You have a website designed or want to design a website and need to know the web hosting space and bandwidth required for your website. I will try to clear your few doubts on web space and data transfer required in order to help you in selecting an appropriate hosting plan.

First let us be clear on web space. What is a web space or web hosting space? In simple words, it is the memory storage space on a web server that serves the web page requests from client software like Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera web browsers, etc.. Web space can be used for hosting websites, email hosting, file storage, etc.

There are hosting plans starting from few Megabytes (MB) to many Gigabytes (GB) depend on hosting companies. First, determine the actual size of your website. The website size depends on its html files, image files, sound files and other media files that are required for your website. A small website of about 5 pages with about 10 images can be under 200 Kilobytes (KB) if the site is coded efficiently. For your information 8 Bit = 1 Byte, 1024 Byte = 1 Kilobyte, 1024 Kilobyte = 1 Megabyte, 1024 Megabyte = 1 Gigabyte, 1024 Gigabyte = 1 Terabyte (TB). The information is stored in a digital format with many 0 and 1. 0 or 1 is considered as a Bit.

Are you confused to choose hosting plans that some hosting companies offer few MB space and others offer only in many GB? It may be a marketing trick to offer huge space for users as most of the small to medium sized sites fit within few MB. However, it is a necessity for many big sites to take up more space for its rich image content, audio and video content and other advanced media requirement. It is important to measure the size of the website and estimate the growth of your site. Only web space won't tell everything about the hosting quality and it is very crucial to look at the reputation of the company, hosting features offered, support services, etc. The bottom line is to choose a suitable hosting company that fulfills the necessary hosting features and web space that is appropriate to the website.

Let's have a look at Bandwidth. Bandwidth is the amount of data transferred from and into a web server. When a web page is displayed then it means some data has been downloaded from the server. Also reading emails, sending emails, accessing ftp accounts, etc. count as Data transfer. Usually it is bundled with the hosting plan as certain amount of data transfer per month. For example: 1 GB Web space and 10 GB Bandwidth.

Bandwidth required is based on the content provided by the website. The text takes the least space, images take more space than text, sound files are larger than image files and rich video files take considerable amount of space. If a website is of 200 KB and has each visitor visiting all pages then 500 MB data transfer per month can accommodate 2,500 visitors per month.

I hope you enjoyed this little article! Please send your comments/suggestions to pradeep@99eon.com. Visit http://www.99eon.com for Web hosting relevant FAQ and Knowledge Base.

About the Author

Pradeep Kumar A is Manager - Operations at 99eon.com. 99eon.com provides Windows and Linux based hosting services.

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