You may have a photography business, sell real estate, be an artist who showcases your pottery, or a general contractor showcasing your builds and remodels. These are photography-heavy (or image-heavy) sites. With every image you lose storage space. And eight-dollar hosting (aka commodity hosting) just isn’t built for you. Let’s break it down.
How WordPress Handles Image Sizes (And Why It Creates So Many)
Many WordPress website owners don’t realize that when you upload an image or photograph to your Media Library that WordPress automatically creates more copies of that image. This is because of the mobile-first design philosophy for responsive websites.
“Since WordPress 4.4, native responsive images is supported by including srcset and sizes attributes to the image markup it generates. …When users upload images in WordPress, it automatically crops new images to smaller sizes.” ~ WordPress Developer Resources
The code of your website and the browser communicate and, based upon the user’s screen size, the browser will show them the best image size. This is not only a better experience for the user (no buffering) but it also is less taxing on the server response times.
“To help browsers select the best image from the source set list, WordPress also include a default sizes attribute that is equivalent to (max-width: {{image-width}}px) 100vw, {{image-width}}px.” ~ WordPress Developer Resources
But this also means that every image you upload to your WordPress Media Library now has three extra copies (just in different sizes). Meaning, WordPress doesn’t shrink or expand the image in the user’s browser with JavaScript or something. Your browser just chooses the best image size based upon the user’s screen (desktop, laptop, tablet, phone).
So if you upload a default featured image that is 1200 x 628 (best practices per OpenGraph Specs), WordPress will also create a Large size, Medium Size, and a Thumbnail. The size of these duplicated images depends upon the theme your site is using. For example, in the Twenty Twenty-Five default WordPress theme, the large size is 1024 x 1024, Medium is 300 x 300, and Thumbnail is 150 x 150. As you can see, these are all squares.
How Much Storage Does One Image Actually Use?
So, let’s create a featured image (1200 x 628) which is an OpenGraph specification so that your blog post, page, or custom post type shows up well on social media.
I created this 1200 x 628 image with a banner and some text in Canva and downloaded it as a PNG. That file is 1.3MB. No problem, right?
The 1024 x 1024 or Large WordPress image size is 1.1 MB.
300 x 300 pixels (Medium WordPress image size) is 137 KB.
And, finally, 150 x 150 pixels (Thumbnail WordPress image size) is 40 KB.
So, for that one featured image:
1.3 MB
1.1 MB
137 KB or .137 MB
40 KB or .040 MB
= 2.677 MB
Imagine you have 100 blog posts each with a featured image. If you were posting twice a week for a year, that’s not unreasonable. You would have 267.7MB worth of images – just for the featured image.
Of course, if you’re uploading headshots for sale on your photography site, various shots of a house listing for your real estate website, and/or images of your new pottery studio for your artist portfolio, you would have quite a few more images per blog post or page on your WordPress website.
Honestly, with all of the things you have to think about just to get that new page published or your latest real estate listing, do you want to worry about having enough space on your hosting plan? Probably not.
How Much Storage Does a WordPress Hosting Plan Actually Give You?
So, what is the average size storage that comes with a basic hosting plan, you may wonder? If you do a quick search on Google, you’ll get various AI overviews, Reddit threads, and articles from WordPress hosts.
“I happen to have a trivial one-page ‘coming soon’ WordPress [sic] site, and my host reports it's taking 87 MB.
Another WordPress site with dozens of pages, about 15 plugins, and a photo gallery with hundreds of photos takes 1.7 GB.
With my shared hosting provider, the OS's space needs are not included when they measure my space usage. (A VPS might count it, not sure.) I have a one-page non-Wordpress site that clocks in at under 500 KB.” TinyNiceWolf on Reddit
The consensus is that each WordPress hosting plan typically comes with 1GB of storage space. It should be noted that your theme and plugins will also take up some space – it’s not just for storage.
“On average, we’ve found that the typical client has approximately 1 GB of data for a single WordPress installation.” Kinsta
If you go to Tools > Site Health > Directory and Sizes you can see how much the WordPress install is taking up. In my TasteWP.com example site, my plugins and theme is using 84.91 MB. Now, I haven’t installed any plugins at this point. I’ve just been using it to upload my Cancun Featured Image.
If your website host has a good dashboard like mine (I have the Business Plan at Rocket.net), then you will see exactly how much of the space you’ve been allocated has been used – and for which sites, if you have more than one.
As you can see from this dashboard, my main site (bridgetwillard.com) has 2.97GB of the 40GB I’m allotted and is, by far, the largest site on my plan. In contrast with my site, however, is the need for image-heavy industries to again be able to upload more than 20 images at once (who has time to FTP like it’s 1999?) and also display much larger versions of their photography.
To top it off, video is a totally different ballgame that will explode your disk usage. Video is important for product sales, even if it’s AI-generated. People want to see how fabric moves on a body before they buy the dress. Which brings us to eCommerce and WooCommerce image requirements and best practices.
WooCommerce Makes the Storage Problem Even Worse
Once you’ve left what industry professionals call “a brochure site” into eCommerce, space is at a premium. And details matter – especially in online shops.
WooCommerce recommends images that are at least 800 x 800 pixels as well as a few different versions. Best practices when selling online is to also have detailed photography that sets your product apart from the competition.
“We recommend a minimum size of 800 x 800 pixels, width, and height. This renders well for the main/featured image, catalog image, and thumbnail image. Images that are larger are even better, especially if you’re selling items with great detail.” WooCommerce
So, in addition to the Original Size Upload (1200 x 628 was our example) for a blog post which creates: 1064x1064, 300x300, and 150x150, your WooCommerce store requires at least one image that is 800x800. According to OmniCalculator, an 800x800 image is just under 2MB. So imagine you’re using 6-7 images for each product. You need to budget 14MB for each product. This is in addition to the other media you have on your site. (And we haven’t even started talking about PDFs!)
“I'm a studio photographer with over a decade of experience in product photography. One key tip I've learned is to use all 9 available image slots for your listings. This keeps potential customers engaged in a seamless, visual shopping experience for as long as possible. I always recommend my clients to use at least 6 high-quality images to maximize their product's appeal. more is better.” Coinphoto on Reddit
Why You Need to Plan for Storage Before You Run Out
When you’re just starting out, 10GB seems like a lot, but you have to plan for the future. Every use case, every new staff member with a profile photo, every new blog post, every page will cost you in storage and – eventually – in fees.
“Most shared hosting plans include 10-20GB of storage. A WooCommerce store generating multiple thumbnail sizes per product image can blow through that faster than you’d expect. When you run out, hosts charge $10-50/month more for additional storage.” ClikIT
The Fix: Offload Your Media Without Changing Your Workflow
Infinite Uploads + Big File Uploads = Winning Combo For WordPress Site Owners
As a small business owner, you don’t have time to negotiate with WordPress’ native Media Library or varying host limits on storage. This is why Infinite Uploads with Big File Uploads is the best for photography-heavy and video-heavy business websites.
Big File Uploads removes arbitrary file size limits, minimizes frustration, and empowers you to add to your own company assets.
"There are few ways to increase the upload size in WordPress. This plugin is by far the easiest way to do for non-techies. Simply install and activate the plugin and set up your criteria." ~ Tisagh Chase
Even better, your photographs are still stored directly in the WordPress Media Library so you don’t have to remember another username or password or learn another piece of software. Better yet, with Infinite Uploads you won’t have to learn new settings, worry about running out space on your current website hosting plan, figure out how to set up a separate CDN, or buy another piece of software to optimize your website images.
The ultimate stack for uploading and managing large files in the WordPress Media Library for both beginners and experts is Big File Uploads with Infinite Uploads.
