Bandwidth (also called data transfer) is the total amount of data transferred between your server and visitors' browsers. Every page load, image download, email sent or received, and FTP transfer consumes bandwidth.
Please note: Screens and options may vary slightly depending on your cPanel version and hosting plan.
Viewing Bandwidth Usage
- Log in to your cPanel account.
- In the Metrics section, click Bandwidth.
- The page shows bandwidth usage over the past 24 hours, past week, past month, and past year, broken down by:
- HTTP (Web) — Website traffic. - FTP — File transfers via FTP. - IMAP/POP3/SMTP — Email traffic.
What Counts Towards Bandwidth?
- Every visitor loading a page, image, CSS file, JavaScript file, or media file.
- File downloads (PDFs, ZIP files, etc.).
- Email sent and received through your account.
- FTP uploads and downloads.
- API calls and webhooks.
- Automated traffic (search engine crawlers, bots, monitoring services).
Reducing Bandwidth Usage
- Optimise images — Compress images to reduce file sizes. Use modern formats like WebP where possible.
- Enable caching — Browser caching allows returning visitors to load resources from their local cache rather than downloading them again.
- Use a CDN — A Content Delivery Network (e.g. Cloudflare) serves your static files from servers closer to the visitor, reducing load on your server and often providing better performance.
- Enable compression — Enable gzip or Brotli compression in your
.htaccessor server configuration to reduce the size of text-based files (HTML, CSS, JS). - Enable hotlink protection — Prevent other sites from consuming your bandwidth by embedding your files.
- Minimise unnecessary traffic — Block abusive bots, remove unused large files, and optimise your site's code.
Tips
- Most hosting plans have a monthly bandwidth allowance. If you exceed it, your site may be suspended or you may incur overage charges — check your hosting plan's terms.
- A sudden spike in bandwidth can indicate a DDoS attack, a bot crawling your site aggressively, or a file going viral. Check your access logs to identify the cause.
- Bandwidth resets at the beginning of each billing cycle.
What Next?
- Enabling Hotlink Protection — Stop bandwidth theft.
- Improving Website Performance with Caching — Reduce repeat bandwidth usage.
