Presently, each and every business requires a website to prevail in the competitive market and make sure that its clients can access services 24/7. This increasing demand to go online has compelled SMEs and business owners to navigate the world of technology that might not be their principal expertise. Understanding several technical aspects can be easy for geeks than getting it done. As Hosting companies are giving a set of choices, it is necessary for businesses to know the nuances of the services given.
The performance of a website could be affected due to various factors like bandwidth given by your hosting service provider.
What is Web Hosting Bandwidth?
Besides various crucial aspects such as speed, storage space, etc that affect website performance, there is one another aspect ‘Bandwidth’ and Bandwidth usage which is equally important.
Web hosting bandwidth can be described as the rate at which data could be transferred among your website, and the internet in a specific amount of time.
To better understand bandwidth and bandwidth usage, I will use the analogy of a highway. Let’s say traffic is the number of bits that are transferred and the number of lanes is the bandwidth that signifies how many bits can be transferred in a specific time.
Higher bandwidth will guarantee that more visitors will be capable to utilize your website at optimum speed and fully enjoy the experience that you have made for them. Additionally, you can also read this article “Difference between hosting and domain” for deep insights into web hosting and domain.
What is Bandwidth Usage?
Bandwidth usage of a website depends on several factors, including the media files on your website, web design, the code of the website, and to a level the content on your website.
The number of visitors and pages visited by every user plays a crucial role in calculating bandwidth usage. How it plays a crucial role let’s see with an example: if all your users exit the website after checking to just one page, the bandwidth usage will be less as compared to a case where users load multiple or every page on the website.
To understand the concept, we will further use the analogy that we utilized previously, the number of lanes on a highway is the bandwidth, and the traffic at any specific time is the bandwidth usage. If the highway has the size of 40 cars passing a specific stretch at any specific time, then that is the maximum bandwidth accessible.
Suddenly, if there are more cars on the highway, there would be a traffic jam and no one would be able to travel to anyplace. Likewise, if your website has a specific bandwidth, and if the usage increases surpassing that limit, your website visitors will not be able to load your website.
How Much Bandwidth Do you Require?
It is crucial that you buy bandwidth that fits your needs especially if you are one of the SMBs. If you buy a plan with lower bandwidth then there might be possibilities that it may have a negative impact as website speed could be affected which results in loss of customers and brand name. On the other hand, if you buy a plan with higher bandwidth then you could end up paying more for something that could have been evaded.
So how to calculate your bandwidth requirements?
While it is practically not possible to calculate the approximate or exact bandwidth your business would require each month. However, you could derive an estimate with an analysis of previous data.
For estimating bandwidth you will require:
- Average page size
- Average monthly visitors
- Average page viewed per visitor
Bandwidth = Average Page Size * Average Monthly Visitors * Average Pages Viewed Per Visitor
Let’s suppose your website receives 5000 visitors per month, with every visitor viewing around 4 pages. The size of each page is approximately 5 MB. Then your per month bandwidth will be :
5MB * 5000 * 4 = 1,00,000MB (100 GB).
This basic method would give you a rough estimate of the bandwidth you require. But such estimates would not calculate the sudden increase in the number of visitors due to your marketing activity or any social media post going viral. In such a case you need to buy extra bandwidth to handle the situation instantly.
While conventional hosting choices may not be easily scalable, you can go for hybrid cloud hosting to handle such unexpected situations. By choosing cloud hosting you can guarantee data security. Additionally, with just a click of a button, you can easily scale web hosting.
Types of Bandwidth
Web hosting providers give two types of bandwidths with their hosting plans:
- Metered Bandwidth: In metered bandwidth, the limit to the bandwidth offered is set beforehand, once you surpass the limit, the hosting provider will charge you.
- Unmetered Bandwidth: In unmetered bandwidth, you just pay for the hosting plan. So you can use as much bandwidth as you need.
Conclusion
Hosting companies provide a wide set of plans starting from 1GB bandwidth to unlimited bandwidth. Each website has its own website bandwidth needs. An eCommerce website with dynamic traffic will need high bandwidth as contrasted to a static blog.
It is important to know if the plan gives unmetered bandwidth or metered bandwidth. At 10GB Hosting, you get Linux Hosting plans with unmetered bandwidth. You get the freedom of utilizing bandwidth as much as your site requires
Last but not the least, i hope through my article you have understood what is bandwidth, bandwidth usage and how much bandwidth you need.