Guide
Bandwidth and disk space explained
Disk space is how much your website stores, and bandwidth is how much data it sends to visitors each month. A small business site uses far less of both than most people expect. A 40-page site with compressed photos might use under 1 GB of disk and a few gigabytes of bandwidth a month, well inside our Small plan's 5 GB and 100 GB.
The basics
Two different limits
Disk space is storage, like the size of a cupboard. It holds your website files, databases, emails and any backups kept on the account. It fills up when you add things and does not reset.
Bandwidth is traffic, like the number of deliveries out of the cupboard. It counts every byte sent to visitors, such as pages, images and downloads, and it resets each month.
A simple way to remember
Disk space is what you keep. Bandwidth is what you send. A small site can have lots of one and little of the other.
What uses what
Where your space and traffic go
| Thing | Uses disk space | Uses bandwidth |
|---|---|---|
| Website pages and code | A little | A little per visit |
| Images | Most of the space for many sites | Most of the traffic for many sites |
| Videos you host yourself | A lot | A great deal |
| Email mailboxes | Grows over time | Small |
| Databases | A little to moderate | Small |
| File downloads | Depends on file size | Each download counts |
Our plans
Disk space by plan
Our plans
Monthly bandwidth by plan
More examples
How much space different sites use
A simple brochure site of ten pages with a handful of images can use less than 100 MB. A WordPress site with a theme, plugins, 40 pages and 300 compressed photographs typically sits around a few hundred megabytes, as the images dominate.
A photographer's portfolio with a few thousand web-sized images might use several gigabytes. An online shop with thousands of products can reach 10 GB or more, because each product carries several images.
Email grows quietly. A busy mailbox with years of attachments can reach several gigabytes by itself, so it is worth tidying large messages or archiving them to your own computer.
Image sizes
Why images matter more than anything else
On most websites, images make up the majority of the data. A single photograph straight from a phone can be 4 MB or more, while the same picture resized to the width of your page and compressed can be 150 KB. That is a twenty-fold difference for a picture that looks the same on screen.
Multiply that by a gallery or a product catalogue and the difference is the gap between a site that fits comfortably on the smallest plan and one that needs a much larger one. It also decides how quickly pages appear on a phone.
Resize images to the largest size they will be displayed at, save them as JPEG or WebP for photographs, and use a plugin to compress them automatically when you upload. Do that, and disk space and bandwidth rarely become a problem.
- Resize before upload to the display width, often under 2000 pixels
- Use WebP or well-compressed JPEG for photographs
- Use SVG for logos and icons where possible
- Remove image sizes your theme never uses
Planning
Choosing a plan with growth in mind
Think about where the site will be in a year. If you plan to add a blog, a shop or a gallery, estimate how much that will add, and pick a plan that holds it with room to spare. Moving up a plan is easy, but it is simpler to start with the right size.
Habits
Keeping an eye on usage over time
Check your disk usage and bandwidth every few months, and before any big change such as a redesign. Usage creeps up slowly through old backups, forgotten test installs, unused themes and mail that is never deleted, and a quick tidy often frees a surprising amount of room.
Set a reminder in your calendar. Ten minutes twice a year is enough to catch a problem long before a limit is reached, and it keeps the account tidy, which also makes your site quicker to back up and to move.
Rule of thumb
A simple rule for sizing a plan
Add up your current files, double the figure for growth and add a margin for email. If the answer is well under your plan's disk space, you are comfortable.
Find the plan that fits your site
Compare disk space and bandwidth for all six plans.
Worked example
Estimating bandwidth for a small business site
Suppose your home page and typical inner pages weigh about 2 MB each when loaded, including images. If you get 100 visitors a day and each views three pages, that is about 300 page views a day.
300 page views at 2 MB is 600 MB a day, or about 18 GB a month. That is a fraction of the 100 GB on the Small plan. In practice, browsers cache repeat visitors' files, so real use is often lower.
To check your own numbers, use your analytics for page views and a speed test tool for page weight, then multiply. You will probably find you are using only a small part of your allowance.
Staying inside
How to use less of both
Easy savings
- Compress and resize images before uploading
- Host large videos on a video service and embed them
- Delete old backups and unused plugins or themes
- Clear out old mailbox messages
- Use caching so repeat visits cost less
Things that eat allowance
- Full-size camera photos
- Self-hosted video
- Large downloads, such as brochures and archives
- Years of mail with big attachments
- Bots scraping your site
Unlimited
What "unlimited" usually means
Many providers advertise "unlimited" disk or bandwidth. In practice there is nearly always a fair-use policy, because servers are finite. A plan that says unlimited can still limit file counts, processor use or what you can store.
That is why we state real figures for disk and bandwidth, and keep "unlimited" for things that are not a resource constraint, such as email accounts, subdomains and databases on every plan. Real numbers let you plan, and you can check them at any time.
Checking
How to see how much you are using
Open the control panel
Disk usage and bandwidth are shown on the home screen.
Look at the biggest folders
Find which folders hold the most data, often images or backups.
Check monthly bandwidth
Compare it with your plan allowance.
Decide
Tidy up, or move to a bigger plan if you are regularly close to the limit.
FAQ
Common questions
What happens if I reach my disk space limit?
You may be unable to upload files or receive email until you free space or upgrade. You can move to a bigger plan.
What happens if I use all my bandwidth?
Contact us to discuss options. Moving to a larger plan is the usual answer.
Do emails count towards disk space?
Yes. Mailbox contents count towards your plan's disk space.
How much space does WordPress use?
A fresh installation is small. Themes, plugins, images and a database grow it over time.
Is bandwidth the same as speed?
No. Bandwidth here means monthly data transferred. Speed is how quickly pages load.
Keep reading
Related pages
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