The Bandwidth Barometer – How is Bandwidth Involved when Choosing a Web Host

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by Xuxa Sexton

Bandwidth is very important when choosing a web hosting company. Never doubt its importance on the survival of your website, or the influence on your checkbook. Of course your required bandwidth depends on several factors such as, your audience, link popularity and the type of files and graphics that you use on your site. Read on to learn about the importance of how bandwidth effects your site, and what you can do to help ensure within reason that you have enough bandwidth to keep your website up and running.

Don't be fooled that free web hosting is actually free when it comes to bandwidth usage. Also, don't fall into the trap that if you're just starting out that you need tons of bandwidth, even with a paid hosting provider. The over sell technique to purge more money from your hip pockets is as old as mankind. If you want to put up your Internet website you'll need to know a few facts, be informed and make wise decisions about what you want to spend on your new website, it's the best policy.

Free web host accounts will limit you on how much traffic you will be able to use on a per day or month basis. After all, they are the ones paying for the bandwidth, and they are certainly going to make a profit, they have to. Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be transferred from your website through their server. Standard free web hosting bandwidth usage is usually offered at 50 KB. Peak times of usage occur with holiday seasonal times, and when your site becomes very popular and visited through a good advertising campaign initiated by you, it's what you want – customers. However, with the visits comes extra cost to you. Before you sign up for any web hosting services, make sure that they have included a good web stats software application that you can apply to watch you bandwidth usage. Also, you can figure your anticipated bandwidth usage by using a simple formula of number of pages and size of them per your anticipated number of hits per day or month.

Historical Quote

For us necessity is not as of old an image without us, with whom we can do warfare; it is a magic web woven through and through us, like that magnetic system of which modern science speaks, penetrating us with a network subtler than our subtlest nerves, yet bearing in it the central forces of the world.

—Walter Pater (1839–1894)

Of course, this is not an exact science, but you can figure in some extra bandwidth needs to compensate for any unexpected rises in hits to your website. Remember, too, that your target audience, especially if it's and e-commerce website, or even on that has adult content, which always includes lots of graphics and at time high in flash scripts will cause your bandwidth usage to automatically go up, just based on the file sizes and directories from you site. 5 GB is not unreasonable to start out with if you're website includes either of these two options and uses. When you or someone that you hire is designing your website, ensure that you or they know how to properly format and maximize all of the space that's available for your site. If you don't it takes up your allotted bandwidth usage.

Be very aware of policies of both the pay services and the free web hosting companies. Read the fine print of both because at times you will be charged for extra usage of bandwidth by either per usage of GB or over usage. You might be expected to pay for bandwidth usage in advance of the actual usage of the service of bandwidth. Free web hosting services will often hide the clause within their website. Again, be aware of the gimmick of unlimited bandwidth usage because there are usually exceptions defined in their policy. Usually this is the way they make their extra money by providing the enticement of free bandwidth, and then sticking you with a huge bill at the end of the month, and on top of that they will shut down your website until your bill is paid.

Free web hosting services have their place on the Internet for small personal web pages and very tiny e-commerce sites, but in reality the old adage still applies in the Internet world today, you get what you pay for. If you're not well prepared and informed of your choices and the services they offer, you'll soon find your cash reserves gone, and your website out of business. Preparing for your Internet business is the smart way to ensure that you'll have lots of happy customers and a pocketful of money too boot.

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Please note: All personal opinions expressed in the "The Bandwidth Barometer – How is Bandwidth Involved when Choosing a Web Host" article belong to the contributing author and are not necessarily shared by WebDesignConferencing.com.

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