Do I need to archive my data?

Generally speaking, archiving your data would be unnecessary if your server is proportional to the website traffic you experience.

An Example with Cookiedatabase.org

On cookiedatabase.org we have an average of 200k visitors each month. This means for 2023 until september 1st was close to 1.6 million pageviews.

The database tables from Burst in 2023 currently, for 1.6 million pageviews account for 423MB. For this purpose we use a Professional server set-up with 100GB SSD and proportional specifications, and have no data storage issues with Burst Statistics, nor do we experience slowed down queries in the back-end.

Comparing to GoDaddy

On GoDaddy you can get a small hosting package for € 167,88 a year, with 25GB data storage.

Compared with cookiedatabase.org specification you would expect the same relative data usage with 400.000 pageviews for 8 months, or 600.000 per year.

So why would I archive, or even delete data?

It’s impossible to optimize for all hosting environments, especially when you consider the amount of configuration a WordPress website can have due to plugins, themes, custom coding and versions. This Burst is optimized for general use, but your website might just be the exception. In that case, you can choose to archive data older than 12 months to minimize database queries and storage.