What Is Bandwidth In Web Hosting?
Web Hosting Bandwidth actually refers to the amount of data that can be transmitted by a website to its users in a particular span of time. Companies typically calculate and sell bandwidth in the form of Gigabytes but in some cases unlimited bandwidth is an exception.
There many ways we can understand how bandwidth actually works, we can compare bandwidth with the diameter of an electrical wire. The thicker the diameter, the more electric current will pass, in the same way, a website with a larger bandwidth means more data can be transmitted to its users.
Why is Bandwidth important?
Bandwidth is important because its amount determines the speed with which data can be transmitted by your website to the users when the web traffic is at its ‘peak’. It plays a very important role in increasing the amount of people who visit the website. It may also increase sales if you are promoting your product on your website.
With less bandwidth people will have to wait longer to get data from your website and as a result many people will be reluctant to visit your website, which will have a great impact on your website audience numbers.
How Much Bandwidth is Essential for a Website?
The amount of bandwidth, a website needs depends on different factors:
1. The size of the website i.e. the size and amount of web pages in your website.
2. The number of visitors that you get on your website i.e. the website audience.
3. The average amount of web pages each visitor visits or sees.
If you have created a new website, then it is inevitable that you will receive very less visitors on your site, so a small bandwidth will be perfect for your site.
Website with a large number of visitors everyday and with a lot of downloadable content such as images, videos and PDF files usually need a large amount of bandwidth.
There are many WordPress hosting providers you can work with:
1. Bluehost
2. SiteGround
3. Hostgator
The can know the amount of bandwidth easily by just logging in to your web host account and see the traffic reports in the control panel, then select a package from the above sites according to the bandwidth you need. If you still experience difficulty, then a managed WordPress hosting provider can help you to make the correct decision, for example:
1. WP Engine
2. Liquid web
3. Dream host
On a managed hosting provider, over usage of bandwidth does not close the website, instead it informs the user and then make changes in the user’s bandwidth plan thus, helping your website audience to have a great experience.
You can also simply work with an “unlimited bandwidth” plan, without any tension of over usage.
What is Unlimited Bandwidth?
‘Unlimited Bandwidth’ does not actually exist, it is named so because the provider is assured that the site will never consume up all the provided bandwidth under usual conditions. Some web providers ‘prevent’ the customers from deciding which bandwidth plan to choose, by just giving ‘unlimited bandwidth’ because they are confirmed that small sites will never go over the provided bandwidth.
To some inexperienced website owners, unlimited bandwidth sounds wonderful but the providers do not tell about the maximum amount of the provider’s CPU your website can utilize.
If the website transgresses the boundary usage set for it, then the provider might even close the website for a particular span of time and might call for the user to select a plan of an even high level than the previous one.
‘Unlimited bandwidth’ providers should be asked about CPU usage limits.
How Can Bandwidth of a Site be checked?
Checking the bandwidth of a website is very easy. Just go to your Word Press provider and login to your web host account. From there, go to the control panel and find a link or a section that gives you the activity of your website. Different web hosting providers have different ways of viewing these reports. In Bluehost control panel, go to the ‘advanced’ tab and click on the bandwidth button in the metrics section,
You will see a report in this way:
The bandwidth breakdown option, once clicked, shows the bandwidth of your site in different time periods i.e. pats 24 hours, past month and last year.
How to Reduce Bandwidth?
Many people do not want to upgrade their bandwidth plan or pay more money, if they are using more bandwidth. So a simple option for them is to reduce their bandwidth. If your site has a lot of images and videos that increase your bandwidth, then you can simply reduce bandwidth by removing some images or videos or by reducing image and video size by compressing them and using JPEG, MP4 and GIF formats.
One more way to reduce bandwidth is to remove unwanted text or comments from your website. Removing unnecessary tags and spaces also helps you to reduce bandwidth. If your website has some background music, then removing it is also essential. You should also remove cached data from your website. One more way is turning on HTTP compression, this helps reduce file size by 66%. You can also compress your JavaScript, CSS and HTML. The reduction in the text and image size will reduce bandwidth usage to a great extent.
What will happen if Bandwidth is over used?
Some people do not reduce bandwidth usage and keep on consuming extra bandwidth. If this happens, then the host may temporarily close the website or they will charge an over usage fees from the website owner. Some managed WordPress hosting providers simply promote the users plan to a more expensive one and ask him/her to pay more to get more bandwidth. They also constantly send messages asking the user to upgrade his/her plan.
Conclusion
If you are creating your own website then consult different hosting providers and choose wisely according to your website audience. In case of unlimited bandwidth, always ask the providers about CPU storage policies, to prevent suffering in the end.
