How Much Storage and Bandwidth Do You Need to Host a Website?

Have you ever estimated how much Storage and Bandwidth you need to host a website? There are too many expert opinions on how much storage and bandwidth you need to host a website to meet your traffic’s needs. Bandwidth and storage need to depend on the type of site, how much traffic it receives, what type of content the site hosts, whether it uses a Content Delivery Network(CDN) or not etc.

In the beginning, when you just start a site, 5GB is enough for you provided that you do not upload videos. Any site that runs a blog or mostly textual content doe not need a lot of bandwidth and storage. On average, a 5GB site can handle up to 20,000 visits with pages having less than or equal to 50kb in size. You should know certain terms related to the web hosting industry like storage and bandwidth before estimating their requirement.

What Is Storage in Web Hosting?

Storage in web hosting is the web space that a server occupies in order to save data, files, folders, video, audio, images, and other contents. Every website hosted stays on servers to keep data. Each website has image files, PHP, JavaScript, and HTML files. Each file on the server for a particular website has its own extensions. The files under PHP have .php extension, such as Function.php, …etc.

There are various categories of files stored on the servers. Be it file, folder, images, or textual, it needs web space to store them inside the server. So, web storage refers to the total amount of data that is allocated to a website by the web host. The web host runs many servers which have large spaces to store data. Whatever you write and save on your website, it stays on the allocated web storage provided by the web host. In a nutshell, each website stays on the server which hosts the site, and the space which the hosting server allocates to the website is referred to as web storage, disk space, or web space.

” So, storage in web hosting is the total space that is allocated to the hosted site by the web hosting provider or simply the web host. The server that allocates space to the website is the hosting server on which are installed the DNS Server and other software to let it work properly”.

While choosing a web host, look at how much web storage it offers to host your website. A site that just starts does not require much web space. Any site that grows and stores a huge amount of data, needs more disk space. So, as far as storage in web hosting is concerned, it ultimately depends on the type of site and how much content it stores in its databases.

Storage is not only relates to the site itself but also includes site backup data, script and email transferred from and sent to your hosting server. The posts, pages, videos, images, and other certain contents located in the root directory are publicly accessible and can be seen. For example, suppose your web address is ‘www.example.com’ which visitors can access and view. Now, visitors can see and access it because it is not restricted but there are certain files and folders which you, as a visitor, can’t access and view if the site does not belong to you. But all these are included in the web storage. The web hosting service provider shows you both the storage and bandwidth when you go to purchase a plan.

When you create new posts, add images, upload videos and publish them for readers and mark your content as ‘public’ from the Block Editor, your site’s disk space is decreased, as the content occupies storage space within the server and visitors can read your posts. Whenever you add content or upload files to your site, the site allocates certain disk space to the content and uploaded files. This space allocated to the files remains within the web space located within the hosting server. So, web storage and bandwidth are not the same things. The storage is only for allocating disk space to all the contents of the site.

What Is Unlimited Storage in Web Hosting?

Probably you are thinking about unlimited storage or unmetered disk space. Can’t understand it? Don’t worry. You need to learn what it is. So, let’s define and know what is unlimited storage in web hosting. Unlimited web storage implies that you will not be charged, based on what server resources you use in terms of disk space for operating your website at a normal level. However, there are certain limitations set forth by the hosting provider. That being said, it is found that most websites do not require as much web storage as is offered by the web host.

So, unlimited disk space or unmetered web space is sufficient for you if do not upload huge files of larger sizes. In most cases, unlimited web storage is more than what your website needs to store all contents including files, folders, HTML Files, JavaScript, codes, etc.

Certain web hosts provide unlimited storage and bandwidth to the buyers who purchase the hosting plans.

What Is Bandwidth in Web Hosting?

Are you a beginner in the field of web hosting? If that may be the case, you need to learn certain terms related to the web hosting industry such as bandwidth, unmetered bandwidth, unlimited bandwidth, etc. You will learn what it is but before I am going to define it, you should know something that is relevant to it.

So, let’s start. Every moment customers, buyers, visitors, and other users access and view your content from their devices. Visitors can’t access and view your site until it loads on your device’s screen. Now, what I’m going to persuade you is that each time a page loads on your device, the server sends data to you and the browser only handles it. The data that is transferred to you is a part bandwidth. So, bandwidth refers to the amount of data that the hosting server provides to the visitors when they access and view the site.

The total data transferred from the server to the visitor’s device per month is calculated in terms of bandwidth. Loading of HTML Files does not take much data and consequently consumes less bandwidth. But the larger image files, software, and pdf take much web space and they increase the use of bandwidth.

“Also, keep in mind that storage and bandwidth are provided to the site owner by the web hosting provider, however, they do not represent the same thing. In web storage and bandwidth, the former is static but the latter is dynamic in intuition”.

What Is Unlimited Bandwidth for Web Hosting?

Another term related to the web hosting industry is unmetered or unlimited bandwidth. What does it mean? If you don’t know what it is, then I think you should know it, as you are going to choose a web host, start making a site and set off your journey on the world wide web(WWW). Thanks for your enthusiasm. That is a good undertaking. Let’s go to what we are going to explain.

Unlimited or unmetered bandwidth refers to that the web host does not charge you when you use bandwidth under certain specifications set forth by the web host. The bandwidth is, in most cases, found to be enough for the expected traffic. In the beginning, it does not require too much bandwidth, as it receives less web traffic. But when your site gets thousands of traffic, you can consider whether you need bandwidth or not.

“If you compare the web storage and bandwidth, then always keep in mind that you need less web storage than bandwidth. In other words, you need more bandwidth than web storage. Your bandwidth requirement is greater web storage requirement”.

What Is the Difference Between Web Storage and Bandwidth?

Do you know what is the difference between web storage and bandwidth? As already explained a bit about it, you can learn that web storage is a physical space that remains within your hosting server. You have heard about SSD or HDD storage. This kind of storage refers to web storage when the drives are installed on the hosting server within your desktop. Such kinds of servers stay in the data centers, as they need heightened security, an uninterrupted power supply with internet connectivity, advanced infrastructure, and more. Web storage is static as it refers to a physical space, to say in a more comprehensive way it is the disk space within your hosting server.

On the other hand, bandwidth is dynamic. When a file stays within the server, it will be regarded as web storage, not bandwidth. But when the file is uploaded to your device, it is counted in terms of bandwidth. So, data remains static when it remains within the web storage but again when it uploads to a visitor’s device or is transferred from the hosting server to the other servers, it is included in the bandwidth. So, bandwidth is a dynamic concept when it comes to working.

Furthermore, you need less storage and more bandwidth. Suppose you need 20GB of web storage. Now, what should be your bandwidth requirement? There is no definite and accurate answer to this question. Now, your bandwidth may be 50GB, 80GB, or more. Here, how much bandwidth you need depends on how much traffic your site receives.

However, as usual, you should know that your web storage always should be less than your bandwidth requirement.

Another thing that needs to mention here is that based on your traffic metrics, you can increase your bandwidth, and, normally, you don’t need to buy more web storage if your site does not include huge files of larger sizes.

To reduce web storage, you can compress images before uploading them to your site. To compress images, you use image compressing browser extensions or install image compressing plugins on your site.

To reduce bandwidth, you need to use CDN services, as they deliver image files, HTML files, JavaScript files, and other static contents to the visitor’s device from the nearest servers.

Whenever you purchase a web hosting plan, you should look at web storage and bandwidth, as they matter to what your website needs and performs in terms of content and traffic.

How Much Storage Is Needed for a Website?

Web storage required to host a website must be enough. But how much GB of web storage is enough for you is a question that many beginners ask. Most web hosts have reliable hosting infrastructure that provides as much storage as you need. In the beginning, you do not need much storage for hosting a new site. Any site having a few hundred web pages, posts and articles do not need much disk space. What storage they provide to your site is more than enough.

Do you think 5GB storage is very low? Don’t think so. Providing low web storage is not a factor in determining that a web host is not reliable. Most blogging sites and personal websites contain HTML Files(text files) and the page size, on average, is 500kb, 1MB, or 2MB. As usual, the page size is not more than 2MB. You can calculate a page size with ease. Once a page is downloaded from your browser, you can see its size from the download option.

Now, you can see inside the table that page size affects web storage. A website containing 100 to 500 pages of 500kb needs minimum web storage of 50MB to 250MB. If the page size is 800kb, then the website storage needs more disk space worth 480 MB to 800MB.

Similarly, if your website contains 100-1000 pages of size 1MB, then your site requires more storage than what was before. In that case, the web storage must be greater than 100 MB or 1 GB.

Look at the above table and you estimate how much storage is needed for your website. 100 to 500 pages of 2MB needs 200MB or 1GB. If the average size of the pages is 2MB, then your website can give storage to 2500 pages. This number is a great choice. Most websites do not have so many pages and posts.

How Much Bandwidth Do I Need for Hosting My Website?

Now, we have to know about bandwidth requirements. Web storage and bandwidth are relevant in certain aspects. The more visitors access and read your website, the more bandwidth you need.

Look at the table and you can estimate how much bandwidth you need to let the visitors access and read your web pages. Suppose you have pages of 500kb and you get 10000 visits/month. Now, how much bandwidth you need depends on the size of pages, and total page loads, namely visits. If you get 10000 visits/month and the average size of the page is 500kb, then you need 5GB bandwidth per month. If the page size changes to 1MB or 2MB and you get 10,000 visits/month, then your bandwidth must be 10GB or 20GB per month.

So, for a blogging or personal website, 5GB of web storage is a good choice. But when it comes to bandwidth, it may change. As in the above tale, you can see that visiting 10000 pages of 1MB and 2MB size need 10 GB and 20 GB bandwidth. If the page size is reduced, the bandwidth too will be decreased. So, storage and bandwidth are linked to each other.

Also, read:

The Best Website Builders for your site.

The Top Landing Page Builders for You.