Cost of running a forum

[James14]

How much does it cost to run a web forum?

How much bandwidth do posts use?

[TanK DaWg]

It all depends on how many people join your site and how many posts daily..i have 5000mb on a reseller account which is wayyy more than I need..i only use about 1000mb of it for a site with almost 400 members

[dwh]

To start out not too much. If you find the right host maybe $20 per month. But when you get a lot of traffic it can be hundreds of dollars and in some cases thousands. But opportunities come with that traffic. But another cost to consider is grey hair. That is expensive

[James14]

It all depends on how many people join your site and how many posts daily..i have 5000mb on a reseller account which is wayyy more than I need..i only use about 1000mb of it for a site with almost 400 members

I am hoping to get 200 posts a day after a month or two.

How much would that cost (roughly)

[rh2004]

On 2500 posts a day, around 2400MB (2.4GB)

[Mr_Bob]

So after a year you will have 73,000 posts . You can probably use about 150mgs with that, I'm not 100% sure. The cost all depends on the hosting company. Some are very cheap while others are exspensive. My host gives me 20 gig of space with 40 gig bandwidth per month for about $80 every six months. You should look around for a good, cheap, but still very proven by review host (I won't list the host to prevent advertising).

[dwh]

Is your topic area graphic heavy? That will have an impact on space requirments as well as bandwidth

[JPT62089]

With Vizaweb.com it is $6/mo (yearly) for 1 Gig space and 70 Gig bandwidth... they have other plans too

[James14]

Thanks for that its very helpful


BTW what the difference between web space and bandwidth

[ManagerJosh]

WebSpace aka Hard Disk Space
Bandwith - Amount of Data allowed to be transfered from server to end users or viewers.

[RockStar]

To run a site/forum, here's is what it would cost you:

1) ~$9 per year : Get a domain name (www.godaddy.com is great and cheap)
2) ~$5-6 per month : Get sharedhosting for starters. There are many great hosts like someone mentionned above for starters like you
3) $85 per year/$160 lifetime : Buy vBulletin

That's all there is to it really.