Determining How Much Bandwidth Your Site Needs

Bandwidth and data transfer are generally used by web hosting providers to describe the same thing although they are in fact, slightly different. Bandwidth refers to the amount of data that can potentially be transfered at one time. Data transfer, on the other hand, refers to how much data is, or has been, actually transfered. Data is transfered namely by how many visitors go to your site, how many pages they view once there and how much of your site they download, etc. Data is also transfered through the use of the email accounts with your plan. You will want to make a determination on how much data transfer your web site will potentially produce and then compare that to how much bandwidth your web hosting provider allots with your particular plan (more on making that determination below).

Keep in mind, many low priced, shared web hosting providers, including ones that we rate and rank on this site, will advertise plans with "unlimited" bandwidth. Like "unlimited" disk space, this assertion is not entirely true. The assumption is made by the web hosting provider that you will use a "reasonable" amount of bandwidth and therefore they don't state any specific cap. However, just know there is one. If you look closely in the AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) of the web hosting provider you will see terminology referring to bandwidth allocation as within "reasonable" or "acceptable" use. The web hosting provider is the one that makes that determination.

That being said, chances are, especially when starting out, you're site will not use much bandwidth and you should be OK for a while. However, as your site grows in traffic and if you become successful with your advertising and marketing campaigns therefore bringing more visitors to your site, you might want to consider more robust web hosting options like dedicated web hosting at some point so you are not in danger of violating your web hosting provider's AUP.

The easiest way to determine how much bandwidth your site will need is if your site is already established and up and running. Just about every web hosting provider out there has traffic statistics built in to your account where you can view how much bandwidth you are using. If you're creating a new site then you will need to make several assumptions to determine an estimate. First estimate how many visitors you expect, the number of pages you expect visitors to load while their there and the average page size. A typical web page is anywhere from 8K-15K. Multiply all of this together for your daily total. Multiply that number by 30.5 to determine your average monthly total. You will then need to add in a buffer for email correspondence.