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There's a large supply of hosting companies on the Internet just waiting for your business to come their way. A lot of them will be alike, offering the same or very similar hosting packages at several different prices. The services they offer may sound enticing and "just what you wanted," but one service you just have to put both your eyes on is the amount of disk space that will be available to you on your host's server.

This space has to be large enough to hold your data, photos and graphics, web site files, databases, ebooks, articles, blogs and anything else you might want to include. You certainly have to think about some of the space requirements you will need for the online projects and processes you will have on your website. If you choose way more disk space than you need, you will be throwing money in the waste basket. Not enough disk space will not run your processes adequately and might even cause your site to stop working and be unavailable to your customers.

Simple 10-page websites without a lot of graphics would take 1 MB of space, or less. A good number of hosting services start with anything from less than 1 MB to 5 MB of available space...more than enough for most smaller websites. This choice would be perfect for family sites mostly used to announce reunions, gatherings, births, graduations, etc. More than 1 MB of space (3-5 MB probably) would be needed if photos are planned for part of the family togetherness and sharing. If you planned a genealogy, family history, database on your site, for instance, you have just left the "simple" stage.

A larger site of 25-30 pages, with some pictures and graphics, maybe some ebooks, articles or tables of the available resources onsite...and possibly a small database of customer or visitor information, would require 2-3 MB as a bare minimum, leaving some room for light expansion. Just remember that pictures, graphics and databases require large amounts of disk space, and choose a large enough disk space package to more than cover what you plan to do. If you don't, your photos, graphics and databases won't load and your site might just freeze. If your estimate is 3-5 MB of needed space, it would be a good idea to choose the next highest package offered.

A more complex site of approximately 100 pages, with lots of graphics and JavaScript functions on most pages, including lots of text, could be 5 MB or more, depending on the size of the graphics. A site like this one would need a considerable amount of future expansion room (you know you will need it), so a disk space package in the 15-20 MB range would be a safe choice.

Finally, a complex commercial site with graphics and a database of 500-1000 products and maybe a second database of customers or replacement parts, would need far more disk space than all the other options put together. Databases just eat up disk space like candy and the more data entered into it, the larger it gets each day. You will need ample expansion room in order to keep your business running smoothly. Graphics can do the same thing. While your logical disk space estimate might be in the 50-100 MB range, 500 MB would be much safer to select.

Dan Thompson is a veteran website designer and has used numerous web hosts in his time. Dan specializes in writing web host reviews, his latest article is a Hostmonster Review. You can view Dan's latest web hosting review at http://www.hostmonster-the-review.com