What Is Bandwidth in Web Hosting?
Bandwidth (also called data transfer) refers to the amount of data transferred between your hosting account and your visitors over a given period, usually measured monthly. Every time someone visits your website, downloads a file, or sends an email, bandwidth is consumed.
How Bandwidth Is Used
- Web page views: Each page load transfers HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images, and other assets to the visitor's browser.
- File downloads: If your site offers downloadable files (PDFs, software, media), each download uses bandwidth.
- Email: Sending and receiving emails through your hosting account consumes bandwidth, especially with attachments.
- API calls: If your website communicates with external services, those data exchanges count towards your bandwidth.
Checking Your Bandwidth Usage
- Log in to DirectAdmin from your SillyHost client area.
- On the dashboard, locate the Bandwidth section which shows your monthly usage and limit.
- For detailed logs, navigate to Site Summary / Statistics to see bandwidth broken down by day.
What Happens If You Exceed Your Limit
If you reach your monthly bandwidth allocation:
- Your website may become temporarily unavailable until the next billing cycle.
- You will receive a notification from SillyHost.
- You can request a temporary bandwidth increase or upgrade your plan.
Reducing Bandwidth Usage
- Enable browser caching so returning visitors do not re-download static files.
- Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network) like Cloudflare to offload traffic from your server.
- Compress images using tools like TinyPNG or ShortPixel.
- Enable Gzip compression on your server to reduce the size of transferred data.
- Optimise your website code by minifying CSS and JavaScript files.