Author: Subhendu Sen
Article source: http://www.msjsoftware.com/. Used with author's permission.
"2GB web space with 50GB traffic for $5.95 per month!"
A luring ad—definitely. In fact this ad makes many small
business owners feel cheated by their present web hosts.
This is how the small business owners, who have taken small
amount of space (say, 5, 10 or 25mb) calculate and feel that
they are paying more :
"If 2000MB (2GB) costs $5.95 per month, then 5MB should cost
(5.95 x 5 / 2000) = $0.15 only! But my web host charges me
$1! A 700% profit!! Oh...I am losing so much money!!"
So, if a small business site shifts to the advertised web
host, he should get better value for his money. Right?
Wrong.
Let me explain how:
As a small business owner, how many HTML pages
do you have in your web site? 5, 10, 15, 25?
Experts say that you should not have a page of more than
100K including images. Normally the file size of a
starndard HTML page is around 10-15K.
Remember that, many of the images linked to your pages
are common. If you have a 400x300 pixel image, the file
size of that image should not be more than 30K. Buttons
are normally between 3-5K.
So, let's take an example of 25 page web site, which has
(a) 25 HTML pages, (b) each page has one big image of
400x300 pixel and (c) have 25 buttons.
So, the total space usage is:
25 HTMLs x 15K = 375K
25 400x300 pixel images x 30K = 750K
25 buttons x 5K = 125K
Total : 1250K = 1.25MB
You need space for mail. How many email accounts do you
need? 5, 10, 25? How much space you want to allocate for
each mail box? Do you get large attachments? Your can set
your email software to delete mails from the server
(immediately or after few days) after you download them to
your computer. So, if you check your mails every hour and
keep your mail space clean for receiving further mails, you may
safely allocate 1mb for each email accounts. If you are using
only one email account, you can use the entire free space for
your email.
So, with the above example, if you go for a 5MB space, it's
enough for you in the given circumstances.
But, if you go for a 2GB space and use only 5MB of it, you
are actually paying $5.99 for using 5MB space. A loss of $4.99
every month—$59.88 every year!
You got it now, right?
You may ask, 'What about Traffic? 50GB!! It's huge man!'
Yes, it's huge. But, do you need it?
With the above example, if one person visits all the pages,
your site generates 1.25MB traffic. If you get say 100 such
visitors every day, you generate only 3750MB or 3.5GB
(approx) traffic for the entire month!
So, here again you pay more for the unused traffic.
Check from your control panel, how much space and traffic you are
you consuming currently. Are you paying for unused space /
traffic? If yes, then browse the web for reliable hosts and find
out a plan which fits with your requiremnts. Compare the
prices and features. Check the reliability of the host and
go for the one you find the best.
And, Save Money! Subhendu Sen is the owner and webmaster of http://www.IndHosts.Net/hosting.html
— a low-cost web hosting service provider and in
the business of web hosting since 1998.
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