How to Determine the Ideal Size of a Web Server for Your Website

Whether you are just starting a new website or scaling a growing business, you might be wondering what size of web server your site will need.

We’ve had years of experience determining the perfect web server size for our own websites. From small blogs to high-traffic platforms, we’ve carefully balanced resources to ensure smooth performance without unnecessary costs.

When our traffic started to grow, we quickly realized how important it is to find the right server size. Scaling too early can mean wasted money, while scaling too late can cause downtime and lost visitors. Through trial and error, we’ve fine-tuned our server needs to match our growth and keep our websites running smoothly.

In this article, we will walk you through the steps we used to find the ideal web server size so you can confidently choose the best setup for your own website, no matter its size or traffic.

Here is a quick overview of the topics we will cover in this guide:

What Is a Web Server?

A web server is a computer that stores and shares websites with people online.

Think of it like a librarian who organizes websites and gives them to anyone who asks so they can view the site on their device.

Based on our work with many server setups, most use special software to handle website requests. The most common ones we’ve seen are Apache and Nginx.

A web server, like a home computer, can be set up in many ways. Some are more powerful, with extra storage, processing power, and memory. We’ve seen firsthand how the right configuration can make a massive difference in speed and performance.

In our experience, renting web servers from companies specializing in website hosting works best. They offer different server types and pricing to suit various needs.

We also recommend choosing a server that allows easy upgrades as your website grows. You can add more storage, processing power, or memory to ensure your site runs smoothly.

What Makes Up the Size of a Web Server?

From our experience, the size of a web server depends on the capacity of the components installed on it. When we’ve worked with websites of different sizes, we’ve seen firsthand how choosing the right server components makes all the difference in performance.

Higher capacity components increase the web server’s size, making it faster and more powerful. We’ve optimized many websites with these components, and the performance improvements are clear.

Conversely, lower capacity components reduce the server size, which can make it less efficient under heavy traffic—we’ve seen this happen when websites outgrow their initial server setup.

Here are the most important components of a web server that determine its size and performance:

Processing Power (CPU)

Each web server uses a computer processor or CPU (central processing unit). This is your server’s brain, responsible for quickly assembling all the parts of a website. From our experience, a powerful CPU is essential for delivering fast load times and keeping users happy.

The CPU grabs the text, pictures, and videos and combines them to serve the user’s computer or phone. A more powerful processor can handle this job much faster, which leads to smoother website performance, something we pay close attention to when choosing server setups.

More powerful processors with multiple cores (dual-core, quad-core, and higher) further boost performance. Each core acts like an additional brain, allowing the server to handle more tasks simultaneously, which is especially helpful for websites with lots of traffic or resource-heavy features.

Memory (RAM)

From our own setups, we know memory or RAM (random access memory) is a crucial factor. It acts as a super-fast storage area where the server holds files temporarily for quick access. This is especially important for high-traffic sites that need fast responses.

RAM allows the server to collect all the files needed to display a webpage quickly. More memory means more space for temporary storage, allowing your site to load faster and work more efficiently, which we’ve seen work wonders on resource-heavy websites.

Storage (Disk Space)

Storage, or disk space, is the server’s physical storage for your website’s files. A larger storage capacity allows you to store more data on your website. We’ve managed many websites where increased storage helped store high-quality images, videos, and other data without affecting performance.

Think of storage as a digital closet where all your website’s files live. If the closet is well-organized, it’s easier to find and serve files quickly to visitors. More space ensures that larger websites, like the ones we’ve worked on, can store and access all their data efficiently.

Just like a well-organized closet improves efficiency, having plenty of well-structured storage for your WordPress website can significantly improve its performance.

Internet Speeds & Bandwidth

A web server needs a solid internet connection to communicate with users. Higher bandwidth can make a huge difference in website speed and responsiveness, especially for websites with global audiences.

If your server has high bandwidth, it can send data to users much faster. Bandwidth is like a straw—the wider the straw, the more data you can send. We’ve increased bandwidth for several sites to handle larger audiences and improve overall performance.

Increasing the internet speed and bandwidth of your server allows your website to respond faster to user requests and send data more efficiently. We’ve applied this strategy successfully to speed up many WordPress websites.

How to Calculate the Web Server Size You Need

Now that we know what makes up the web server, you will need to calculate the size that fits your needs.

This is important because web hosting costs money, and bigger web servers with many resources are expensive.

Here is our formula to calculate your WordPress website’s ideal web server size.

1. Average Bandwidth and the Amount of Data Your Website Serves

Each time a user makes a request, your web server sends them data. More data means using more server resources.

You can calculate how much data your WordPress uses by first seeing your average page size.

This is easy to do by running your 10 most popular pages through website speed checker tools like GTMetrix.

You then need to multiply the average page size by your website’s monthly page views.

Google Analytics collects data about the traffic to your website, including page views, average session duration, and more. While you can go directly to Google Analytics to see your page views, using a WordPress Google Analytics plugin is much easier.

MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics plugin for calculating the total number of page views. It helps you track your website traffic and view all the data from your WordPress dashboard.

Simply go to Insights » Reports in your WordPress dashboard.

Then, you can use our sample formula to calculate the average amount of data your website consumes:

Average page size x total monthly pageviews = average bandwidth consumed

For example, it might be:

200KB x 60,000 views = 12,000,000 KB bandwidth used

You can then convert it into MB or GB for convenience:

12,000,000 KB / 1,000 = 12000 MB
12,000 MB / 1,000 = 12 GB bandwidth consumed per month

2. How Much Storage You Will Need

You will also need to know how much storage space your website requires. You can calculate this by tracking the storage your website is currently using.

The easiest way to find this is by using the Site Health tool. Just go to the Tools » Site Health page in your WordPress admin dashboard and switch to the ‘Info’ tab.

From here, you can calculate the disk space used by your WordPress files and database.

As you can see in the screenshot above, our test site’s Total installation size is 1.30 GB. The ‘Total installation size’ shows how much storage space your website currently needs.

However, as your website grows, you also need to estimate how much data it will upload each month.

The easiest way to calculate this is to monitor the total installation size each month and notice the difference from the previous month.

For instance, if your total installation size was 1.0 GB last month and 1.4 GB this month, then you uploaded 0.4 GB or 400 MB of data.

We recommend choosing a web server with at least three times the storage your website currently uses.

Now that you have calculated the web server size you need, you can find web hosting services that meet your requirements.

Shared Hosting Web Server Sizes

On shared hosting plans, your website shares its server resources with other sites. This allows the hosting company to offer cheap hosting plans for smaller websites and blogs.

Suitable For: Small websites and blogs under 10,000 page views per month.

Web server size: Most good shared hosting companies spend a lot of money to ensure that their shared servers have fast processors, sufficient RAM, and plenty of storage.

The resources provided by a host vary a lot. If you cannot find this information on their website, then you can ask individual hosts before signing up.

Typically, you get a single-core CPU with 1 GB of RAM and 10 GB of disk storage for a starter shared plan.

However, the amount of web server resources available to your website will depend on the number of sites sharing those resources.

Our Recommendation

We recommend Bluehost as the best WordPress hosting company offering shared hosting plans.

Their web servers use state-of-the-art components, unlimited bandwidth, and highly optimized software to manage resources, ensuring 99.9% uptime for your site.

Depending on your plan, you will have access to 10 GB, 40 GB, or 100 GB of disk storage.

For more details, see our complete Bluehost review to learn more and see performance test scores with pros and cons.

Alternatives:

• Hostinger – A bit expensive but gives you a performance boost. See our Hostinger review for details, or take a look at our comparison between Hostinger and Bluehost.
• HostGator – Comparable to Bluehost in terms of pricing and features. See our HostGator review for more information.

Managed WordPress Hosting Web Server Sizes

Managed WordPress hosting is an upgrade from shared hosting services. It allows users to use a custom-built platform for WordPress websites.

Managed WordPress hosting companies offer automatic updates, additional security, and easy options to scale your website as it grows.

You can think of it as a concierge service for your WordPress website.

Suitable For: eCommerce websites, growing blogs, and small to medium-sized businesses. Starting from 25,000 page views.

Web Server Size: The web server size varies based on your plan. Managed WordPress hosting companies also have strict disk and bandwidth limits to ensure fair usage.

Typically, you can expect at least 10 GB storage, 50 GB bandwidth, single or dual-core CPU, and 1 GB RAM.

Our Recommendation:

We recommend SiteGround as the best managed WordPress hosting provider.

It uses the Google Cloud platform, which makes the SiteGround servers blazingly fast and highly reliable.

We love SiteGround’s hosting control panel, which makes it easy for beginners to install WordPress and manage their websites and hosting accounts. At the same time, it offers advanced tools to power users to do more.

We use SiteGround to host several websites, including WPBeginner (we’ll talk more about our experience with them later in this article). To learn more, read our in-depth SiteGround review for more details.

Alternative:

• Rocket.net – It is a lot more expensive than SiteGround but offers incredible performance. It is suitable for established businesses, eCommerce stores, and very high traffic websites. See our complete Rocket.net review for more details.

VPS Hosting Web Server Size

A VPS hosting plan allows you to create a virtual private server and use it as your site’s web server. It is an upgrade from managed and shared WordPress hosting plans.

The advantage of VPS hosting is that you can choose your web server size and scale it as your website grows.

This ensures you get the resources you need without upgrading to a dedicated server or enterprise hosting plan.

Suitable for: eCommerce stores, large, content-rich websites with a lot of multimedia files, such as hosted audio or video files. It is ideal for 30,000 to 100,000 page views, depending on the server configuration.

Web Server Size: Server configurations vary among companies and are priced accordingly. You can choose from different configurations or create your own from a hosting control panel.

Our Recommendation:

We recommend SiteGround VPS hosting plans. They offer generous web server sizes starting from 4-core processors with 8 GB memory and 40 GB storage space.

They have a powerful hosting infrastructure built on top of Google Cloud. Plus, you get all the features of managed WordPress hosting with access to additional developer tools.

Alternatives: Bluehost VPS

Dedicated or Enterprise Hosting Web Server Size

Dedicated or enterprise hosting is the ultimate upgrade, with custom-made web server sizes designed for the highest performance and massive amounts of traffic.

On a dedicated server, your website doesn’t share any of its web server resources. You can choose the processor speed and cores, RAM size, disk storage, and the bandwidth you need.

Enterprise hosting plans are the last tier of dedicated hosting plans. One of these plans gives you access to the hosting company’s engineering team. They will manage the hosting infrastructure according to your needs, and your dedicated support team will provide 24/7 phone support.

Suitable For: Big-name brands, mission-critical websites with massive traffic, and larger eCommerce stores. Ideal for 200,000 to millions of page views.

Web Server Size: Companies offer dedicated servers with different configurations. Typically, you can expect dual or quad-core CPUs with 4-8 GB RAM and 500 GB to 1TB disk storage. You can also configure your own dedicated server with different components.

Our Recommendation:

We recommend SiteGround’s dedicated hosting plans. Hosted on the Google Cloud platform, these plans offer up to 33 cores of processing power, 130 GB of memory, and 1TB of SSD storage.

WPBeginner website is hosted on SiteGround’s Enterprise Cloud platform. WPBeginner is a high-traffic website with visitors from all over the world.

We needed a platform that can handle traffic spikes, and offers the same performance regardless of users geographic location. See our case study to learn why we switched to SiteGorund and our experience with their service.

Alternatives: DreamHost dedicated servers

Frequently Asked Questions About Web Server Size

The following are some of the most commonly asked questions when choosing a web server size.

1. How much disk space does a web server need?

The amount of disk space a web server needs depends on how much data you will be uploading to your website. Typically, starter hosting plans start with 5-10 GB of disk storage, which is enough for a small business website or a starter blog.

2. What is the average size of a web hosting server?

Most websites are hosted on shared hosting web servers. The average size of a starter shared hosting web server is under 10 GB of disk storage, 1 GB of RAM, and a single or dual-core processor.

3. What does unlimited bandwidth mean?

Normally, shared hosting companies advertise unlimited bandwidth with their hosting plans. However, bandwidth costs money, and there are usually restrictions on how much bandwidth your website can use based on a fair usage policy. You can get further information by asking your hosting provider about their fair usage policy for bandwidth limitations.

We hope this article helped you learn how to choose the ideal size of a web server for your WordPress website. You may also want to see our WordPress performance guide to make sure your WordPress website is ready for peak traffic or our expert pick of the best monthly web hosting plans.

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