Essentially, bandwidth is a term used to describe the amount of data and traffic that transferred between users and your website via the internet. Unfortunately, the term ‘bandwidth’ is often misconstrued with the term ‘data transfer’ but the two are not synonymous.
Data transfer is the complete amount of data to be transferred within a specific time. Which is usually averaged in months. Bandwidth is the complete measure of data that can be moved over within a particular time. And that is generally averaged in seconds.
Data transfer indicates how much data can be moved in a given month. Whereas, the bandwidth number tells you how quickly the data can be shared.
A web hosting provider that can offer a good amount of bandwidth can serve as a good option for an online business because the greater the bandwidth, the greater the connectivity, speed, and better systems.
Why is bandwidth crucial?
During high website traffic situations, the accessible bandwidth determines how swiftly your website can deliver content to end users or visitors. This is a critical component of expanding your clientele and enhancing your sales.
Higher bandwidth enables online businesses to have more dynamic features; and content on their sites, making them more appealing to visitors.
Unlimited Web Hosting Bandwidth
Many hosting companies offer low-cost hosting plans with unmetered bandwidth. This means that the buyer can run as much as data the site needs without any restrictions. For the hosting provider, it means a method of providing the client with a fixed bandwidth that usually works.
It is not possible for hosting firms to provide a diverse range of businesses unrestricted access to bandwidth, it ends up being too costly. However, most businesses default to normal bandwidth usage which hosting companies term as unlimited when creating hosting plans and packages.
So while unlimited hosting providers serve their majority clientele base, there is a bandwidth extension cap.
By weighing your website’s actual requirement to the extent of bandwidth that is needed. You can estimate the hosting quality level you require and whether a specific hosting company meets the requirement.
Check your bandwidth
As a website owner, you can quickly examine your bandwidth by accessing your WordPress dashboard.
So what you need to do is go to the control panel, look for the website’s resource activity section (this may look a bit different for each host, some may provide a direct link or icon to it) and once you click on it, it will display trends broken down by period to show how much bandwidth your site has used in the last 24 hours, week, month, and year.
As a result, just as there is no such thing as unlimited server storage space or unlimited bandwidth. Several shared hosting companies frequently provide unlimited bandwidth, domains, or disc space. Unfortunately, this is false because all web hosting providers impose bandwidth limits on their packages.
Web hosts advertise unlimited bandwidth because they know that websites on a shared server will never use the entire available bandwidth.
Rather than spreading awareness about server bandwidth and determining bandwidth requirements for small businesses or non-technical individuals, hosting companies prefer to say unlimited bandwidth because most small websites will never exceed the limit.
What they don’t say is that the amount of server Central Processing Unit (CPU) your website can use limited. If your website crosses the limit then it can be rendered inaccessible for a temporary period during peak traffic and the provider may also request you to upgrade to a higher plan.
In addition, when looking for a web host, look for those that provide unlimited bandwidth. Furthermore, inquire about their CPU usage policies and what they will do if traffic peaks.
How much bandwidth do you need?
It is irrelevant to pay for more bandwidth than you require, however, insufficient bandwidth can bring the website load down.
So, the bandwidth needed depends on size, space, and the number of web pages. The number of users visiting your website. And the number of pages each user visits.
If your site established recently or if it doesn’t have a lot of visitors, then you will not require a lot of bandwidth. In such a situation, a basic shared hosting plan might just do the trick.
However, if your site has a lot of traffic, or has a lot of content on the website like images, videos, graphics, downloadable content, audio, etc. your site will need more bandwidth.
always start with a small or basic plan, if the bandwidth exceeds the limit that is required, the web hosting provider will notify you.
What will happen if you exceed the bandwidth limit?
If the bandwidth limit is exceeded in a given month then usually the web host disables the site temporarily, charges additional fees, or automatically upgrades you to a higher plan.
How can you reduce the bandwidth?
If you are not yet ready to jump to a higher hosting plan, then you can consider lowering your website’s bandwidth. You can compress images and videos and reduce the size of large downloads or content on your website.
You will also have to consider allowing JavaScript, CSS, and HTTP compression. So, you can store your fixed content on the CDN (Content Delivery Network) close to your visitors, therefore lowering the server load.
While at the same time, if you have exceeded the bandwidth limit of your current hosting plan, you can think of upgrading to a Windows and Linux VPS hosting, cloud hosting, or dedicated hosting plan.
The Final Word
When it comes to bandwidth, the higher the better. But when setting up a website, you may not require a hosting package with a large bandwidth cap. When the website traffic increases, it is better to upgrade your plan.
Furthermore, you should opt for a reputable hosting provider, the bandwidth you receive should boost and enhance the overall performance of the website.
And it’s always a good idea to monitor the website bandwidth usage regularly and to use caching to lower page load time and resource usage for a user-friendly experience for your visitors.
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