Disk Storage

When shopping for a web host, the amount of "Storage" or "Disk Space" that they advertise refers to the amount of room that you are allow to use on their server's hard drive to store your files. This will usually be measured in gigabytes (GB). Many of todays top web hosting companies will offer "Unlimited Storage" with your hosting plans.

Since there is really no such thing as an "Unlimited" sized hard drive, what this actually means is that they do not impose a limit in how much stuff you can store in your hosting folder. However they will point out in their disclaimer that there are limits imposed by the finite amount of the actual storage size of the drive.

The amount of storage that you are allowed is more of a flashy sells technique than actual value in most cases. Most html files are relatively small. Large sites with thousands of pages rarely exceed 1 GB. You can however use up a lot of disk space if you will be hosting videos or other multi-media format files.

Data Transfer (Bandwidth)

Bandwidth is the amount of information you are allowed to send through a servers internet connection. If you have a file that is 2 MB and it is viewed or downloaded 100 times in a month, then you will have used up 200 MB of bandwidth.

There are many web hosting services that offer "Unlimited Bandwidth". This is nice in that you will never get any extra overage fees do to excess traffic. Even hosting plans that offer "only" 300 GB of data transfer are far more than enough for most sites, with rare exception. Only the web sites that receive extremely large amounts of traffic viewing large multi-media video files will ever likely exceed this limit.