When you’re starting a website for your small business, there are many factors to consider – from the domain name to the monthly bandwidth for the website. Many new website owners have problems estimating how much bandwidth they need. Is 5 GB a month enough? Or maybe 100 GB? Furthermore, are those unlimited plans truly unlimited? That’s what we’re here to answer today. Read on to learn more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every website on the internet generates some amount of traffic whenever people visit it. When an internet page loads, it needs to pull up all the files included, like images, audio, and script files, which all need to be downloaded to the client’s web browser. The same goes for any data that travels from the client’s computer to your website. That traffic is called bandwidth, and it’s most commonly measured in bits per second (bps).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When you decide to make a website, your bandwidth will most likely have a monthly cap set by the hosting company. This is usually presented in gigabytes (GB), although some providers measure it in megabytes (MB). If you exceed your bandwidth limit, your hosting provider may charge you extra or even shut down your website until the next billing cycle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There’s a common misunderstanding that bandwidth affects how fast your website works. However, it will not affect how many visitors you may have on your website at the same time before slowdowns happen or, worse, the website crashes. That is only determined by the actual hardware the server is equipped with, along with the physical distance from the server, i.e., ping times. That\u2019s why many businesses choose to host their websites on a VPS platform<\/a> instead of a traditional, shared server.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The average bandwidth for a website isn’t universal. Therefore, in this section, we’ll list a few essential factors for determining how much bandwidth to order when setting up your web hosting account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Different types of websites have different bandwidth needs. A simple blog with text and a few pictures will need way less bandwidth than a video streaming site or an online store. To put it simply – the more complicated your platform is, the higher the chances it will require more bandwidth leeway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Website size is another determining factor in the amount of hosting bandwidth you need. A static website with just a few pages will obviously use less than a website with hundreds or thousands of pages. The number of files on your website is important as well. If you have a lot of high-quality images, for example, those will take up more space and, therefore, use more bandwidth than plain text.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The more people visit your website, the more bandwidth it will use. However, other factors play into this as well. For example, if most of your visitors are just browsing through your website and not interacting with it much, they won’t use as much bandwidth as visitors watching videos or downloading files.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another factor determining the necessary bandwidth for all websites is how much time people spend there. If your visitors are there for a long time, they\u2019re more likely to interact with what you have on it, which means they’ll be using more bandwidth than visitors who just spend a few seconds on your site before they click away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If people only visit one page on your website, they won’t use as much bandwidth as visitors looking through multiple pages. Since each page on your website uses some amount of bandwidth, so the more pages someone visits, the more bandwidth they’ll use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now that we’ve gone over all the factors affecting how much bandwidth you need, let’s talk about how to actually calculate it. You need to determine the average number of visitors your website has in a month by looking at your website’s traffic data in the admin panel. If you don’t have that, you can use a tool like Google Analytics<\/a> to get it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then, you need to multiply that by average page views per visit and average time spent on it. This will give you the total number of page views for your website in a month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, multiply the total number of pageviews by the average page size. This will give you the total monthly website bandwidth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let’s say you have an eCommerce website with an average of 10,000 visitors per month. Each visitor spends an average of two minutes on the site and views an average of three pages. The average page size is 500 KB.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The formula goes like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n 10,000 visitors x 3 pages\/visit x 2 minutes\/visit x 500 KB\/page = 30 GB\/month<\/p>\n\n\n\n This means you would need at least 30 GB of bandwidth per month for your website, but it would be advisable to have more. You can now start shopping around for hosting plans that offer the right amount of resources for your needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are a few things you can do to reduce the amount of bandwidth your website uses. One of the most important things is to optimize your images. This means saving them in a suitable format and using the appropriate resolution. You should also consider using a content delivery network (CDN) to serve your static content<\/a>. This can help reduce the load on your server and, as a result, your bandwidth usage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A web hosting plan should have enough resources for your website. This includes things like storage space, CPU power, and, of course, bandwidth. Your monthly bandwidth limit is fundamental if the website attracts a lot of traffic or uses a lot of data-heavy content, like videos and high-resolution images.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you’re not sure how much data you need, you can use the formula from the section above to get a rough estimate and plan accordingly. Remember that this is just an estimate, and your actual bandwidth usage may be higher or lower than shown here. It’s always best to err on the side of caution and choose a hosting plan with more resources than you think you need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We’ve mentioned some common misconceptions about server bandwidth and how it affects websites. Let’s look at some other popular cases of false advertising often used by hosting providers to lure inexperienced customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many people believe that having more bandwidth will make their website faster. However, this is not necessarily true. Bandwidth only affects the speed of data transfer, not the actual loading time of your website. This means that, if your website is already fast, adding more bandwidth won’t make it any quicker. The only thing that matters is the hardware your web host is using – i.e., its processing power and how fast the storage is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another common myth is that you only need enough bandwidth to cover your average traffic. However, this isn’t always the case, as you can easily exceed this website bandwidth limit. If you have traffic spikes, you may need more bandwidth to accommodate them. It’s important to keep this in mind when choosing a hosting plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Likewise, many people believe you don’t need much bandwidth if you’re not getting much traffic. Again, a common misconception. Even with low traffic, you may still need a lot of bandwidth if you’re using data-heavy content like videos and high-resolution images on each web page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You might’ve seen a web hosting company advertising plans with unlimited bandwidth. Web hosting bandwidth is a finite resource. Most web hosts will impose limitations or even shut down your website if you use too much bandwidth. Hosting companies often advertise unlimited bandwidth, or unmetered bandwidth as it’s often called, for plans dedicated to hosting WordPress websites and blogs<\/a>. But, there’s often a caveat: Fine print stating you’ll either have limited speed after X amount of traffic or imposing some other limitation to what you can do with the website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you can see, there are a lot of myths about bandwidth. It’s important to understand how bandwidth works so you can make sure you have the right amount for your website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We hope this article has helped you understand bandwidth and how it affects your website. It’s a good idea to have an estimate of how much website-hosting bandwidth you need before launching your platform. Keep in mind that your actual bandwidth usage may be higher or lower than average. It’s always best to err on the side of caution and choose a hosting plan with more resources than you think you need. This way, you won’t have to worry about running into any problems down the road.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When you’re starting a website for your small business, there …<\/p>\nDetermining How Much Bandwidth You Need<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Type of Website<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Size of Website<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Number of Visitors<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Average Time Spent on Website<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Average Pageviews per Visit<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Calculating the Necessary Bandwidth for a Website<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Optimizing Your Website’s Bandwidth Usage<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Bandwidth Myths Debunked<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Myth 1: More Bandwidth Means More Speed<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Myth 2: You Only Need Enough Bandwidth For Your Average Traffic<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Myth 3: You Don’t Need Bandwidth If You’re Not Getting Much Traffic<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Myth 4: Bandwidth Can Be Unlimited<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n