Website hosting - do I pay for bandwidth used?

1ddqd

I have a website idea, and I'm trying to understand the product pages on various sites. Some have various limits (like 250MB) for storage... I shouldn't have to pay for the amount of traffic that any one file generates, right? If I upload a 10mb file, is it common practice to pay for the amount of bandwidth used by people downloading the file?

Daenris

Yes it is absolutely common practice to charge you for bandwidth. You can certainly find unlimited options but you'll pay for it. Depending on your hosting when you go over bandwidth your site will either be taken offline until you upgrade your account or some providers might just charge you overage amounts for the extra bandwidth.

Jasconius

yes. you have to pay for upstream bandwidth from a web host

if you host a 10MB file, and 25 people download it, you will pay for 250MB

with that being said, bandwidth is extraordinarily cheap and you can find many hosts out there who will give you hundreds of gigabytes of bandwidth for either free or very cheap

mcp

Whatever you get will likely tell you how much bandwidth you get with your package.

I manage a site on Liquid Web.

It costs X for the VPS, and you get 5TB transfer included. If you want more, you pay more. Anything over your plan is charged at X.

I think that's fairly standard.