How Many Resources do You Need from Your Web Host?

When it comes to choosing the web host that you’re going to use, it’s all about the resources. And when it comes to those resources, it’s typically storage size and data transfer that people are looking at. It doesn’t take long to find out that these two resources in particular, all come with different capacities and with different prices. Of course you want to make sure that you get what you need, but you also want to make sure that you don’t overpay for things that you don’t need. So, how do you know how much you need?

The answer, just like with anything else that involves your web hosting, is that it will depend. And it will depend mostly on what your website is for. If your website is very small such as a blog, and you use it mostly for things such as sharing personal stories, then you most likely don’t need to spend too much on either storage or data transfer. But, if your website is a business website, you still may not need a lot of storage or data transfer.

This will be the case if your website is made up of mostly text, with just a few images. For instance, if you typically write articles that are about 500 words in a length (or a page, approximately,) and you write only one article a day, you’ll probably only require 1 megabyte or less of web hosting storage space. This is because one of those articles will only require about 22 kilobytes. You can use these calculations to determine the amount of data transfer that you’ll need as well.

If you’re writing thirty 500-word articles in one month’s time, and you know that you get approximately 800 visitors per month, you’ll need 1 MB for each one of those people. That will add up to 800 MB that you’ll need in data transfer for that month, and that will help you determine what web hosting package you need to choose.

Using these calculations, you can also determine whether or not a free web host is right for you and your website. Typically you can expect to receive about 1 MB of storage space, and about 100 MB of free data transfer from a free web hosting service. You can see the difference in resources that you’ll be given, and you can see why if you’re running a business website, a free service and the limited resources they give you simply won’t be enough.

If you already have a website, it’s worth the time to use analytic software to determine how many people are coming onto the site each month. And it’s also a good idea to ask your web host how much bandwidth and storage space you’re currently receiving. If you’re not happy with how your website is currently working, you’ll know that you need to upgrade. If you are satisfied, doing this little bit of research will better prepare you in case you ever want to find a new host, as you’ll have a better idea of what you’re actually looking for.