Many web hosting push the fact that they offer unlimited traffic, unlimited storage, and various other bells and whistles. Other web hosts will encourage you to “upgrade” to their bigger, more “fully featured” packages. However, you need to keep in mind that unless you will be generating a lot of traffic to your website (and quickly), then a much more modest package will probably suit your needs.
The following statistics are from the “real world” and for sites I host for various clients. They are all “small” websites, although some get a reasonable amount of traffic. All the sites have been online for at least 2 years (Site D has been online for 9 years).
Site A
This site features a number of articles and a niche web directory.
Page Rank: 3
Pages Indexed by Google: 174
Disk Space Used: 3.21MB
Bandwidth:
(April 2009): 407.88MB
(March 2009): 311.41MB
Google Analytics Visitor Statistics:
(April 2009): 1989 visitors (-58.03% below benchmark)
(March 2009): 2213 visitors (-50.30% below benchmark)
Site B
This site primarily acts as an online advertising brochure.
Page Rank: 4
Pages Indexed by Google: 14
Disk Space Used: 4.34MB
Bandwidth:
(April 2009): 41.4MB
(March 2009): 15.16MB
Google Analytics Visitor Statistics:
(April 2009): 317 visitors (+1,881.25% above benchmark)
(March 2009): 380 visitors (+2,135.29% above benchmark)
Site C
A small niche content wiki, using MediaWiki software (the same as used by Wikipedia).
Page Rank: 4
Pages Indexed by Google: 116
Disk Space Used: 29.07MB
Database Space Used: 31.56MB
Total storage space: 60.63
Bandwidth:
(April 2009): 266.89MB
(March 2009): 311.71MB
Google Analytics Visitor Statistics:
(April 2009): 593 visitors (+3,606.25% above benchmark)
(March 2009): 722 visitors (+4,147.06% above benchmark)
Site D
This site is an article repository (niche content).
Page Rank: 4
Pages Indexed by Google: 3210
Disk Space Used: 163.05MB
Bandwidth:
(April 2009): 7650MB (7.65GB)
(March 2009): 8680MB (8.68GB)
Google Analytics Visitor Statistics:
(April 2009): 24,647 visitors (+489.92% )
(March 2009): 26,820 visitors (+574.38% above benchmark)
* Note: benchmark figures are from Google Analytics and for similar sized websites.
All website are primarily text, with only a few graphics (ie. heading, and a few photos). Even with 24,000+ visitor per month the bandwidth is less than 10GB per month – and 3 out of the 4 sites are performing well above Google’s benchmark of similar sized websites. Of course, an image or photo rich website will use a lot more space in both storage and bandwidth, however many sites never require more than 100-1000MB of diskspace, 1 or 2 databases (maybe for a blog and a forum), and 10GB per month storage.
E-commerce sites, large forums, and image/video/file hosting services will of course use much more space and bandwidth than average websites.
If you would like to discuss your web hosting requirements then please feel welcome to contact us. We can assist you with finding the best hosting solution to suit your needs, as well as graphic and web design, web site promotion, and related services.
Email: graeme@dunedinwebhosting.co.nz
Phone: 021-110 8096
PO Box 5084 – Moray Place – Dunedin 9058 – New Zealand
