How Much Bandwidth Does My Website Need?

How much bandwidth does your website really need?

You may be tempted to order a web hosting plan with the highest offering of bandwidth because you’re thinking to yourself that you don’t want any problems when it’s time to launch. However, is large bandwidth really practical in your case?

Let’s discuss the worst case scenario first:

if you order a web hosting package with too little bandwidth then you will either watch as your website goes “dark” or it will continue to function and you will have to pay hefty overage fees. The best case scenario is also kind of grim, come to think of it: if you don’t use all of the bandwidth you order your users will be happy—but you will be paying for bandwidth that you don’t really need.

When making your choice

consider these two important points. First, you must compare the content of your site as well as the file size of each item to how much traffic you anticipate holding while your website is in its early stages. If you have a website that features lot of animation, graphics, sound and video content, and you anticipate a huge grand opening, then it might make sense to order the maximum amount of everything because if everything goes as planned you will need a lot of bandwidth to function.

However, if you envision a slow start

that eventually spirals into a mainstream success then you could reasonably delay the bandwidth upgrade until your site increases in popularity. Even if you have a very popular site that gets hundreds of unique visitors a day, unless you have a lot of large files to transfer on your site, then you probably won’t use most of your bandwidth. Text pages with a few graphics require very little in terms of web space or bandwidth capacity.

For more on bandwidth

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