A lot of hosting companies will try to tempt you to part with your cash for hosting packages that offer vast quantities – sometimes even "unlimited" amounts – of bandwidth and storage. I can tell you now: you do not need unlimited bandwidth or storage, and the host company is probably misleading you if it is claiming to offer it. There is no point in paying for a package with 500MB of excess storage or a gigabyte of superfluous bandwidth that you are never going to use.

So how much storage space is enough? Hosting companies know you’ll never use all of the huge storage space that you are paying for, so they can cash in the difference. If you’re offered a good amount of storage by one company, and a huge amount by another at the same price, then don’t be seduced by large numbers – look into the reliability of the company’s service, the quality of their technical support, and check out their small print, especially surrounding their uptime guarantee. You are better off paying the same price and getting more of what you actually need for your money, rather than piles of things that look good on paper but that you don’t really need.

You can easily calculate how much space you need. Work out how big each of your pages are and add them up. Most sites won’t require more than about 30MB of space, unless you’re using a lot of graphics or multimedia features such as video or music streaming. You can often make your site smaller by being more efficient in your site design, and saving your graphics in more compressed formats. You might also need more space if you’re featuring a forum, as these sites can grow very quickly. But if you choose a package that is easily upgraded, you can worry about these issues as they arise.

Bandwidth affects the speed that data can be downloaded. It is measured in bits per second. A data transfer limit is the quantity of data that you are allowed to transfer during a fixed period. Your account might have a bandwidth of 1.5Mbps and a 1GB data transfer limit. You need to work out how much data is being downloaded from your site and buy a package with a suitable data transfer limit. Be warned: a lot of hosting sites use the word "bandwidth" to refer to data transfer. It’s quite possible to design a compact website, and your visitors will probably prefer it without the flashy graphics and the long download times. 2GB should be plenty of data transfer for the first time user. Again, though, make sure that there will be room for you to upgrade that limit if need be. Note that "unlimited" data transfer always has small print, and often it says that you will be charged when you exceed a certain level.

Finally, if you find you require more than 15GB a month, you should strongly consider moving over to dedicated hosting – see other Domainmonster.com articles for details.

Author: Natalie Catchpole

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