Bandwidth & data transfer to a large degree are somewhat synonymous. In a nutshell, it refers to the amount of information transferred to and from your web site by you and your visitors. This boils down to 3 major factors: 1. The amount of traffic you receive 2. The size of your site 3. The types of files offered on your site.

Very simply put: If your web site is 2MB including pages and images, and 1,000 people viewed every page on your site you would transfer 2,000MB.

Realistically, based on average internet traffic, you could probably take a good bit more visitors as not everyone views every single page on your site. The average personal to professional level site transfers 500 - 1,500MB per month.

If your site offers things like audio files, video files or software downloads you can expect your transfer to be much higher!

A fact about HostChart.com's traffic and bandwidth
HostChart's site, which consist of hundreds of pages and currently has over 50,000 visitors per month viewing over 150,000 page views per month and still uses less than 10GB (10,000 MB) of data transfer per month.

Those offering unlimited
Another important key factor to look out for is web hosting companies offering "unlimited bandwidth". At times, this statement may be FAR from what it states. I have come across time after time with web hosting companies stating that they offer "unlimited bandwidth", but when you inquire about the truth or accuracy of the statement you may find "unlimited" to them means "2 GB of transfer" (or similar.) Since when did 2 GB (gigabytes) transfer mean unlimited?

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