The web hosting capacity that you need is decided by the three basic factors of the disc space requirement, the monthly average traffic generation that is expected in the near future, and the connection speed. A small-sized website will need a minimum disc space between 10 MB and 50 MB. A medium-sized website will require disc spaces in the range of 50 MB to 500 MB. Large websites must have disc spaces that exceed 1 GB, which can run up to 10 GB or more.

A normal HTML page takes up only a minor disc space between 5 kb and 50 kb in the web server. Still, the presence of images, graphic elements, photos, and videos in the page will increase the basic space to very high levels. Even a short video of a minute or two will necessitate a disc space of around 20 MB to 50 MB. Hence, you should carefully weight the contents of all the pages in your website while deciding the actual level of disc space for web hosting on the remote server.

The monthly traffic that is generated in the website also plays a key role in web hosting and disc space capacity needs. Smaller and medium-sized websites consume around 1 GB to 5 GB of data transfer in one month, while larger commercial sites encounter monthly web traffic of more than 100 GB. The monthly web traffic capacity is calculated by multiplying the average web page size by the average number of anticipated page views in a single month. For example, if your average web page size is 50 kb and you expect about 60,000 page views in a month, then the disc space that you need for web hosting is 0.05 MB x 60,000 = 3000 MB or 3 GB.

The connection speed is also important in the decision of web hosting capacities. Modems with low speeds transfer data in the range of 14 kilobits to 56 kilobits per second, termed as 14 kbps or 56 kbps. This is the equivalent of 2,000 characters to 7,000 characters per second, which are around 1 to 5 written text pages. One single byte is 8 bits. One byte can transmit one character. One kilobit or kb is 1,024 bits. One megabit or MB is 1,024 kb and one gigabit or GB is 1,025 MB.

Hence, when you engage a web hosting service provider, you should find out the answers to the following questions.

• What are the disc space restrictions on monthly traffic and data volume transfer by the service provider?
• Will the provider charge extra when the volume exceeds the accepted limits or will the website be shut down without notification?
• Will the charges for exceeding the specified volume be affordable or extremely high?
• Will the provider offer volume upgrading options, whenever required without much hassle or heavy costs?
• What will be the average network speed offered by the web hosting service provider and whether it will be adequate to your requirements?