Determining How Much Disk Space Your Site Needs

This has become easier and easier over the years as many web hosting providers are now offering "unlimited" disk space on their plans. This "unlimited" disk space is not entirely accurate however. You'll notice in the fine print or AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) of just about any web hosting provider that the "unlimited" disk space only pertains to "reasonable" usage. Basically, a typical web site uses very little disk space and therefore many providers, rather than put a cap on it, will offer "unlimited" space because they know a typical site will never come close to any stated quota. For example, a typical web page is only 10-20KB in size. That's extremely small when it comes to today's hard drives.

That being said, should you have a web site that requires a lot of disk space - such as a large database site containing music, photo or video files then you'll probably want to look into more elaborate web hosting options like VPS (Virtual Private Server) web hosting or dedicated web hosting so you don't push the limits of what your web host would consider "reasonable" disk space.