The Scoop on Diskspace and Bandwidth
April 29, 2009 by tracy
We get calls from customers wondering “Why am I receiving these emails about my bandwidth/diskspace being over it’s limit? I only have a small site!”
The reality is, if you don’t have one of our premium email packages, your disk space and bandwidth are accumulated not only from your website, but from your email and databases as well. The types of files that can easily contribute to bandwidth and disk space overages are below:
- Zip files
- Audio files
- Video files
- PDF files
You’ll always want to check the size of the files you upload to your site, send via email, or offer for download on your site. These can add up quickly:
- If the disk space limit for your site is 512 MB, one 50 MB file is 10% of your disk space. It doesn’t take many of those to exceed your diskspace.
- Don’t forget when you send items via email. A 2 MB document attachment sent to a single email address might not be a problem. However, if you send that same 2 MB file to 250 email addresses, that equates to over 500 MB in bandwidth usage for that single mailout. Sent out regularly, usage like this can add up.
- How about a media file (audio or video) on your website that is regularly downloaded by your site users? It may only be 50 MB, but 20 downloads adds up to 1000 MB of bandwidth usage. If your site becomes more popular, it may only take 320 downloads for you to reach your bandwidth limit.
- How many files do you have on your site? A large number of smaller files can also contribute to site overages — you’ll want to keep unused files to a minimum.
You can always check your site’s usage by logging into your control panel, clicking into the domain and then on the Report icon. There are several helpful areas within this page that can help you diagnose where all that bandwidth and diskspace is going. Still have questions? Call us — we’d be more than happy to walk you through the reports and explain what they mean.