Web Hosting Bandwidth – What is it and How Much Do You Need?

When it comes to choosing a UK web hosting company to host your website, one factor to consider and compare is how much they charge for the amount of bandwidth you need.

Sure, there are many hosting companies offering unlimited hosting plans but one close look at these plans and you will find that the word unlimited has been simply tossed into offer an otherwise limited plan.

You may face penalties when you exceed “normal” usage. So it makes sense to identify your bandwidth needs so you can choose a plan that suits your requirements whilst saving money at the same time.

Web Hosting Bandwidth and Data Transfer

Bandwidth is a terminology used to calculate the rate of data and traffic permitted to flow between your site and users’ computers via the internet. The term “bandwidth” is often used to refer to “data transfer”. However, these two are completely different things.

Data transfer refers to the total amount of data being transferred at any given time, typically measured over a month.

Bandwidth, on the other hand, measures how much data you can transfer in a month. Look at it like a pipe where the width of the pipe will determine how much and how fast the water can flow. In essence, data transfer is the use of bandwidth.

When looking for a UK web host, look for a company that can offer higher bandwidth. After all, higher the bandwidth, the better the connectivity, network, speed and systems of the host.

How Much Bandwidth Do You Need?

The amount of bandwidth you need entirely depends on the amount of traffic (number of visitors) coming to your website. Perhaps you are wondering whether 50GB or even 100GB would be enough for your website per month.

In reality, 99% of websites floating on the world wide web use no more than 5GB of bandwidth per month. Unless you expect to generate a significantly high amount of traffic, you won’t need any more than 5GB bandwidth a month.

A higher bandwidth is only needed for video streaming or image-driven websites.

What about Unlimited Disk Space? 

Again, the amount of disk space (storage space) you need completely depends on the content of your website. Most websites are no bigger than 150MB where one web page takes up anywhere around 1 to 2MB.

In our opinion, 5GB is a lot of bandwidth and is sufficient for most small and medium businesses. However, do take into account the kind of content your website will host. If there’s a lot of video and visual content, you may need higher bandwidth.

Looking for reliable and affordable UK web hosting? Contact LS25 Web Hosting today!