For several years, I was a lucky customer of Verizon with a grandfathered, unlimited data plan. Last year, in an attempt to shove us freeloader-types overboard, Verizon jacked up the price of unlimited plans by an insane amount. Rather than be extorted, I moved over to Google Fi. The point here, however, is not how much I like Google Fi. Rather, not many people have unlimited data plans. (A lot of carriers don’t like them, because of the few rotten apples that regularly abuse them.)
For most of us, even those on Google Fi, data costs–literally. Every time we download a website and all of the things on that website (images, text, video, what have you), it costs us money. If your site is weighed down by a lot of images with big file sizes, for example, it costs more to download than a site that has few or very small images. So, that large JPG of your event’s flyer? Yeah, we hate it.
There’s a handy site that can give you an estimate of how much it costs to download your site. What Does My Site Cost? is a nifty tool that allows you to get an estimate by site URL. And, you can compare costs by country. Here’s a screenshot of how much it costs to download the first page of CNN:
Some things to know:
- “Because these numbers are based on the least expensive plan, they are best case scenarios.” This comes directly from the site. That means it likely costs people more than the estimate shown here.
- There is a direct link to http://www.webpagetest.org/ from the test results page. The full test results show how your site scores across a range of performance measures.
What do you think? Will you use this tool…or are the results too scary?
