How to Determine How Much Web Space and Bandwidth You Really Need Before You Purchase Your Web Hosting Plan

A lot of web hosting providers offer huge quantities of bandwidth for a low price. Before you leap on the deal, consider carefully how and if that bandwidth will actually be available for you to use. Keep in mind that there are limits to everything, including a bandwidth connection. Some web hosting providers oversell their limits and gamble on the fact that very few if any sites on their servers will use the full allotment of bandwidth. If they are right, no problem. If they are wrong, and your server crashes then you and all the other site owner who share your server are the losers.

I constantly advise my readers to conduct a search for complaints about a web hosting site BEFORE purchasing any hosting plan. Five minutes of your time and a few clicks on your keyboard is a small price to pay to assure you get a reliable hosting plan for your business.

Your safest bet is to purchase your web hosting from a company that offers a reasonable amount of space and bandwidth within the range you need at an affordable price. A web hosting provider that offers plans with a smaller amount of web space and bandwidth is probably doing so to maintain their sterling reputation of reliability and service for their customers.

Before you purchase your hosting plan, you should determine how much web space and bandwidth you need. Hey, don't panic! We're not talking advanced calculus here. On the contrary, determining the quantity of web space and bandwidth you need for your website is easier than you think. So grab your trusty calculator, and let's get started.

First of all you need to know what measurements you are dealing with. Web hosting providers show the bandwidth offered in either megabytes (MB) or gigabytes (GB). One megabyte (1MB) equals 1,048,576 bytebytes. One gigabyte (1GB) equals 1,073,741,824 bytes. There are 1024 MB in one GB. For our purposes, you simply need to remember that 1024 MB is equal to one GB.

Most website pages have a mixture of text and images. Some websites offer down-loadable files, images, etc. Want to know the quickest and easiest way to determine the quantity of space you will need? If you haven't done so already, store all the data, web pages, your images folder, and the folder with your download files etc in a folder labeled website (or whatever name you prefer). Then, simply open your Windows explorer and hover your mouse over the folder containing your website files, images, etc. You will find the size of your website in the little popup window.

If you haven't completed your website yet, or plan to add more pages as you go along, then simply purchase the smallest web hosting plan that fits your needs at the present time. You can easily upgrade to a larger plan later if necessary.

The amount of traffic you can expect on a given day can vary substantially depending on several factors. If you already have a website in operation, you simply have to check your stats to see how much bandwidth you are currently using each month. If you have not setup your site yet, you can still get a good estimate of the bandwidth you need by basing your calculations on an average web site's traffic.

On average, a website usually receives anywhere from 50 to 500 visitors per day. To accommodate 500 visitors a day, you will probably need somewhere between 3-5 gigabytes (GB) of data transfer per month. Now let's say you get more than 500 visitors per day, or that you offer a lot of large downloads. If that's the case, then you would probably need a hosting plan that offers around 50-60 gigabytes of data transfer (a.k.a, bandwidth) per month for your website.

If you plan to add on domains to your account, your web space and bandwidth needs will increase as well. You should use the same calculations for each website you add on and purchase or upgrade your hosting plan to fulfill the requirements of all your websites hosted on your account.

When you're shopping for an affordable hosting plan, be sure to do a few minutes of advanced planning and a brief search for customer complaints before you purchase a plan from any web hosting provider to save yourself hours of frustration and headaches in future.