What is Disk Space in Web Hosting? – The Truth About Unlimited Web Space

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When you sign up for a web hosting account, one of the benefits that web hosting companies can often tout is limitless disk space.

This has led to many newbies asking “what is disk space in web hosting?”

You can find it difficult to choose the best web host if you don’t fully comprehend what disk space in web hosting entails.

Indeed, you can be easily swayed by words like unmetered or unlimited disk space without fully understanding what they imply.

Before signing up with any web host, you should first figure out what kind of website you want to create. This will help you figure out how much storage space you’ll need.

This post will go into detail to explain what is disk space in web hosting, unlimited disk space, unmetered storage space and provide you with the best web hosting solution with the optimum disk space for your website.

I believe that by the end of this article, you will have a better understanding of what disk space in web hosting means in terms of the type of website you want to run.

Are you ready? Let’s get started…

What is Disk Space in Web Hosting?

In terms of hosting, disk space refers to the amount of space on the server that can be used to store your website’s content.

This content comprises, among other things, files, photographs, websites, videos, and databases.

It can also be used to store emails in certain situations, but this is not the norm.

On their websites, web hosts usually list the amount of disk space they offer, as well as information about their plans and pricing.

You might come across words like “disk,” “hard drive,” “hard disks,” “Storage space,” “local storage,” and even “webspace”, which are all terms used to mean the same thing.

Webspace is webspace, regardless of how it’s referred to, and should not be confused with bandwidth (the volume of data that can be transferred) or monthly visits (i.e. traffic).

As a result, when you host a website, the webspace holds all of your content.

Fresh content is being saved onto your disk space while you update it. This is handled automatically, so there is no need to do anything.

The amount of disk space provided by hosting companies varies a lot, depending on the form of hosting.

So, let’s look at a few cases. For example, Liquid Web’s Spark Managed WordPress hosting plan includes 15GB of disk space:

Liquid Web Managed WordPress Hosting Pricing

GreenGeeks is another choice. Their simple Starter Lite plan comes with 50GB of webspace, and when you upgrade, you get unlimited web space.

GreenGeeks Starter Lite Pricing

Finally, Inmotion’s Basic plan includes 10GB of SSD storage space, while their Pro plan includes 200GB of SSD storage space:

InMotion Shared Hosting Pricing

GreenGeeks’ basic plan doesn’t give much space you may think or Wow, 50GB is a lot of storage or even unlimited web space, as the case may be.

It’s easy to be enthralled by the prospect of endless space. But do you really need so much storage space?

It’s difficult to understand the difference between 5GB and 50GB without reference. To begin, what is even the average size of a WordPress site? What, after all, is a standard website?

It’s possible that the amount of disk space you assume you’ll need is significantly less than what you actually need?

Just hang on as this post will address all of those questions.

How to Estimate Your Web Hosting Needs

The most important requirements for having a website on the Internet are bandwidth and disk space.

The amount of data you can store on the webserver is referred to as disk space. The amount of space required is obviously determined by the size of your website.

The majority of websites are made up of flash, pictures, text, or a combination of these elements.

Text is very space-efficient; it takes up very little room. Since images and flash need more disk space, they are more costly.

Each web page on your website should be between 200 and 300 KB in size, including photos and flash.

This is due to the fact that some people use dial-up connections that are slower than 56Kbps. A 200KB page would take more than 31 seconds to load for these users.

Website Page Load Time

31 seconds can seem insignificant, but imagine having to sit and look at a blank white page for longer than 31 seconds. That’s a significant amount of time.

As a guide, use the slow dial-up link. If your website loads quickly over a slow dial-up network, it will load even faster over a high-speed broadband connection.

Just to be up to speed with the relevant statistic, you can fit around 50 pages on 10MB of space if your average page size is 200KB. You can host 500 pages if you have 100MB of disk space.

How To Check The Disk Space Used In Your Hosting

Finding such information is simple if you already have a hosted website.

It’s already in your hosting account’s control panel.

Most website owners’ best option is to go straight to their cPanel interface, which prominently displays stats on their disk space, bandwidth, domains, and email accounts.

These numbers can be found on the right, under the General Information window, after you’ve logged into cPanel.

cPanel disk usage by the sidebar

You may also look at the disk usage reports for more detailed information. Simply select “Disk Usage” from the Files menu.

cPanel disk usage

Scroll down to the bottom of the screen and look for the “public_html” and “MySQL” files, which are the ones that eat up the most disk space.

cPanel disk usage public html file

While plugins such as Advanced Database Cleaner can assist you with this mission, it is preferable to search directly from your cpanel region, as this will provide you with the best results possible.

The Truth About Unlimited Disk Space

Several companies claim unlimited disk space, and many consumers are trapped as a result of a lack of knowledge. Let’s go over some of the rules that are commonly used in hosting with unmetered disk space.

The first is that hosting should be for the intent of hosting websites.

As a result, there is no limit to the amount of storage space that can be used; however, all files in the hosting must relate to the website or be connected to it in some way.

Companies ban any storage that serves a different function, such as virtual memory or file sharing.

As businesses detect excessive server resource use that jeopardizes server reliability or performance, the support team will approach the customer and suggests a reduction in usage or a VPS or dedicated server upgrade.

It is extremely rare for a personal website or small business to surpass the limits of this package, as web hosting companies often state.

By the way, shared hosting is the most common among individuals and businesses around the world, with plans offering up to 100 GB of storage, which is much more than what the vast majority of websites will ever need.

It’s important to note, however, that even unlimited hosting has limitations.

At least, you are limited to the type of content you can store on your Cpanel area. Any file you will be uploading must be in one way or the other be related to your website.

How To Free Up Your Disk Space

You’ve purchased a web hosting package that you believed would meet your website’s requirements. Perhaps you were aware that unlimited web hosting is a mirage and instead chose a package with a few GB of storage and adequate bandwidth.

That sounds promising right. But where did the issues arise, then?

After a few months of careful management, the web disk limit appears to be dangerously low, whereas the utilization percentage bar quickly approaches 100%.

Aren’t you just a few steps away from purchasing an upgrade?

Stop for a moment and assess the situation before you consider making a purchase. What went wrong, exactly?

It’s time to act if you’ve run out of storage space on your web hosting site. Files may become scattered as a disk fills up, slowing website performance.

Having insufficient storage space, on the other hand, means you will be unable to expand your website, collect more data, or upgrade your software.

While upgrading to a larger hosting package might be the best option in some cases, for many webmasters, the first move is to declutter what they already have. Here are sixteen ideas to get you started.

1. Spring clean your website installation

Website programs such as WordPress or Magento gather a lot of extra or unwanted data that takes up valuable disk space. The first thing you can do is get rid of everything you don’t need.

This includes inactive themes, deactivated plugins, undeleted spam comments, never-used uploaded images, old article revisions, no longer-published posts, and websites, and unsubscribed users, among other things.

2. Disable or limit user uploads

Although allowing user-generated content on your website can increase user engagement, unregulated uploads or unlimited file sizes can rapidly fill up your storage space, particularly if they upload an image, sound, or video files.

Limiting the number or size of uploads that can be sent, as well as the format in which they can be sent, can help reduce disk use. Worse still, you might only switch off uploads entirely.

3. Delete old emails

Emails saved on your web server will take up a lot of disk space. The most significant problem is email attachments, which take up much more room than the email itself.

If you need to hold the attachment, save it to a local machine before deleting the email.

After that, clear your spam and junk files before going over to your inbox and sent folders, and deleting everything you won’t use.

4. Delete installation backups

Some applications can save an installation backup on your computer when you upgrade it.

This backup is useful in the event that the update creates problems with other programs on your website.

If this occurs, you can use the installation archive to restore the program to a previous version.

However, once you’ve verified that your site is functioning properly after an upgrade, you can remove the installation backup file; else, it will just sit there taking up valuable space.

5. Get a separate email hosting account

If you receive a lot of emails and they’re filling up your web server’s disk space, you can avoid this by setting up a separate email hosting account with its own disk space on a different server.

6. Never host videos or music on your website

Video and music files are massive files that can easily take up limited disk space.

Upload the video or music to a third-party platform like YouTube and embed it on your webpage if you want to feature it on your blog.

People would still be able to see it on your blog, but the video or music will be hosted somewhere else.

Furthermore, if it is made available on popular streaming platforms, it would be able to reach an even larger audience.

7. Limit the number of websites on each server

Any website you host on a server adds to the amount of data you have available. Start by deleting any partially finished websites that you’ve never gotten around to launching and have been pushed to the back of your mind.

If you have other sites that are becoming more popular, now is the time to offer them their own dedicated server or upgrade to a larger package that can handle them all.

8. Delete log files

Many website owners rarely look at their log files, but they can help you figure out what’s causing any problems on your blog.

You can download your log files to remote storage and then remove the ones on your server to save memory. Even the ones you download will not be needed all the time.

9. Backup and delete test files

If you’ve created test websites or installed testing programs but aren’t using them anymore, removing them will help you save even more room.

If you want to use them again in the future, you can always save them to a backup and reinstall them.

10. Delete duplicate site analytics tools

If you’re using a set of analytics tools that all do the same thing, just stick to one.

Google Analytics is the best option because it stores your traffic data on Google’s servers rather than your own.

However, tools like AWStats can save them on your own server and consume the generated megabytes of space.

11. Compress your CSS and make it external

Using external configurations will greatly improve the performance of your website because your pages can load much faster and you can save many kilobytes of storage space.

Remove indentations and non-essential spaces from CSS files to make them even lighter.

One-line stylesheets are difficult to handle, but if you keep a human-readable version on your screen and a minimized version on the server, you’ll save space and time.

12. Use cloud services for common scripts

You can use a variety of providers, such as Google, who host the most common JavaScript libraries via their own servers.

You’ll gain extra Kb (or MB) since you’re no longer hosting the libraries yourself, and thanks to the services’ caching functionality, you’ll increase the script loading time for a better user experience.

13. Delete installation doc files

When you install a script, either remotely or through your host’s pre-configured installer (e.g. Fantastico, Softaculous), a (doc or another name) folder containing the software documentation will be copied.

Although this guide is useful for reference, it isn’t mandatory for the script’s functionality, so you can safely delete it and free up some Kb or even MB of web storage.

However, you should keep your README.txt and license.txt files in case the author needs them for proper script use.

14. Try moving your subsites elsewhere

A separate hosting account, a Blogger or WordPress.com blog, or any other free hosting package from another company are all possibilities that can be explored in this scenario.

The most important thing is that subsites that are not too relevant should be taken off from your main hosting server in order to free up space.

Set your priorities straight: a personal blog will definitely benefit from a less costly or free bundle than a company website.

15. Image optimization

A website picture should never be more than 200kbs in size. Inexperienced users often upload photos that are larger than 2MB, which is outrageous.

When you multiply 2MB by the number of photos you have on your site, the amount of space they take up can be enormous.

Optimize your photos on your website or before uploading them to your website to free up space. There are scores of plugins available for WordPress that perform this task.

Any time you write an article, you can manually optimize your images before uploading them to your sites. Img2go and TinyPng are two online applications that can help you optimize your photos.

Another choice is to upload your photos to a different site and exclude them from your hosting. You will save several megabytes of space this way.

16. Buy additional hosting space

If you’re still short on hosting space after following the steps I’ve outlined, the most likely cause is that you purchased a package that was too limited for the project or projects you were working on at the time.

Your best bet in such a scenario is that you’ll have no choice but to upgrade your hosting service.

Types of Web Hosting Storage Disk

The two major types of storage devices in web hosting are HDD (Hard Disk Drives) and SSD (Solid State Drives).

These two storage devices are what most web hosting providers will have at their disposal.

It is worthy to state that you will not readily find a web host offering both storages as part of their package, therefore, it is either a hosting provider is offering HDD or SSD.

As a result, it is typical to come across terms such as HDD hosting or SSD hosting.

Yes, there are a slew of strategic decisions to be made when doing so, one of which is whether to use SSD or HDD hosting.

Hard disk drives have long been the most common storage medium. These drives have been around for decades and can store large amounts of data for a low price.

Solid-state drives (SSDs) have become increasingly common in recent years, particularly for dedicated hosting.

When selecting a hosting service, knowing the difference between SSD and HDD storage will help you make an informed decision that best fits your business needs.

So, what is HDD? And what is SSD?

See also: SSD vs HDD – Which is the Best For Your Hosting Needs?

What Is SSD Storage?

Solid State Drive is abbreviated as SSD. In Integrated Circuits, it is the most effective type of data storage (ICs).

SSDs, unlike HDDs, have no moving parts and were first introduced to the world in 1978. They have a quicker access time than HDDs, which can cause data retrieval to be delayed.

SSDs serve data 100 times better than HDDs, which suggests they’re significantly faster, not just a little faster.

SSD web hosting is a form of hosting that utilizes this non-volatile storage device.

The solid-state drive is a new data storage device that uses memory chips to store data.

SSDs, like flash drives, use the same technology, but on a larger scale.

As a result, an SSD server is without a doubt the fastest WordPress hosting option for increasing data transfer speeds and having websites load as quickly as possible.

What is HDD Storage?

The hard disk drive (HDD) is a storage unit. Customers can also get HDD hosting from most hosting companies.

HDDs are widely used in web hosting due to their low cost. The hosting company buys a lot of space for a cheap price.

This allows hosting companies to get a lot of space for a low price. That is why hosting companies offer their customers UNLIMITED storage space.

HDD drives have moving pieces. As a result, HDD drives have a much shorter lifetime than SSD drives.

Disk defragmentation, loading time, sound, and disk failure rates are all substantially higher in hard disk drives.

Where is Data Stored on a Website?

A hard disk drive (HDD) or solid-state drive (SSD) server.

The difference between your PC and servers is that they are linked via the internet, much like your local PC or laptop.

The internet is made up of a large number of client-server networks. As a result, all documents and other resources on it are stored on the servers’ secondary storage devices.

Web servers are the servers that host websites. When you type a website’s URL into your browser’s address bar, it establishes a link with that web server, which then retrieves the data from the secondary storage device (such as a hard disk) that they may be using and sends it to the appropriate browser.

The same is true for every other resource you access on the internet (MP3 file, image, zipped file, etc.).

Servers now have more processing power than a standard PC. And they’re still on the move.

As a result, you will still see your website in action. However, power outages or heavy loads may cause your server to shut down or restart. As a result, your website would be unavailable at that time.

You can now purchase server space and resources from your hosting company. You purchase them and put them to use. You still keep your data.

To bring things into context,

  • Web servers are where websites are kept
  • Mail servers are where emails are kept
  • Databases are maintained on database servers (which are never identical). I’m referring to the fact that SQL Server and MySQL are both different, and that they can be on separate servers but still, be connected.)
  • Domain servers keep track of domain names (which has DNS namespace control)
  • File and website backups are stored on backup servers

If a hosting provider is offering you their service, they should have all of the servers mentioned above. All the servers above, are then linked to the webserver.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How much disk space is needed by a website?

A small site or blog with 500 to 1000 daily visitors would need 1000MB of memory to function normally.

Most websites, particularly personal or one-page blogs, do not require more than 1GB of storage. Choose a minimum of 4GB of disk space for a high-traffic website or blog; more would be better.

Netflix and Facebook, on the other hand, are increasing their storage space on a regular basis. This amounts to around 21.0 terabytes a day.

2. How much storage space is required for an ecommerce website?

The amount of space required for your ecommerce website is primarily determined by:

  • How many items will you show?
  • How many photos will be linked to those items?
  • The image quality – product images would usually be under 200kb in size to make them convenient to download in customers’ browsers if they are clicked on
  • If you’re using your store’s built-in picture zoom feature or not
  • If you’ll have other types of content on your static content pages, such as video.
  • If you’re selling online items, consider the size of the files that consumers will be able to download after they’ve paid for them
  • How many emails do you want to save on the server?
  • When your e-commerce shopping cart is mounted, the disk storage space it takes up

If you have between 1-500 items on your e-commerce website, 650-1000 MB of disk space should suffice for most business applications.

Larger storage space will be needed for merchants with a large number of goods or stored emails.

You’ll need at least 5 GB of storage if you plan to store email on the server. This will allow you to store thousands of emails without having to worry about running out of webspace.

3. Is 10 GB storage sufficient for a website?

Yes.

10 GB of monthly bandwidth is sufficient for small to medium traffic blogs and websites, but don’t forget to secure the site with SSL security.

4. How much hosting space do I need for WordPress?

Each WordPress template takes up about 25 MB of disk space, and the MYSQL database takes up about 85 MB.

So, on average, 1GB of free space is needed to launch a WordPress website. Most WordPress hosting plans provide at least 1GB of disk space.

5. What is storage on a website?

Webspace, also known as storage space or disk space, refers to the amount of storage on a web server that web hosting companies assign to website owners.

It’s the total number of text files, photos, scripts, databases, addresses, and other files associated with your website.

6. What is monthly bandwidth in web hosting?

The amount of data your website can send to your users in a specified amount of time is referred to as bandwidth in website hosting.

Gigabytes (GB) are typically used to measure and sell bandwidth, although some web hosting providers can provide unlimited bandwidth.

7. How do I find out the size of a Web page?

There are many online resources for determining the size of a web page.

For example, you can use the Pingdom Website Speed Test Tool to determine the size of any web page.

Simply type or paste the URL of the page you want to inspect, and you’re done.

Pingdom Website Speed Test tool

You’ll get a lot of details, including the page size.

WebHost Bros Disk Space

This resulted in a file size of 575.1 kb for this blog. If using different tools, the actual values will differ. Nevertheless, the differences will be minimal, especially for large pages. You’ll be able to tell whether the page is small or big.

8. What are the best web hosts that provide unlimited disk space?

All of the hosting plans mentioned below offer unlimited storage:

9. What is SSD storage in hosting?

SSD storage in hosting refers to hosting plans that use solid-state drives to store your files (SSDs).

SSDs are the most recent major development in data storage technology, resulting in quicker and more efficient website hosting than conventional hard-disk drives (HDDs).

10. How much storage do I need for a blog?

You’ll need at least 4 GB of disk space, and you’ll need between 10 and 15 GB if you upload a lot of files like photos, PDFs, and other documents.

As a result, for blogs with 1000 daily users, 4 to 15 GB of disk space is adequate.

11. What is unlimited bandwidth in web hosting?

Unlimited bandwidth simply means the ability to send an unlimited amount of data across the internet between your website and that of your client.

The amount of data allowed to flow to and from your website is referred to as bandwidth (also known as data transfer).

Unlimited bandwidth hosting plans don’t have a monthly limit on the amount of data you can use, but if your site gets too active, you can experience throttling.

12. What is the “bandwidth limit”?

Bandwidth limit refers to the total amount of data that can be transferred from your website to the end-user and vice versa.

When this amount is exceeded, your website will return a bandwidth limit exceeded error message.

The word “bandwidth limit exceeded” refers to the amount of bandwidth available to the hosting plan having been used up.

When data is downloaded from the server and transmitted to the end-user (outbound traffic), as well as when the end-user uploads content to the webserver (inbound traffic), bandwidth is consumed (inbound traffic).

Bandwidth utilization accounts for all data sent from the website to the client and vice versa. The browser will display a bandwidth cap exceeded error if the amount of bandwidth usage reaches the amount of bandwidth allocated by the web host.

Some web hosts do not place a cap on the amount of bandwidth that can be used in a month. There is no need to panic about experiencing a bandwidth cap exceeded error in this case; although, there will be a surcharge for the additional bandwidth used in comparison to the plan’s allotted bandwidth.

13. Why is my website bandwidth so high?

High bandwidth consumption could be caused by a variety of factors, including:

  • Gaming
  • Peer to peer applications
  • Mail server problems
  • Streaming media
  • Bots
  • Remote backup tools

High bandwidth consumption can be explained simply by the fact that your account’s website or web pages receive a lot of traffic.

14. What is unmetered bandwidth?

Unmetered bandwidth refers to a fixed amount of bandwidth (for example, 1Gbps) that you are free to use as much as you want.

Although the maximum server speed is limited, the amount of data that can be transferred is not.

15. What does unlimited storage mean?

The amount of data you will have on your hosting account is referred to as storage, which is also known as web space or data storage. When a hosting plan includes unlimited storage, there is no limit on how much room you can use for your website or email – however, if your site grows too large, you will run into other restrictions.

When disk space nears capacity on hosting plans with unlimited space, additional disc drives are attached to the server to expand storage space.

Although the word “unlimited” is right, other considerations, most notably bandwidth, prohibit you from pushing the limits entirely.

Data transfer rates are capped, even though you can store as many files as you want. Visitors will be limited to viewing a certain amount of your site’s material at a time.

You can’t also use your unlimited storage space to host unauthorized or copyrighted files.

16. What does unlimited website hosting mean?

Unlimited hosting refers to hosting plans that provide an unlimited amount of bandwidth, domains, websites, and storage.

Simply put, with this method of hosting, you would have unlimited access to all of the major resources.

17. What is an unlimited database?

Essentially, “unlimited databases” means you can use as many as you need to run your website under the hard disk space constraints. Of course, any provider you select will have its own set of terms that you must read.

The reality is that having a fully “unlimited” database is just not feasible. This is due to the fact that a database is a storage unit. There will never be an infinite amount of web storage—there will always be a limit.

Most of the time, the term “unlimited” is used purely as marketing gymnastics to make a hosting plan seem good than it is. However, just because they use appealing terms like “unlimited” to characterize their deals does not mean the service is excellent.

Is this to say that all limitless hosting plans are a waste of money? Not inherently, but they are often deceptive.

As a result, be careful of hosting companies that claim to provide limitless database storage and always read the terms of service.

18. What is unmetered disk space?

Unmetered disk space means you won’t have to think about the total size of files hosted on your account when building additional websites to promote yourself and your company online.

However, keep in mind that having a large website will cause it to slow down, resulting in a high bounce rate.

My advice is to use a web host that can accommodate large websites and to avoid using a shared hosting service if you plan to create a large website. In this case, dedicated hosting is your best option.

Conclusion

For this blog post, it’s a wrap!

At this stage, I want to believe that you now know what is disk space in web hosting.

If you’re looking for a new hosting package or making plans for your site’s potential storage requirements, it’s critical to know how much space your site actually requires versus how much you think it requires.

Knowing how much you’re using now, or predicting how much you’ll use in the future if you’re starting a new site, will help you choose the hosting that’s right for you.

Once your site is up and running, remember to keep an eye on the page size to ensure that your pages load quickly. You’ll still want to tidy up your database on a regular basis to keep it as clean as a sound.

WebHost Bros is an online resource that helps you to find the best web host that is best for you. Here is our list of the best hosting providers in the market.