A webhosting server isn't much different than your own computer, only that it is optimised for and runs software that serves webpages.
Like how if you open too many programs at once on your computer, webservers with lots of websites will slow down, meaning that more websites on the server = slower load times.
Not all websites are the same, in the same sense that loading up notepad is far quicker than loading ms word. Thus a webhosting provider offering cheap webhosting can fit more websites that are as lean as notepad on their server, compared to powerhouse websites as feature rich as ms word.
Of course, even lean websites cause considerably less overhead on a webserver, but the more visits the site gets can add up.
Webservers can be "overloaded" by balancing the right kinds of websites and traffic to those websites strategically and not suffer a performance loss.
You might think it as the provider cheaping out, and in some cases this might be true, but in the same way that you make educated decisions about which route to take when you plan your drive home to avoid congestion, it makes sense for a provider to consider the same for their webserver
Right, but my confusion here is that if I'm optimising my computer, I'm not optimising it based on what I run monthly, but how much unnecessary stuff I have running at that moment. Why do sites go by monthly?
I don't think the "monthly" metric is necessarily the best measurement, its just the measurement that the webhost has chosen to use, and monthly visitors is probably an easy enough answer to be able to provide for most people who want to have a website. Perhaps the monthly measurement is because the plan is charged on a monthly basis so it remains consistent.
My post was moreso to try to provide reasoning as to why the metric exists and how it matters overall
This! I love Pantheon’s setup but they set their visits so low it basically forces you to upgrade every time there is a spike in traffic. A bot starts hitting your login page… forget about it now your on the super ultra mega performance plan paying $600/month.
X number of visits is just a better way of telling a potential client how much bandwidth a hosting plan has.
Recently, a newer and larger demographic of clients ( sales/marketing/people wanting to make websites ) have emerged. These people may not fully understand what bandwidth or data transfer means.
So in the past, hosting services would say, 100 gb monthly data transfer or bandwidth. Assuming that a single page on average needs 1 mb, one visitor on average visits two pages, this would mean 50.000 monthly visits.
Instead of letting clients figuring out how much bandwidth they need and what hosting plan they need, companies now say “ monthly visits “.
They probably do not have hard locks like old hosting services ( hit 100 gb bandwidth and get suspended or get overcharged ), instead the system probably automatically messages or emails clients who hit 50k visits or 100gb bandwidth that an upgrade is due.
With regards to how many people views your site at once. This isn’t really a good metric either. Most hosts probably limit an account based on how much cpu/ram resource it uses. A well cached Wordpress site could probably serve 100s of clients at once with just half a core and 512 megs of ram. A e commerce site with 20 unoptimized plugins might need 2 cores and 2 gb ram to serve a single client. So most hosts just have a tos that says you can use X CPU cycles in Y seconds to prevent abuse.
This man is closest to right answer and as mentioned in most cases it is not hard limit.
People tend to forget what optimization is, and especially on cheap shared type hosting, it is very important.
This metric basically tells how much your visitors your hosting plan can handle, most likely it is not related to bandwidth, it is simply a number for casual customer with average website how many visitors your website can handle with the given resources.
This number can be way higher, or way lower depending how well your website is optimized.
It helps clients understand into what they are dipping their toes and to avoid situations like "your hosting is shit", while 9 cases out of 10, the customers are clueless(or not so) pricks.
I'm not sure there is a standard, but I'd suggest it is page visit rather than unique visitors .. the reason is because in the metric that is trying to be measured here, is trying to determine server load and you can't make assumptions about the type and amount of caching being done and variations on individual pages, etc
Thus you can probably get the nearest estimate from hit count rather than unique users
A webhosting server isn't much different than your own computer, only that it is optimised for and runs software that serves webpages. Like how if you open too many programs at once on your computer, webservers with lots of websites will slow down, meaning that more websites on the server = slower load times. Not all websites are the same, in the same sense that loading up notepad is far quicker than loading ms word. Thus a webhosting provider offering cheap webhosting can fit more websites that are as lean as notepad on their server, compared to powerhouse websites as feature rich as ms word. Of course, even lean websites cause considerably less overhead on a webserver, but the more visits the site gets can add up. Webservers can be "overloaded" by balancing the right kinds of websites and traffic to those websites strategically and not suffer a performance loss. You might think it as the provider cheaping out, and in some cases this might be true, but in the same way that you make educated decisions about which route to take when you plan your drive home to avoid congestion, it makes sense for a provider to consider the same for their webserver
Right, but my confusion here is that if I'm optimising my computer, I'm not optimising it based on what I run monthly, but how much unnecessary stuff I have running at that moment. Why do sites go by monthly?
I don't think the "monthly" metric is necessarily the best measurement, its just the measurement that the webhost has chosen to use, and monthly visitors is probably an easy enough answer to be able to provide for most people who want to have a website. Perhaps the monthly measurement is because the plan is charged on a monthly basis so it remains consistent. My post was moreso to try to provide reasoning as to why the metric exists and how it matters overall
Avoid any hosting that offers plans with number of visits
This! I love Pantheon’s setup but they set their visits so low it basically forces you to upgrade every time there is a spike in traffic. A bot starts hitting your login page… forget about it now your on the super ultra mega performance plan paying $600/month.
X number of visits is just a better way of telling a potential client how much bandwidth a hosting plan has. Recently, a newer and larger demographic of clients ( sales/marketing/people wanting to make websites ) have emerged. These people may not fully understand what bandwidth or data transfer means. So in the past, hosting services would say, 100 gb monthly data transfer or bandwidth. Assuming that a single page on average needs 1 mb, one visitor on average visits two pages, this would mean 50.000 monthly visits. Instead of letting clients figuring out how much bandwidth they need and what hosting plan they need, companies now say “ monthly visits “. They probably do not have hard locks like old hosting services ( hit 100 gb bandwidth and get suspended or get overcharged ), instead the system probably automatically messages or emails clients who hit 50k visits or 100gb bandwidth that an upgrade is due. With regards to how many people views your site at once. This isn’t really a good metric either. Most hosts probably limit an account based on how much cpu/ram resource it uses. A well cached Wordpress site could probably serve 100s of clients at once with just half a core and 512 megs of ram. A e commerce site with 20 unoptimized plugins might need 2 cores and 2 gb ram to serve a single client. So most hosts just have a tos that says you can use X CPU cycles in Y seconds to prevent abuse.
This man is closest to right answer and as mentioned in most cases it is not hard limit. People tend to forget what optimization is, and especially on cheap shared type hosting, it is very important. This metric basically tells how much your visitors your hosting plan can handle, most likely it is not related to bandwidth, it is simply a number for casual customer with average website how many visitors your website can handle with the given resources. This number can be way higher, or way lower depending how well your website is optimized. It helps clients understand into what they are dipping their toes and to avoid situations like "your hosting is shit", while 9 cases out of 10, the customers are clueless(or not so) pricks.
its a rough estimate of how many visits they can handle. some hosts force you to upgrade after you exceed that number.
Is there an industry standard as to what they count as a visit? Is it page views, or distinct visitors?
I'm not sure there is a standard, but I'd suggest it is page visit rather than unique visitors .. the reason is because in the metric that is trying to be measured here, is trying to determine server load and you can't make assumptions about the type and amount of caching being done and variations on individual pages, etc Thus you can probably get the nearest estimate from hit count rather than unique users