When choosing a web hosting(opens in new tab) provider and selecting the appropriate hosting package, it is essential to have a clear idea of how much disc space your WordPress website will require.
It’s not only about how much you’ll need now; it’s also about how much disc space you’ll require later on when your site (ideally) starts to expand.
Before we get started, let’s define disc space and discuss why it is important.
Disk space, which is the amount of physical storage on a server you are renting from a web hosting company, is also known as storage space, web space, and local storage. Everything you see on a website, including the site layout, pages, text, logos, images, and videos, as well as databases, code, and other types of material, can be stored there.
Your site won’t continue to expand if you run out of disc space, but that’s not the whole story. Some hosts will notify you if your space is running low, while others will abruptly suspend your web hosting service once you hit your limit.
Therefore, we’ve created this guide to assist you in determining how much disc space you’re going to need for your WordPress website.
How much disc space are provided by web hosts?
Before devoting your time, money, and work to a certain web hosting company, it is crucial to take into account disc space, which is the amount of storage space your site will have on its servers. So, before making a final decision, be sure to evaluate plans, pricing, and available resources (including RAM and bandwidth in addition to disc space).
You will often receive 10GB of disc space with entry-level hosting packages, whether they are WordPress-specific or not (such as with hosts like Bluehost(opens in new tab), Kinsta, and SiteGround(opens in new tab), among others).
However, more and more hosts are now including a few dozen additional GB, and some of them are even offering unlimited storage space (DreamHost, HostGator, and iPage, to name a few). Since you wouldn’t need to worry about storage capacity if your website suddenly became popular, we think the unlimited storage function will become a global trend.
Although having infinite disc space can initially seem like a huge benefit, most users really need less than 10GB anyhow, so all this talk of “unlimited storage” seems more like a clever marketing ploy than anything substantial.
How much disc space is typically required by a WordPress website
There is no universally applicable solution to this problem because every site is unique and has different storage requirements. Likewise, text-based websites with few to no graphics typically take up little space, but websites with plenty of photos and videos do the opposite.
As a result, the answer to this question for a typical WordPress site would fall between 1GB and 2GB.
A basic WordPress site would need to have a database (let’s say around 50MB for a business site), the WordPress core installation, which is currently around 31 MB in size, a theme (which ranges between 1MB and 10MB), a few sweet plugins (these take up somewhat between 5MB and 10MB), and WordPress code and database backups (which often gets overlooked). If your website had 10 themes and 10 plugins, the total size increase would be a meagre 200MB at most, which is incredibly small given that our typical web hosting package provides 10GB of storage space.
How much RAM should a WordPress site have?
The performance of the server and your website can be largely determined by the random access memory, or RAM, therefore the faster the RAM, the higher the processing speed.
Additionally, according to statistics, visitors will most likely leave your website if it takes longer than three seconds to load on any device (including PCs, tablets, and smartphones).
The WordPress programme itself requires at least 512 MB of RAM, therefore you must have this bare-bones minimum to function. Although a small site can be run with as little as 256MB of RAM, WordPress sites cannot be run in this manner, especially if you want your site to perform better than passably. Don’t reduce your RAM below 512 MB as a result.
Fortunately, the majority of well-known web hosting companies will give you much more than this.
How to determine how much disc space your site needs
As a result, we already know that the typical WordPress website(opens in new tab) needs between 1GB and 2GB of disc space. However, it’s now up to you to determine how much space your WordPress website will take.
Consider the core WordPress installation, plugins, and any other third-party programmes and scripts you anticipate using, as well as HTML files, as indicated above (layout and content of the site).
Additionally, if you’ve already developed some content (text, images, videos, etc.) for your upcoming website, go to the folder containing it, check how much space that content occupies, and then try to make an educated bet as to what you’ll need moving forward. Additionally, keep in mind things like email accounts, access logs, databases, and backups.
Another thing to keep in mind is that websites that frequently update their content and contain more multimedia files (like e-commerce sites, blogs, and membership sites) tend to use up more disc space than straightforward business websites. If you intend to build a website like this, make sure it has enough room to expand.
Before taking the initial action, it’s a good idea to research techniques to maximise (and conserve) disc space. The majority of the top suggestions advise deleting almost everything you aren’t using or don’t plan to use in the near future and compressing huge photographs.
These include unused image sizes (because WordPress automatically creates three versions of any picture you add to your media library), unpublished draughts of blog posts or pages, outdated and inactive plugins, spamming comments, and unsolicited emails. Remove WordPress backups, that is, erase old ones and download new ones to your computer, if you really want to conserve space.
Space on the disc is crucial
It’s wise to have a clear understanding of how much disc space your site will actually require whether you’re trying to choose the best web hosting plan for your needs or making preparations for your WordPress site’s future storage requirements.
Fortunately, the disc space is highly expandable with the majority of top web hosting providers, so there’s no need to stress about choosing the wrong package because you can easily upgrade your hosting plan and increase the disc space limit.
Also keep in mind that 10GB of disc space should be adequate and available for a typical WordPress website.
