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So, you want to build a website and you're
looking for web hosting. That's great, but what are all those features
being offered? For instance, Bandwidth? What on earth is that?
Bandwidth is also called data transfer or traffic. So if you see any of
these terms associated with a gigabyte or GB or gb value then that feature
is actually bandwidth.
Simply put, bandwidth is the number of gigabytes of data that your website
is allocated to transfer from the web hosting server to your users in one
month. This number is not an absolute, it's just the number of gigabytes of
bandwidth you pay for in the monthly price of your hosting plan.
If your users are so many or your website is so busy that you go over your
bandwidth allotment in a month, then you are charged extra, by your
Hosting Provider, for each gigabyte over the allocated amount included
in your hosting plan.
The cost per extra gigabyte for the overage is usually around $0.50,
depending upon your hosting company. If you are concerned about running over
your bandwidth allotment, then you should check with your
hosting company about the actual cost for each extra gigabyte.
Bandwidth is now cheaper than ever before, so it would be foolish not to get
the most bandwidth you think you'll need right off the bat. Depending upon
the
hosting company, you may find that for a couple of dollars more each
month you can get as much as 4 or 5 times the bandwidth of the cheaper
hosting plan!
Generally, here's how bandwidth is computed. It's the amount of information
transmitted to and from your website by your visitors. The following are the
factors considered in your traffic usage:
1. The amount of traffic you receive (hits to your website)
2. The size of your site.
3. The types of files offered on your site.
4. How much data you upload to your website.
A hit is more than a visit. Every file, picture or any other reference
that's made to your hosting server when your web page is loaded is a hit.
Each hit consists of a number of bytes of information.
For example, let's say your website is 1 megabyte (MB) including web pages
and images. If 100 people visited your website and viewed all the pages, the
traffic generated would be approximately 100 MB.
A megabyte is 1,000,000 bytes (1 million bytes) and a gigabyte is
1,000,000,000 bytes (1 trillion bytes). So that makes a megabyte 1/1,000 of
a gigabyte. In the example above, 100 MB of data transfer would be 1/10 of a
gigabyte.
So, if your website traffic consisted of 100 MB each day, your usage for a
30-day month would be 3,000 MB or 3 GB per month. In this case, you would
want a
hosting plan that provided at least 3 GB of bandwidth per month.
But that's not ideal. What if you have a burst of traffic during a month
(lucky you!) or what if your daily traffic grows beyond 100 visitors per
day (luckier you!)? You could easily exceed your monthly bandwidth. If this
happened rarely, then no big deal, just pay the few dollars for the
bandwidth you used over your monthly allotment.
But, if your site is that successful, it would probably be better to move to
an upgraded
hosting plan. You'll save money this way and won't be nagged by your
hosting company to upgrade your
hosting plan every month.
Let's consider an example: If your visitors increased by 50% you would have
150 MB of traffic each day for a total of 4.5 GB of monthly traffic. You
would pay about $1.00 for the extra bandwidth.
You would probably find that an upgrade to a better hosting plan would cost
you an extra couple of dollars each month, but you would triple or quadruple
your bandwidth. That's a better bargain and allows your successful website
to grow without further fees or upgrades.
And don't forget, even inexpensive hosting plans allow you to host multiple
websites on one
hosting plan. This is a real money-saver, but you'll need lots of
bandwidth to handle more than one website on your hosting plan. Fortunately,
as you've seen in the examples above, you don't pay double to double or even
triple your bandwidth.
Basically, the rule of thumb is: Total the size of all your frequently
visited website pages, images, external CSS and Javascript files, any
downloadable files, MP3s, or video and you will have the expected bandwidth
per visit to your website.
Then check your server logs and determine the number of visitors per month.
Multiply the two numbers and you should have an idea of your usual website
traffic. Next add in the size of uploads you may make. For example, when you
change a page or redesign your site, you will upload new web pages to your
site. These uploads cut into your bandwidth too. Double the grand total to
allow room for growth and you have a pretty good idea of your bandwidth
needs for that website.
Next, allow some bandwidth for the addition of new websites on the same
hosting plan. Add everything together and purchase a
hosting plan that meets your current needs and has room for you to grow
as your business succeeds.
Conclusion
Hopefully the above
information will have given you some thought as to your Bandwidth
Requirements.
Now it is time to give some
serious thought to who will be your Web Hosting Provider. If you haven't
already, take a look at our
comprehensive review. Here our team of webmasters
have taken an in depth look at the
10 major web hosting companies and compared
them individually according to pricing, reliability,
performance, features and service.
Good Luck
YourDomainUK Team  |
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