Get a definitive answer about the bandwidth in web hosting with its importance and how it affects website performance & ways for optimization.

1. What Is Bandwidth In Web
Hosting? Things You Must
Know
‘Bandwidth’ is a self-explanatory term. The term
suggests the ultimate capacity to do work. Everyone and
everything has a maximum bandwidth, and if you try to
exceed the same, it results in an error. The same thing
applies to website bandwidth.
Upon purchasing a hosting platform, you get a pre-
determined bandwidth capacity. However, many web owners
tend to neglect this part, considering it unimportant.
Like other aspects, bandwidth capacity is equivalently
important as it ensures a quick turnaround time for the
website.
But That’s Not it!
Numerous factors are affected when you don’t have
sufficient bandwidth capacity, which we will discuss in
this blog post. This article will give you information
on what is bandwidth in web hosting and what happens
when you exhaust the capacity.
Without taking much of your time, let’s move forward to
understanding everything about bandwidth.
Definition Of Bandwidth

2. Bandwidth, also recognized as network capacity, It is a
technical term used for defining the overall capacity
of a network or connection to transmit data in a
specified time frame.
Generally, people assume internet connection and
bandwidth are the same. But let us put an end to this
confusion by stating they are not. Internet speed
refers to the maximum speed at which a set amount of
data can be shared. Whereas bandwidth is all about
transmitting maximum data in an alloted period of
time.
Bandwidth is usually measured in bits per second (bps).
However, times have changed, and so does the measuring
capacity. Today, bandwidth is measured in Mbps and
Gbps.
Definition Of Website
Bandwidth
Bandwidth and website bandwidth are almost the same.
However, the only difference is the website. Here, a
specified amount of bandwidth capacity is allotted to
your website upon purchasing web hosting services. This
capacity allows you to wire data from the server to the
users.
Generally, bandwidth capacity is allotted based on your
needs. However, some hosting providers even offer

3. unlimited bandwidth. Website bandwidth is also measured
and allotted in Gigabytes (GB).
Now that you are clear with bandwidth hosting
meaning. Let us explain to you why it is important for
websites.
Also Read: How Much Storage Do I Need For My Website?
Must-Know Factors
Why Is Bandwidth Important For
Websites?
The purpose of Bandwidth is the fastest data
transmission in a specified time frame. Let’s give you
an example to explain this situation. Supposedly, there
are 2 pipes for the water supply. The first pipe is
smaller than the second. Now, think about which pipe
will have the heavy water pressure and faster water
supply. Of course the second one because of its big
size.
The same goes for bandwidth capacity. If you have
sufficient bandwidth capacity, rapid data transmission
is guaranteed that too in a short period of time.
Fast speed is especially vital for websites. Higher
speed equates quick turnaround time of pages & website,

4. leading to better user experience and increased
traffic.
On April 09, 2010, Google announced by stating that
search algorithms would prioritize websites with quick
turnaround time. Meaning they will index and rank fast-
loading websites at the top.
Please note – speed is not the only factor considered
by Google. To rank at the top, following best SEO
practices is a must.
Also Read: Top Industries That Can Benefit From SEO In
2023
Factors To Consider For
Bandwidth Usage On Website
 Webpage Size
 Monthly Visitors on Website
 Daily Page Views on Website
 Average File Size on Website
 Email Usage
Bandwidth usage is not a random thing. You are supposed
to consider numerous factors when choosing the adequate
bandwidth capacity for your website needs.
1. Webpage Size

5. The initial factor you must undertake is the page size.
Bandwidth usage can widely depend on the content and
visuals of your website. The content and visuals here
mean the Javascript for creating HTML pages, images,
videos, quality of fonts, and advertisements displayed
on the site.
The inclusion of large content or visuals equates
to slower loading website. Hence, you must calculate
the page size by monitoring them. Upon identification
of the page size, you will get an idea of how much
bandwidth your site will consume.
Also Read: 17 Top Technical Requirements For Your
ECommerce Websites
2. Monthly Visitors on Website

6. The next aspect that must be focused on is the monthly
visitors. Now how would you determine the monthly
visitors on your site? Numerous web analytics tools are
available on the internet today. All you need to do is
add the URL of your website, and it will break down the
total traffic on your site.
Here are some SEO tools you can use to check the
monthly traffic on your site –
1. Google Analytics
2. Ahrefs
3. SemRush
Once you get the average number of visitors on your
site, calculating the bandwidth capacity becomes a
piece of cake. Let’s assume you have 100,000 monthly
visitors on your site, 500 GB of bandwidth capacity per
month would be enough to manage your traffic.

7. Please note – This is just a rough estimate. The
capacity will vary based on the factors we discuss in
these pointers.
3. Daily Page Views on Website
How many views do you get in a day? Herein, you have to
narrow down your analysis to ensure a sufficient
bandwidth capacity. Like the other two factors,
capacity will also be reliant on your daily page views.
You can calculate daily pages through web analytics.
1. Google Analytics
2. Ahrefs
3. Moz Pro
These tools will give you a comprehensive analysis of
your daily page views. Once you get the report of your
daily views, choosing a bandwidth capacity becomes a
breeze.

8. Also Read: 15 Best SEO Audit Tools For Your Website
(Free+Paid)
4. Average File Size on Website
Are there large files, brochures, documents, statistics
reports, etc., uploaded on your website for web users
to download? If so, estimating their size and the
number of downloads per day is a must to figure out the
average bandwidth capacity.
To identify the file size, you only need to add the
total file size and divide it by the number of files.
For example, 229 MB / 48 files = 4.77 MB per file.
5. Email Usage
The Email usage factor is inversely proportional to
your usage. Meaning the number of emails you send and
receive in a day will determine your usage needs.

9. However, that’s not it. Several factors are included in
this process. For instance, the size of the email,
attachments used, and number of recipients.
You need to calculate these factors. Once this is done,
comparing the results with the available bandwidth
capacity will help you identify whether or not the
emails will impact the bandwidth capacity. If that
happens, consider upgrading to a higher bandwidth
capacity.
If you send or receive too many emails in a day,
undertaking this point is necessary. Large emails can
impact the performance of your internet, especially the
ones with limited bandwidth.
These were the main factors that will help in
understanding the query you raised — How much bandwidth
do I need for my website.

10. Below we are also mentioning formulas that will give
you the ease of determining the bandwidth capacity for
your website.
Formula 1 – Monthly Visitors * Avg Page Views * Avg
Page Size = Your Bandwidth Requirement.
Formula 2 – Avg Page Views * Avg Page Size * Monthly
Visitors + Download Per Day * Avg File Size = Your
Bandwidth Requirement.
Previously we gave you insights on bandwidth and what
factors you must consider determining bandwidth usage.
The next question in line is the overuse of bandwidth.
Also Read: Why Are My Emails Going To Spam? 10 Ways To
Prevent It
What Happens If I Exceed My
Bandwidth?
1. Website Downtime
The most obvious drawback you will come across upon
exceeding the bandwidth is website downtime. For
readers who might not be familiar with the term
‘website downtime’, it means your website will be
inaccessible to your site visitors.

11. You can regard this website outage as a serious matter,
as it will affect your online presence and business.
You will not only lose visitors, but also it can impact
your ranking on the SERPs negatively. It will also
affect your sales, and you might lose valuable
clients.
Generally, this situation occurs when you receive too
much traffic, and your site doesn’t have enough
bandwidth to manage it. Other reasons include broken
code, plugin errors, update issues, errors from the
hosting provider side, expired domain, or unwanted
cyber-attacks.
You can increase your bandwidth limit by consulting
your hosting provider to fix this. Besides
this, optimizing your website is also a great option
which we will be discussing at the end of this blog.
Also Read: What Does Your Web Host Have To Do With Your
SEO?
2. Additional Fees
If this point has to be explained in one sentence, it
would be bandwidth exhaustion = excess usage charges or
overage fees. As previously mentioned, you get a

12. predefined bandwidth capacity from your hosting
provider.
Once you exceed the same, the hosting provider will
initially suspend your account and raise a ticket to
inform you about exceeding the bandwidth limit.
You can resolve this issue by bandwidth optimization.
If there is an improvement in the bandwidth performance,
hosting providers will make your website accessible to
internet users. However, if not, upgrading the plan
with greater bandwidth would be the next solution.
You can either upgrade your existing hosting server by
paying the additional fees or completely shift to a new
server with better bandwidth.
Let’s assume that your website is currently running on
shared hosting. Now your hosting provider might have
multiple server plans with higher bandwidth. So, you
can either upgrade your plan accordingly or shift to a
different web hosting plan, such as VPS hosting or
dedicated hosting.
Now that we have given you an overview of what happens
when you exceed your bandwidth. The next step is to
guide you through optimizing bandwidth usage.
Also Read: How To Migrate A Website From One Server To
Another

13. How To Optimize For Bandwidth
Usage On The Website
 Compression & Optimization of Images
 Use of Content Delivery Networks
 Enable Browser Cache
 Implement Lazy Loading
 Minify CSS and JavaScript
 Performance Tools Optimization
 Monitor the Bandwidth Capacity
1. Compression & Optimization of Images
Compared to text, visuals like videos, images,
advertisements, etc., take up much bandwidth. Hence,
compression of the size of visuals can be done through
WEBp format. This format reduces the loading time of
the images on the web.
2. Use of Content Delivery Networks
CDN (Content Delivery Networks) would be a great way to
distribute your website’s static content across
multiple servers
This will ensure that users can access files from a
server closer to their location, which directly creates
a positive impact on latency and bandwidth usage and
results in the reduction of such factors.
3. Enable Browser Cache

14. Every time a web page is refreshed or reloaded, the
browser tends to save the files in its history so that
you don’t have to search that page again. This saves a
lot of bandwidth.
However, if you frequently make multiple changes to
your website, the browser tends to re-download those
files, leading to increased bandwidth consumption.
Hence to save your bandwidth, we recommend you make
fewer changes to your website.
4. Implement Lazy Loading
Many websites completely load the moment you click on
their link. However, it can take up a lot of bandwidth.
Plus, loading everything at once is unnecessary, as
users may not be interacting with your entire website.
To avoid such unnecessary consumption of bandwidth, you
may directly load the page or elements only when they
interact with the same.
For instance – a video will be played only when a user
clicks on it. This is also known as ‘Lazy Loading’. It
can save your bandwidth and improve user experience.
5. Minify CSS and JavaScript
It would be really important to minify the CSS &
Javascript. If your website consists of such files,
Your developer needs to remove unnecessary characters

15. and spaces from those CSS and JavaScript files to
reduce their file size.
This will not only helps in reducing bandwidth usage
but also creates faster loading of the website.
6. Performance Tools Optimization
Performance testing tools like RUM (Real User
Monitoring) and Synthetic monitoring usually consume a
lot of data when running on your website leading to
bandwidth exertion. Although, this situation can be
solved by installing a file called /status.txt.
This file contains a word called ‘OK’. This string is
followed by the monitoring tools, and the process of
the tools becomes less data-intensive, which can save
your bandwidth to a great extent.
7. Monitor the Bandwidth Capacity
Bandwidth consumption can also be reduced to an extent
if you keep an eye on the same. Once you launch a
website, it will grow as new visitors interact with it.
You can monitor the growth to ensure the additional
interaction is not consuming your bandwidth too much.
Also Read: How Can You Make A Website Look More
Professional?

16. Conclusion
Hope this blog gave you an answer to what is meant by
bandwidth in web hosting.
Our last and best tip for you would be to make a wise
choice. If you are spending on something important as
bandwidth, it should be good enough to sustain your
needs. However, this is only possible when you make the
right choice. Go for a bandwidth capacity that gives
you perpetual growth.
Source - https://www.hostitsmart.com/blog/what-is-
bandwidth-in-web-hosting/