| Now a days, you see many web hosting companies overselling or offering unlimited this and unlimited that. I will admit that this is a good advertising technique and it does catch eyes, but the truth is, you do not need anywhere near as much space as many packages offer for a shared hosting account, especially unlimited packages. I guess it’s nice to know you “can’t” run out of web space or bandwidth, but a lot of the time that’s all you’re paying for is that assurance. You most likely will not need that.
Let’s get a breakdown of how much space you will need. First, you probably already know this, but let’s go over disk storage
- 1 Bit = Binary Digit
- 8 Bits = 1 Byte
- 1kb (kilobyte) = 1000 Bytes
- 1MB(Megabyte) = 1000KB
- 1GB(Gigabyte) = 1000MB
Most paid hosting packages start around 1GB or 1000MB. That will probably look very small to you when you see the next package up for 20GB for only $1 more per month and then the next package up offers unlimited space for $3 more per month. You will most likely be very tempted to purchase the unlimited package. My advice would be to really think about the space you need.
Your web space will consist of website content as well as email account storage. On average, set aside 20mb per email account. Try to limit your email accounts to 1 or 2 per user.
You might be surprised to know that the average size of 1 text webpage is only between 20 and 50kb. Text based WebPages can even be as small as 1kb. When you add images and other multimedia to the page it can boost it up from 50kb to a few MB per object. Of course videos and music take up the most space, so if your site uses small amounts or no multimedia, it is possible to have a 200 page website with 30-100MB of space!!!
Most small to medium sized websites with minimal multimedia usage, will use less than 500MB of disk space. We will use our website at www.reliable-Hosts.com as an example. We are a very new site and we will be much larger in the future, but right now we probably have around 200-250 pages. We also have a business directory with images, advertising images as well as downloadable software (some software with 30MB on its own). You can get an idea of what the site consists of by looking around a little. I just checked our disk usage, and we are still under 500MB. That is not much space at all. We have only used half of the small 1GB plan we talked about earlier.
If you need hosting for 1 or 2 sites and you do not plan on having a wide range of music, videos or downloadable software, then a plan with 1-2GB of space will most likely be more than enough. If you are still worried, then go for a 2-5GB. Unlimited shared hosting for 1 or 2 websites is pretty pointless.
How much bandwidth do I need?
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