Bandwidth question...opinions please! Options

[laura_l]

Hi,

I have been doing web design for a while, but this is my first paying gig, so I need to make sure I get this right.

My client really wants to go with a webhost that is a local company. For $100/year she only gets 200mb bandwidth transfer per month. I think this is a joke, and I think she will easily go over this amount.

She has a company SIMILAR to chubbybum.com and wants a similarly formatted website, just to let you know the type and scale of site that i am dealing with.

So she asked the people that worked at the web host about my concerns, and they said, "Well 200mb of transfer is a huge amount per month, you will never reach that." I think that is crap--I just know on my blog that gets 1000 hits/wk that i have already had 400mb transfer in January. I know her site won't get that many hits, but i would just be concerned about going over.

So basically the point of this post is to please verify that i am not insane, and that 200mb of transfer is not going to be enough so i know that i am giving her good advice on dumping this company and going with someone else.

Thanks in advance,

Laura

[Christian J]

My client really wants to go with a webhost that is a local company. For $100/year she only gets 200mb bandwidth transfer per month. I think this is a joke, and I think she will easily go over this amount.

Are you sure it's 200MB and not 200GB? Or 200MB disk space?

She has a company SIMILAR to chubbybum.com and wants a similarly formatted website, just to let you know the type and scale of site that i am dealing with.

Half a dozen HTML pages with pictures? No audio or video files?

So she asked the people that worked at the web host about my concerns, and they said, "Well 200mb of transfer is a huge amount per month, you will never reach that." I think that is crap--I just know on my blog that gets 1000 hits/wk that i have already had 400mb transfer in January. I know her site won't get that many hits, but i would just be concerned about going over.

Note that an actual "visit" may generate several "hits" (one each for every HTML file, image, etc). See e.g. http://www.mrunix.net/webalizer/webalizer_help.html

To get a ballpark figure you might add together the file size of the most popular HTML page and all images etc contained in it. Suppose all this amounts to 50KB, then you'd reach the monthly 200MB traffic limit after 4000 visits, or just 130 visits/day (to that individual page alone). If you have 6 HTML pages of similar size, and most visitors view all of them, you'd just be allowed around 25 visitors/day.

How much is the web host charging for breaking the limit?

please verify that i am not insane

and that 200mb of transfer is not going to be enough

If nothing else it doesn't seem much for the price.

OTOH you should also be wary about offers of "unlimited" bandwidth (which just means the web host hides their actual limit in the marketing).

[pandy]

It's a joke.

Why does she want a local host? Is she going to go there with the updates on a floppy?