How Much Hosting Space Will I Need For My Web Site?
How Much Hosting Space Will I Need For My Web Site?
If you conduct a search today on Google using the terms “Web Hosting Service“, you likely get over 20 Million results to search through. Conducting the same search on MSN’s Live Search you’ll likely get over 269 Million Results and on Yahoo Search over 1.2 Billion results.
Now granted there are with out question multiple listings within for the same site within these search results but never the less you’ll quickly come to understand that there is a lot of competition in the web hosting industry. It is also fairly safe to say that with more competition comes more aggressive marketing in effort to earn your business. Personally, I feel that many hosting companies mislead consumers through there marketing tactics by selling services they either don’t need or in choosing there company based on the positioning of there hosting plans such as “Unlimited Web Hosting” or “200 gigabytes of space”. So, you as the consumer make choices based on perceived value that truly does not benefit you in anyway. For example, if you are hosting a small business web site that only has a few images and few pages (let’s say fewer than 10 pages) and you’re looking for a hosting company to host your site do you choose the company that offers 200GB for $5.95 or the company that offers 500MB of hosting space for $5.95? Truthfully a site of this size will likely never use the allotted hosting space from either company; but you knowing that GB is larger than MB, might go with the company that offers the 200GB because of the perceived value of getting more “bang for your buck”.
Basing your decision on who to host with merely on the perceived value of the hosting package could send down the path of having some very negative experiences with the hosting of your web site. So how much space do you really need? At the end of the day it truly comes down to what you plan to do with your web site. A site offering movies and music for downloads will need much larger space because the files themselves are very large. A web site that has 100 pages offering “How to Information” for example with a few pictures on each page would require significantly less space than one offering music downloads.
Step 1 – Is to determine what your site will be used for.
Step 2 – Is to estimate what the space you will need. If you plan on allowing web visitors to download music use an estimated size of 5MB for each song you will have available to your clients. Some songs will be larger in size while others will be small. I personally went through my MP3 songs and most were between 2.5MB and 4.0MB and estimating by 5MB will help ensure you have some cushion along with my suggestion in step 3. You’ll also need to calculate the number of pages you will have to display information about your available songs and for your clients to click and download which is in the next paragraph.
If you are hosting a web site that offers information to your clients, prospects, etc. than you can estimate that the average page will be about 20KB in size (again some will be larger and some will be smaller), for each image you can estimate around 50KB in size, and add 5KB for perhaps a java script you might run on the page. Using this calculation the average size per page being hosted would be about 75KB per page on average. If you have 100 pages that will be hosted you will need at least 75,000KB of hosting space. Remember KB (Kilobytes) is smaller than MB (Megabytes) and that roughly 1,000KB = 1MB and roughly 1,000MB = 1GB. Take 75,000KB and divide by 1,000 and you’ll need roughly 75MB to host the pages to your web site.
Step 3 – Triple the amount of space you calculated. Why? To provide you and/or your company with a safety net when it comes to the future needs of your web site. For example, some hosts may include email accounts and databases in the hosting space. In addition, you don’t want to have to worry about upgrading your hosting account every time you decide to add to your site or take it to the next level. In theory a web hosting plan that offers you at least 225MB of hosting space would be more than enough to host your website of 100 pages full of information. Even if you get one that is 5 times the size you actually need you would still only need a hosting account that offer 375MB or for 10 times the size you would need just 750MB. So going back to my second paragraph in this example you really wouldn’t need a hosting account that offers even one GB of hosting space.
You might ask what my point is. Basing your decision strictly on the package size of your hosting plan is not always the best choice for deciding who to host with and ultimately you could be missing out on some very good features, functions, benefits, and most importantly positive experiences by using hosting space as your only choice for deciding on whom to host with. When choosing a web hosting provider, consider these following things:
1. How long have they been providing hosting services?
2. How is there reputation online?
3. Does there hosting package meet my needs for my site, domain, email, etc.?
4. Did they respond within 24 hours to my email? Be weary of organizations that respond to fast as they could be more focused on gaining new customers than servicing existing customers. You’ll likely want to be apart of an organization who services there existing client base prior to servicing prospective clients.
5. What does your gut feeling tell you? Go with your gut!
I hope you find this information to be useful and welcome any questions, comments, and/or concerns you may have through our blog at http://www.avekhost.com/blog/.
