Web space and bandwidth are the two most important website components required for its operations. Web space is referred to the storage locations of online files, like photos, while bandwidth is referred to the data used by visitors to access these files. It is similar to how computers and mobiles take up space while saving files, and the internet consumes bandwidth for downloading files.
If your site requires more bandwidth, the best option is to upgrade your web hosting plan. But if you are not ready to do so, checking and reducing the bandwidth usage in web hosting is recommended. The information provided here will help you understand more about bandwidth usage in web hosting services and how to reduce it.
About bandwidth usage in web hosting
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Bandwidth usage pertains to the overall amount of data transferred from your web server to your audience. Your website comprises several files, each with a specific size. Whenever visitors access your website, their browser requests your web server to fetch these files. Subsequently, these files are downloaded onto their web browser to be viewed. To put it differently, larger web files result in increased bandwidth usage. Additionally, the more requests to your website, the higher the bandwidth usage will be.
How to check the bandwidth usage in web hosting?
Calculating bandwidth needs is typically unnecessary for beginners who have a small number of visitors. Basic hosting plans should meet their needs until their audience starts to grow. However, suppose you have exhausted the limit of your current hosting plan and are considering an upgrade or migration to a new provider. In that case, it becomes essential to calculate your bandwidth needs accurately and precisely. You can find numerous web hosting in Mumbai offering a segment where you can check the quantity of bandwidth you consumed during a specific duration. This information can help you ensure you don’t surpass your allotted bandwidth if your hosting plan has a restricted bandwidth.
Determining the amount of bandwidth a website uses can be simplified to a basic mathematical formula. You can calculate this by multiplying the number of monthly visitors by the average page views and the average web page size.
Required bandwidth = monthly visitors x average pageviews x average page size.
- Monthly visitors: The number of monthly visitors your website is receiving.
- Average page views: The typical number of pages a visitor opens when visiting a website.
- Web page size: Know the average size of your website’s web pages. To obtain the most accurate estimate, investigate as many pages as possible.
Other than this method, you can also find several other tools (online) to calculate the bandwidth. You can enter information like page views per day or month, average page size, and redundancy factor in these free tools to check the bandwidth. It would be better to choose a web hosting service that offers more bandwidth than you need to eliminate bandwidth problems.
How to reduce bandwidth usage in web hosting?
· Try to optimize your web page sizes – reduce image sizes.
The more compact your images and web pages are, the less space they occupy in storage and bandwidth, and the fewer energy visitors need to view them. With servers running 24/7, minor alterations can significantly reduce electricity use without jeopardizing the user experience. For instance, you can use image-optimizing tools to minimize your image size. You can also run a speed test where major gains can be made regarding page size.
· Use an external image provider if necessary.
Do you know that images take the majority of the bandwidth of your website, even if it has a minimalistic design? Even a site with more text content may have images taking up about 90% of the total content. Thus, dealing with the size of images is the first step to manage your bandwidth effectively. In an ideal situation, providing images on your website is unnecessary. Instead, you can opt to outsource the hosting of pictures to a third-party website. Numerous image-sharing websites are available on the internet at a nominal or no cost. So it can be a feasible strategy, especially if web hosting in India offers limited bandwidth.
· HTML, CSS, and JS filesMinification
Minification is a process that helps to remove redundant code and new line characters from various website assets, including CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files. Doing so reduces the size of these files, thereby improving the website’s loading speed.
Other options
- Specifying or adding expiry time for static files.
- Eliminate unwanted tags, excess white space, and unnecessary comments.
- Use the Meta Tags only for necessary ones.
Conclusion
There are numerous other methods to reduce bandwidth usage in web hosting. But all of them can only be utilized to a particular extent. If the bandwidth usage goes beyond what you can control with these tips and tricks, it is better to opt for another suitable plan. All leading web hosting companies in Mumbai offer varying bandwidth and storage plans. So ensure to choose one that is suitable for your requirement.
