We’ve all been there. How many megabytes of space and transfer do we need? As if to rub salt to the wound, many web hosts also make it so difficult to compute e.g. 2000 MB should really be 2 Gigabyte but I guess 2000 will make it look like their plans are real generous. And get this – more salt – I’ve seen some web hosts say 2000 MB space and 5 GB transfer. Oh for goodness sake! Can’t you be consistent? Ok ok I’m done with the rant.

Recently someone asked about how much space and transfer they’d need and was asking for a converter. Honestly, I never bother to calculate anymore because it’s quite impossible as every page will have different items on it that will draw resources differently on top of that you never really know when you will get an influx of traffic. If you’re looking to buy web hosting, allow me to share a simpler decision process I use these days. First, look at the biggest plan they got. Can you afford it? Do they allow multiple domains hosted. If yes to both get that one. If no then look at the next step down and if your budget permits, don’t get anything less than 1GB (1000MB) of space and transfer. Don’t overlook the resellers plan if they have one because sometimes you’d be surprised the reseller plans work out to be cheaper.

Finally – quit counting. Most control panels will give you a snapshot report of how much resources you’ve used and have remaining. Just take a quick peek each time you log in – think of it as checking your car’s gas gauge 😉