Data transfer: vital indicator when picking hosting

The data transfer (aka “bandwidth”) stipulates the size of files that users can download from or upload to your site on the monthly basis. Today, most hosting providers are willing to assure that your site has the data transfer that you’ll never be able to actually utilize within any specific month. This means that this indicator is not that important when you are hunting a hosting plan that’s perfect for your site.

But, so that you know how the underlying figures work in the world of hosting, let’s get a bit nerdy and understand how you actually calculate the data transfer.

How to determine data transfer

Let’s imagine that you have a site with 5 pages, each for 50KB. You receive 20,000 visitors per month and they each visit all of your 5 pages. Thus, here’s the total monthly budget for your data transfer: 5 pages x 50KB x 20,000 visitors equals 5GB.

This means that as long as your provider assures that the bandwidth isn’t lower than 5GB, you are OK. And the groundbase levels for VPS actually include 1TB in bandwidth with 1TB equal to 1,000 GB.