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How Much Bandwidth and Storage Do You Need?

bandwidth and storage

In order to get your site published on the internet, you must first find a provider to host it on their server. Before signing up with a particular host, you need to plan things out to determine what your website requires to be successful. A good place to start is with bandwidth and storage as this will ultimately determine what can be done on your site.

So how much bandwidth and space do you need? First you need to look at the content that will be hosted on your site. Is it simply plain text? Photo images? Audio and video files? All of the above? Plain text will claim the least amount of space on a web server. Images take up a bit more room, while audio and video files require a robust amount. This applies to both bandwidth and storage and is something that definitely needs to be taken into consideration.

When researching web hosting companies, you will notice that many of them offer huge amounts of storage and bandwidth, capacities so robust that using it all is nearly impossible. These companies offer a wide range of capacities. For instance, one provider may offer 500 GB of storage while another may offer unlimited storage for the same price. In truth, if every web hosting client used the maximum amount of bandwidth and storage allowed, their servers would not be able to handle the load. While these capacities are important, overall quality is the key factor and shouldn’t be overlooked. Do not reside with a particular host simply on the amount of bandwidth and storage alone.

In the web hosting industry, a good rule of thumb is that approximately 2 MB of disk space is enough to host about 10 web pages along with 4 to 5 images. While this typically varies depending on the size of your files, it is a useful guideline that can help determine just about how much storage space your site needs.

Your bandwidth requirements can be measured in a similar way. At the same time, it is important that you understand how transfer differs from storage space as they are not the same by far. Bandwidth can be compared to the diameter of a water pipe while the data transfer is the amount of water that streams through it. If you plan to transfer a significant amount of data such as uploading files to the server or allowing visitors to download files from the server, a plan with a high amount of bandwidth is more suitable for you.

If you choose a web hosting plan with high amount of transfer but low bandwidth, your site is likely to experience performance issues when being accessed by too many visitors. In this instance, you have enough capacity to transfer data, but the pipe it flows through isn’t large to allow it to pass and keep up with requests.

If you choose a plan that only provides a medium amount of bandwidth and storage, it is a good idea to keep your site simple. Avoid uploading large images. Instead, optimize them only for viewing which will drastically reduce the size. If you are still not sure of how to determine these needs, inquire within the web host and tell them about your plans. A quality provider will be more than happy to assistance with your bandwidth and disk storage requirements.

Does your site require tons of storage and bandwidth? There’s no need to be restricted. Get all the bandwidth you need with reliable hosting from BlueHost and HostMonster.

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25th June 2008
Posted by Web Hosting Consultant in Best Web Hosting Tips
Tags: bandwidth, , disk storage,

One Response to “How Much Bandwidth and Storage Do You Need?”

  1. tirumal says:

    i want to start mp3 download wesite with 500gb like that please tell how much bandwidth i requied

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