidth You Need to Host Your Site

[muneer]

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.

[ldcdc]

Moved to Web Hosting Tutorials.

Average size of your web page(s) + any graphics included within

Images are often cached by the browser, so if they're repetitive, only the first visit results in data being transferred.

[extras]

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

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.

[freeflyer]

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

[linux1213]

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.

[corallinkz]

thanks for the tut buddy

[cway]

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.

[ickleweb]

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

[muneer]

Originally Posted by ickleweb

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.

[muneer]

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.

[ihostpeople]

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

[muneer]

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.

[srahman88]

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

[lucillef]

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

[Montypaks]

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!!!