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Website Bandwidth: Everything You Need to Know

Website Bandwidth: Everything You Need to Know

To ensure the servers(VPS, Shared, Dedicated, etc.) used to host website content are available to internet users and site visitors, bandwidth is required.

Nowadays, choosing the right and reliable web hosting plan takes a lot of work. But it’s the most crucial decision that you have to make. Although you have plenty of options, you should choose one that fulfills all your requirements. And for newcomers for whom the concepts and terminology girdled around web hosting are hard to comprehend this article is a must-read. Bandwidth is one of the essential measures that play a vital role in hosting. Bandwidth defines the range of frequencies for transferring signals of your site within a given band. 

If you want to know more about how and why bandwidth is essential for your website, you must keep reading this guide until the end. Surely, you will get to know the reasons. But before that, let me introduce its basic fundamentals. Let’s get started!

What is Website Bandwidth?

Website Bandwidth is the measure of a site’s data and information traversed from a server to a user in a specified time. Every available site over the web is accessible because of web hosting. When the servers(VPS, Shared, Dedicated, etc.) used to host websites ensure the content available to the internet users and site visitors, they need bandwidth. The more site visitors come across your site, your site will consume the more bandwidth. This is just to load the simple web pages and deliver you the fastest speed. However, it depends on you. If you upload more content or build your website fully dynamic, including Video and Audio, you exclusively require more bandwidth.

Why Does Website Bandwidth Matter?

Website bandwidth matters a lot when it comes to web hosting because it directly affects your site performance and speed. Let me explain to you with the help of a simple example, suppose a visitor comes across your site and watches a video. No doubt it requires small bandwidth and experiences the best quality and user experience. But instead of one visitor equivalent to 50,000 or more watching the same video, then your site undoubtedly requires massive bandwidth to cater to a decent playback quality at the same time to all users. If your site fails to provide enough bandwidth, users will face downtime issues, slow load time, buffering, sluggish performance, or poor video playback quality. 

However, most large businesses opt for remarkable and high-performing web hosting servers that usually cater to seamless bandwidth enough to meet the website’s fast-loading experience. 

But in many web hosting plans, your site shares the web space and even the dedicated resources with other users. However, all the bandwidth is also distributed among the dozens of sites. Therefore, each site has bandwidth limits that you can use to meet your site performance without suffering. 

But today’s visitors expect optimal and fast websites that load with lightning-fast speed. So, to provide the best end-user experience and fast loading speed, you need to opt for responsive web hosting that offers unlimited bandwidth for accomplishing your site needs. 

How Much Bandwidth Does My Website Need?

No doubt, the amount of bandwidth your website needs is completely based on a few key factors to render better speed and allow your site to perform well:

If your site comprises high-quality content in large amounts, including images, text, audio, video files, or downloadable content, then your site needs more than enough bandwidth to perform well.

You need basic or enough bandwidth for small-scale sites that comprise few web pages and limited content. Mostly the users will get the bandwidth they require to satisfy their customers with Shared Hosting Plans from a genuine provider. However, they share their web space, resources, and even bandwidth with other sites. 

But when it comes to a little bigger business like media sites, then you need the bandwidth beyond the limit of shared hosting to give you a better experience. Therefore, the next step closer to more bandwidth indicates Virtual Private Servers. It costs a little higher than a shared plan but provides you with more bandwidth. With more bandwidth, you can consider faster web page loading speed and performance.

For large-scale websites that receive too much traffic, you should go beyond VPS and invest in Dedicated Server Plans. Dedicated Server Hosting might be a costlier plan for you but, in return, gives you unlimited bandwidth. This means all the bandwidth goes to your server and is dedicatedly used to help your site perform well.

What Happens if I Exceed My Bandwidth?

Initially, when you start your website, bandwidth does not affect your site. But when you reach the limits of the existing resource while receiving more traffic than usual. At that moment, your site’s loading speed will automatically be reduced. You need to either switch your web server and hop to the upgraded one that gives you more bandwidth. 

If you didn’t upgrade your plan, then in order to exceed your bandwidth limits associated with your web hosting plans, your web host will do the three things:

You can either reduce your bandwidth usage or upgrade to a plan that satisfies your bandwidth needs.

A good web host notifies or updates you about upgrading your bandwidth requirements before it is exceeded.

Should I Go for a Plan that Promises Unlimited Bandwidth?

If you browse, you can see there are lots of web hosting providers that promise to give you unlimited bandwidth even at a cost-effective price. It sounds good. So, if you get “unlimited bandwidth” with the cheapest shared hosting plans, why would you like to invest more in another hosting?

That’s because the title is a contradiction. No means not a single web host provider cab truly caters the unlimited bandwidth. Their servers come with the bandwidth incorporated with the word “limited.” With a shared server, your site performance and speed suffer after it exceeds its given bandwidth. 

In contrast, large plans promise more than limited or unmetered bandwidth. This means you don’t have to pay for the bandwidth you use but for the bandwidth set with the web hosting plans. So, no matter how much bandwidth you use in a month or week, you’ll not be surprised by the additional fees. But if you exceed the given bandwidth with plans, the web host notifies or nudges you to upgrade plans or reduce bandwidth usage.

Wind Up

Bandwidth – a key factor of web hosting is quite confusing for inexperienced users. But most business owners don’t focus on it on a daily basis.

If you are confused about how much bandwidth you require and which plans you should opt for with excellent support. Then, I suggest you speak to Hostbillo’s Web Hosting Experts. They will guide you in choosing the ideal web hosting plan based on your website requirements.

Also, you will find a broad list of hosting categories from which you can choose the one that comes with the massive bandwidth to accomplish your site needs. 

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