Estimating How Much Hosting You Need

purple

purple

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How do you estimate how much hosting you need? Do you go by current traffic and disc space for saved files or estimate what you may need by the end of the contract term?
 
For the first thing yes, deciding how much storage you will use and how much traffic your site will be each month are the basic to determine to decide how much hosting you need.
 
On the same start people subscribe for the smallest packages and then decide (in month or so) to stay or move to the bigger package
 
How much storage space and bandwidth will you need for your website? This is a question that you will need to answer before deciding on your web site hosting.
You’ll need to look at the content that you’ll be hosting on your site. Is it just plain text? Images? Audio and video files?

Plain text takes the least amount of space. Images take considerably more and audio and video files will need the most space. This applies to both the storage and the bandwidth.

Many web hosts offer what seems like a huge amount of storage space, assuming that you’ll never use it. If everyone hosting websites on their server were to use the maximum space allowed, the servers would likely not be able to handle it.

You’ll see a range of storage and bandwidth being offered. One host might be offering 1 gigabyte of storage while another could offer 500 megabytes at the same price. The quality of service is a key factor in choosing a web host, so don’t just look for the one with the biggest offer.

The rule of thumb in the hosting industry is that 2MB of storage is enough to host 10 web pages and 4 or 5 images. Using this as a guideline, you can determine how much space you’ll need to host your site.
You can calculate your bandwidth requirements in a similar way. Make sure you understand the difference between bandwidth and data transfer, however.

In non-technical terms, bandwidth is the diameter of a water pipe and data transfer is the amount of water that flows through it. If you’re likely to have a lot of data being transferred, you should look for high bandwidth plans.

If you choose a plan with high data transfer but low bandwidth, your site can slow to a crawl when it gets too many visitors. The amount of information you’re allowed to transfer is high enough, but the pipe it’s flowing through doesn’t allow enough to get through at once to keep up with all the requests.

The best way to manage your bandwidth and space is to keep your site as simple as possible. Don’t use large images - optimize them for viewing on the web which will decrease their size considerably.

If you’re not sure how to determine your needs, the better web hosting companies will be able to help you figure out which of their plans will best suit your website.
 
Excellent post, you_rock

That is the first time I've seen the difference between bandwidth and data transfer put so clearly. The two tend to confuse me so this clarification is very helpful.

To the OP, even if you guesstimate the amount of space and bandwidth you'll need fairly accurately, be sure to be with a host that will let you upgrade quickly and easily if you suddenly need it. Many a webmaster has experienced a sudden peak that left their frustrated visitors with a "bandwidth exceeded" message because they were unable to add as they needed to.
 
If you are starting a NEW website, then start with a small hosting plan.
For example: 0.5 - 1GB space + 3-5GB bandwidth.
As your site keeps growing, keep adding more resources.
Go with a host that allows instant upgrades thru their billing systems.
 
Its a new site to offer a custom domain for a blog with very little traffic. I'm hoping it will increase with the easier site to remember, but worry about the maxed out message. I hate those myself :)

I do have images and videos but I've been working on outsourcing them to Flickr and YouTube as it is so they shouldn't take too much of my own.

Thanks for the estimate for storage and the explanation of bandwidth/data transfer. Thats probably going to come in real handy.
 
yes, the reason I bring out this topic is simple because a customer usually easy to confuse the term "space" and "bandwidth".

Even if you really want to investigate this term into further details, the disk space can be categorized again futhers:

1. Disk space in your IIS server
2. Disk space in your Mail server
3. Disk space in your Database server.

Usually, a web hosting company may offer huge amount of disk space for IIS server, but NOT for mail and database? Why? This is simply because mail and database server require extra license and it means more spending $$$ for the hosting company.

Another thing, I hate to use the word "unlimited bandwidth", "unlimited space" --> this is unreasonable as even the sky has the limit. Please BEWARE with the company which offers "unlimited bandwidth" OR "unlimited space".

If you go to computer shop wanting to buy a PC, can you ask a shopkeeper to give you "unlimited hard drive space"? It is unreasonable, isn;t it?

Hope this helps you guys....:)
 
Well said, you_rock. Unfortunately, by the time people realize the truth about unlimited resources, it's usually too late. :shaky:
 
It's always better to start off small and then just slowly step it up, but you still need to have a basic idea of where to start. The guide by you_rock was awesome, I've never seen something so well put and that should give you a really good idea of how much to take to begin with. Where you go from there depends on how you expand the site.
 
The procedure is usually the following:

People choose a minimal package just for trying , then in a month if they are satisfied with the quality of the service, they start buying bigger plans and even dedicated servers.
 
You need to look at the amount of disk space you use as well as traffic coming into your site. I usually start off with a basic package, and upgrade as I need to.
 
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