Hosting bandwidth is one of those technical terms everyone hears, but few understand.
You probably know it has something to do with speed. You’ve heard a lot about bits, bytes, and other bandwidth data types. Maybe you’ve even compared hosting packages and examined bandwidth options.
But what does all this mean in the real world? Is bandwidth really that important? And how much hosting bandwidth does your website actually need?
Read on to learn more about bandwidth and how to decide on the right amount for your website.
What Is Bandwidth?
First of all, let’s define bandwidth.
In basic terms, bandwidth is the amount of traffic and data that can transfer between your website, visitors, and the internet. More specifically, it describes the maximum data transfer rate in a given amount of time.
You could think of the network connection as a pipe and each bit of data as a drop of water. If you pour a large amount of water into a narrow pipe, it will take a long time for the water to flow through it.
If you pour the same amount of water through a wider pipe, the water will travel through the pipe much faster.
Bandwidth works much the same way. The “wider” your bandwidth, the quicker information flows from your website to your visitors.
Hosting Bandwidth For Small Businesses
Now comes the tricky part. How do you determine how much bandwidth your site needs?
There’s no easy answer to this question. Obviously, you don’t want to pay for more bandwidth than you need.
At the same time, you don’t want to turn visitors away or deal with penalties for exceeding your allotted amount.
If you have a small business or informational site with less than 5,000 visitors per month, you probably don’t have to stress about bandwidth. Most hosting companies can provide what you need through their basic shared or cloud hosting services.
Hosting Bandwidth for Larger Businesses
What if your website includes a lot of data-heavy content like video, online apps, or large images? Or what if you expect major volumes of traffic to your site?
In that case, it gets a little more complicated.
If you’re launching a new website, keep track of its activity for a few months after it goes live. This is to determine your actual monthly usage so you can make needed adjustments.
As time goes on, plan for current traffic levels while factoring in the levels you hope to hit. Leave plenty of room for future growth.
Remember that the higher your bandwidth, the more volume your site can handle at the once. Your site may be able to handle 100,000 visitors spread over a month. But what happens if 100,000 users try to access it at once?
Final Thoughts
As you can see, there’s no easy answer to the question of how much hosting bandwidth your website needs.
Because each business website is unique, each has different needs when it comes to bandwidth.
Click here to learn more about our web hosting packages and find the one with the right bandwidth for your business.