Published on September 04, 2011 Web Hosting: Is 1GB enough space? How much disk space do you need?
If you look at the disk space offerings of many Australian hosting providers, you will notice that disk space limits between 500 megabytes and 1GB are often the default minimum amount of disk space offered on ecommerce web hosting packages. How much is 1GB and is it enough for your needs?
Unless you are handling huge numbers of high-resolution photos or videos, in most cases 1GB will usually be more than sufficient for your website needs, especially for online shops with under 1,000 products.
Business applications such as ecommerce websites, typically require much less space than 1GB unless they have tens of thousands of products or offer a large number of downloadable products. This is because well designed shopping cart software does not use a significant amount of disk space and customers cannot afford to place high-resolution, slow-loading photos into shops. If it takes too long to view a product, customers will lose interest and will not buy it.
We have found that although we offer upgrade options for customers who need more space than the , customers rarely need it. Three quarters the level of these ‘entry level’ web hosting packages is usually more than sufficient for even high traffic ecommerce websites.
Editorial Note 1: In 2011, Ozcart has launched new packages reflecting the technology now available, changes in the industry, and common website content.
Editorial Note 2: In 2018 and for the past few years, Ozcart’s plans begin at 6GB SSD data storage space and surpass 30+GB at the highest plan. See our Pricing page to find out more about our latest packages as we may have an unlimited plan by now.
Think about emails
If you have a large number of employees and are looking for a pure hosting account for your business, think about how big you are going to let your employee mailboxes be. If you have ten employees and give them 100MB of disk space each for their mailbox, if they all fill up their email inboxes you will use 1GB of space. You should factor this into your considerations when choosing a web host.
If the package limits for a host are less than your needs, contact them and ask about buying extra. In many cases, hosts will allow you to do this but offer custom prices depending on your needs. It pays to ask – you could be turning away a host perfect for your needs just because they provide custom quotes for ‘overs’.
What about traffic? Is 1GB enough then?
High traffic ecommerce websites will consume considerably more than their disk space levels every month in traffic, as they log in to update their products and customers view products, make orders and for downloadable products stores download software, fonts, etc. A lot of our online store customers use between 2-5GB of traffic per month, with high end customers using between 10-20GB. If you are purchasing your own ecommerce hosting for a shop, look for a provider offering limits in these ranges depending on how many customers you expect to receive.
However, for standard personal or business websites which do not offer ecommerce, 1-3GB of data transfer will usually be more than enough to handle thousands of browser visits per month.
Editorial Note 3 – 2018: Ozcart offers a minimum of 20GB monthly bandwidth at the lowest plan, reaching over 100GB at the highest plan. See our Pricing page to find out more about our latest packages as we may have an unlimited plan by now.
Ozcart Hosting & Ecommerce Shopping Cart Hosting
Ozcart offers an impressive ecommerce package which include hosting tailored to the needs of online shops.
Editorial Note 4 – 2018: We also offer our own semi-managed hosting without our shopping cart, where you can install any type of website.
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