How much bandwidth do you go through?

[TeddyKGB]

I have a few months before my hosting contract is up and I am beginning to look at other options.

My forum is relatively small but I suspect over the next 6-12 months for it to really start to grow. I want to get a hosting plan with plenty of bandwith so I can grow into it. Right now I have about 250 members, with about 50 unique members visting a day.

I just don't know how much is too much so I wanted to get the general consensus of the board.

Can you tell me how much bandwidth you use a month and how many visitors and posts you typically see in a month?

[KingSpade]

Bandwidth usage will really depend on what you specifically allow your members to do. If you allow attachments, photo uploads and varied downloads, your bandwidth usage will be higher than a community that doesn't allow such.

Given that you have a smaller community, 10-20GB's of bandwidth per month should suit you just fine.

A general rule of thumb that I've been told and that I've mentioned to a few others via PM and e-mail is: take your current usage and multiply that by 10. With that, you should have room to grow and expand as you need without having to upgrade constantly.

Given, if you are currently using 2GB's per month, a package with 20GB's of available bandwidth per month should work just as well and for quite a bit unless you are just expecting to massive traffic spike .

[Bob Isaac]

Most providors will allow you to increase your limit...for a price.

Bob

[Curtis H.]

TeddyKGB,

It's generally a good idea to find a hosting provider who offers plans which will allow you to upgrade should the need arise. It may also be a good idea to signup with a plan that is more than you think you'll need, as in some cases, the price is locked even if the provider ups their fees down the road as long as you stay within the same hosting plan.

As KingSpade said, 10-20GB's of bandwidth per month should be fine. I average about 100+ registered users (though many aren't exactly chatter bugs) and countless guest per day and fall into that category.

Something else (important) to consider is Concurrent MYSQL connection limits. This will vary amongst providers and if it's not stated, I advise you to ask before making a final decision.

With that being said, I'll throw a name at you. Probably new to these forums but not new to the hosting game. Dotable.com. While many will say they have "heard" a provider is good, I prefer to hear from actual clients. In this case, I am a indeed a client but won't give a review at this time because I haven't been with them very long.

Feel free to do a search at WHT. Great source of information.

[KingSpade]

If you need further validation on the Dotable.com company, the owner is the same one that owned HTTPMe.com (Aussie Bob). Well worth checking out.

[Sovereign]

I have one of those "100GB/mo" plans, I couldn't use all of it if I tried....and yes I know that my host may oversell, but every time I've checked server load it's been under 1, usually around .2-.5 on a dual-CPU server.

[TeddyKGB]

Thanks for all the replies, that is some good info.

My board is a college sports board, centered mainly around football of course. So this is the "dead" season and I fully expect things to increase dramatically come mid August.

I've always looked at the total bandwidth as the main factor but the more reading I've done the more I realize while still important I better focus on MySQL database size (since some limit you to 100M) and # of connections.

Thanks!

[encryption]

most webhosts will have a limit of simultaneous connections to MySQL so I'd say look for a host who doesnt tie you down to a size limit on MySQL and gives you the freedom to grow