How Much Disk Space Does Your WordPress Hosting Plan Need?

Identifying your required disk space can be challenging when searching for the Best WordPress hosting plan. Often, users severely overestimate their needs, impacting their decision-making.

This blog will cover all methods for estimating your actual disk space requirements, discovering your current usage, and providing real-world examples to help you choose the most suitable web hosting plan.

Why is disk space essential for your WordPress site?

Disk space is the backbone of your WordPress site. Sufficient disk space is essential for storing files, media, and data on your WordPress site, and it’s crucial for seamless functionality and growth.

1. Content Storage

Essential Files: Every WordPress site needs space to store crucial files like core files, themes, plugins, and configuration settings. This base requirement is relatively small, but it increases as you:

• Add themes and plugins:

  Each additional theme and plugin consumes additional space, especially if they have complex features or functionalities.

• Upload Media:

  This is where disk space becomes crucial. Uploading images, videos, audio files, or documents to your WordPress site consumes significant storage space.

  Extensive media libraries, especially with high-resolution images or uncompressed videos, can quickly fill up your allocated space.

• Backup:

  Keeping regular backups of your website is crucial for disaster recovery and security.

2. Website Performance

When your disk space reaches its limit, it can negatively impact your website’s performance.

• Database queries:

  Database queries may take longer to execute due to system strain caused by limited space.

• File access:

  Slow-loading images and scripts negatively impact user experience.

3. Functionality and Growth

Insufficient disk space can restrict your website’s growth and functionality. You might face:

• Inability to install new themes or plugins:

  If sufficient storage space exists, installing new functionality through themes or plugins becomes possible.

• Difficulties with media uploads:

  Uploading new media files becomes restricted when content creation and updates hinder the entire disk space.

4. Security Risks

• Full Disk, Higher Vulnerability:

  An entire disk can become a security risk. Some security updates or patches might require additional space, and a whole disk prevents them from applying, potentially exposing your website to vulnerabilities.

  Disk space is a crucial factor for a smooth-running and well-functioning WordPress website. It impacts storage for your content, website performance, future growth opportunities, and even security.

How Much Disk Space Does AccuWeb Offer?

Disk space refers to the storage capacity allocated by a web host for a website and all its associated files on a server.

Let’s compare the total space to the number of sites provided in AccuWeb’s Managed WordPress Hosting plans. All our plans have been assigned resources and limitations based on the average disk space usage observed from our diverse client base, which includes small and large entities.

Our WordPress Hosting Plan

Scenarios

Let’s examine a few examples from our clients. The websites mentioned below, including businesses, blogs, and e-commerce sites, are currently in production.

• Scenario 1

  A client manages 45 WordPress sites and has used 69 GB out of 100 GB of allocated disk space.

  Resource Usage

• Scenario 2

  A client managing 17 WordPress sites has used 47 GB of their allocated 75 GB disk space.

  Resource usage

• Scenario 3

  A client managing two WordPress sites has used 37 GB of their allocated 50 GB disk space.

  Resource usage

  Assessing your needs and choosing a plan with sufficient resources is crucial to avoid overspending. This presentation will help you decide on and manage your hosting budget.

Accuweb’s Disk Space Add-ons

How Much Disk Space Are You Using?

Here are some quick ways to check how much disk space you use.

• Check Disk Usage and Database Size in cPanel

  If your web hosting provider utilizes cPanel, you can view a summary of your overall disk usage and MySQL database directly from the sidebar.

  You can also check the usage of all files inside the Files > Disk Usage section.

  Scroll down the page and choose Disk Usage.

  To check your MySQL database’s size, click “MySQL Databases” within the Databases section.

  Under the “Current Databases” section, you will find the total size of the database displayed.

• Check Disk and Database Usage with Site Health Tool

  Navigate to “Tools > Site Health > Info” in your WordPress dashboard. Under the “Directories and Sizes” tab, you’ll discover the following information about your site:

  • WordPress directory size
  • Uploads directory size
  • Themes directory size
  • Plugins directory size
  • Database size
  • Total installation size

  From here, you can check the usage.

• Check Database Size with phpMyAdmin

  You can check it from the Databases > phpMyAdmin section.

  You can effortlessly remove these unused tables by selecting them and choosing “Drop” from the drop-down menu.

How Much Disk Space Does Your Important Plugin Occupy?

• Yoast SEO

  Yoast SEO, a WordPress plugin, enhances your site’s search engine performance through its diverse features. It handles the technical aspects of SEO, allowing you to focus on refining your posts and pages using SEO and readability analyses.

  Size: 13.7 MB

• Smush

  Smush is an image optimization tool that uses lossless compression to save disk storage and boost website performance. By extracting unnecessary data from image files, Smush reduces space usage, resizes large images, and enhances speed while maintaining image quality.

  Size: 5 MB

  Pro Version: 32 MB

• Jetpack

  Jetpack is a WordPress plugin that provides WordPress sites with security, performance, and growth tools. It enhances security by protecting logins, preventing brute-force attacks, and optimizing page load times for quicker performance.

  Size: 21.4 MB

How to Save Disk Space?

Here are some instant tips to save disk space and ensure your hosting plan has sufficient space for growth.

• Use optimized images

  As of March 2018, images occupy an average of 51% of a webpage’s total weight, according to the HTTP Archive.

  You can use various tools to decrease the image size without compromising quality. Additionally, altering the file format (PNG, JPEG, GIF) and dimensions can lead to an 80% reduction in image size.

  It will enhance website loading speed, accelerate backups, and boost SEO rankings.

• Clear cache and old backup files

  Cache plugins are crucial in speeding up your WordPress website and enhancing the user experience.

  However, if not monitored, these plugins can generate several cache files, which can be used with inodes in WordPress. To reduce the usage of inodes and to ensure optimum performance, it is recommended that the WordPress cache be cleared.

  Before choosing a hosting plan for your WordPress website, review all your previous backups and store them elsewhere, such as on your local machine, if you want to keep them. It can increase the website’s size.

• Delete inactive plugins and themes

  Having inactive WordPress themes and plugins means they use inodes and occupy disk space. Removing these unused plugins and themes is essential to free up disk space and reduce inode usage.

  To remove plugins,

  Navigate to Plugins > Installed Plugins in your WordPress admin panel. Then, click the ‘Delete’ button for any plugin that is not in use.

  For Themes,

  First, go to Appearance > Themes in your WordPress dashboard.

  Select the theme you want to delete.

  A new popup window will emerge, displaying the details of your WordPress theme. Proceed to click the ‘Delete’ button at the bottom right corner.

• Delete Draft Blog Pages and Posts

  Navigate to Pages > All Pages in your WordPress dashboard.

  After that, click the ‘Trash’ button under any draft blog page.

  You can apply the same process for draft posts on your website.

• Clean your WordPress media library

  Clearing your WordPress media library is an effective method to enhance disk space and reduce inodes in WordPress.

  Removing unused media files, redundant copies of the same image, or pictures in incorrect sizes will help free up space.

  Typically, visit Media > Library in the WordPress dashboard, select an image you want to remove, and click the ‘Delete permanently’ option.

Conclusion

We hope this blog clarifies any concerns you may have when choosing the appropriate WordPress hosting plan for your business. Often, you need less disk space than you assume. Evaluate your current space usage using the methods outlined above, optimize your site, and you can effortlessly cut down on hosting expenses.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How much disk space does WordPress need?

WordPress requires very little disk space, around 1GB for a basic installation. However, this doesn’t include themes, plugins, media like images and videos, and content like blog posts and pages.

2. When should I consider upgrading my hosting plan?

If you’re approaching your disk space limit or experiencing performance issues due to storage constraints, consider upgrading your plan.

3. Are there specific suggestions for the amount of disk space needed based on the type of website?

Small blogs or personal websites necessitate a few gigabytes, whereas large e-commerce sites with extensive media content may require several hundred gigabytes. It depends on the site.

4. How frequently should I review and evaluate the disk space usage of my website?

It is advisable to regularly check your disk space usage, particularly during content updates or when implementing new features, to avoid reaching storage limits.

5. Is there a method to optimize disk space utilization on WordPress?

Certainly, explore options such as optimizing images, removing unused plugins and themes, and regularly deleting unnecessary files.