Web Hosting Space: How Much?

Are you wondering how much web hosting space you need?

If you're just starting out with your first non-free web site, you might be tempted to go for those "highly affordable" web hosting packages that give you less than 30 MB of web space, and less than 5 GB of monthly bandwidth.

Well, if you're not that keen on publishing content online, if you just want to play around and post a couple of photos here and there, or if you don't see yourself building a site that will last more than 1 year, then those cheap web hosting plans may be worth looking into.

But if you're more than casually interested in building your blog or web site, if you want to know who your site attracts, if you want to grow your readership, and if you want to eventually earn from your web site, then please go for a web package that gives you at least 300 MB of space and 10 GB of bandwidth or data transfer per month.

Why 300 MB of space? That gives you enough space for your text, images, audio files, and your web site statistics files. What's the point of publishing online if you can't even monitor your traffic levels, right?

Why 10 GB of bandwidth per month? Bandwidth or data transfer refers to the amount of data that goes through the internet pipes, so to speak, when people visit your site. The more people visit your site, the more data is transferred.

A good target to aim for is 1,000 visitors a day. If your site is text heavy, your monthly bandwidth will be around 4 GB. If your site contains a fair amount of images, expect 1000 visitors daily to up your bandwidth to about 8 GB a month.

So please resist the siren song of cheap, tiny web hosting packages. You're definitely not just playing around on the web.

[ First posted on 09/26/2007 by Manuel Viloria ]