How Can I Improve Bandwidth For My Website?

Increasing BandwidthOne of the most common questions asked by those who are new to web hosting packages involves how to improve bandwidth for website operations to ensure that services go uninterrupted. This is actually a pretty central concern in terms of continued uptime: If bandwidth is exceeded for a given hosting package, customers will find their website’s account is almost instantly suspended. Their visitors will be greeted with an error message, and that message often embarrassingly shows that the website under-budgeted for the amount of traffic its content pulled in on a monthly basis. The good news for website owners is that this problem is actually very easy to fix and often requires just a small adjustment to an existing monthly hosting package.

Start By Considering an Upgrade to the Shared Hosting Package

Bandwidth concerns are most common when paired with a shared hosting package. That’s because shared hosting, which is the most common type of website hosting service sold today, places between 10 and hundreds of different websites on the same server. All of those websites share the same disk space, monthly bandwidth, memory, and processor speeds. Web hosts are well within their rights to impose limitations, then, as using excessive resources could negatively affect a vast number of customers at any given time.

Luckily, those same web hosting companies are aware that their customers’ sites will grow quickly if they find success online. That’s why they offer several hosting tiers that differentiate by total disk space storage levels and monthly data or bandwidth allotments. If bandwidth levels are approaching a monthly limit, or if the site has had a burst of unexpected traffic, it’s time to either change the hosting package using online billing software or contact the company for direct service.

In Extreme Cases, Bandwidth Improvements Come From New Hosting Products

Shared hosting is designed to be a great solution for small or even medium-sized websites, but it’s not typically a good option for sites that grow to be very large or very popular. Those sites need to upgrade to one of two different kinds of hosting. The first is a virtual private server, or VPS account. This service gives users a far larger bandwidth allotment and more disk space, as well as full control over software features and hosting services. They share a server with only one or two other accounts, granting them far more resources to reach their visitors.

If a VPS hosting package isn’t enough, truly massive websites with millions of visitors can find the resources they need with a dedicated server account. A dedicated server typically comes with an outsized bandwidth allocation, since it gives the website full access to its own server at all times. There is no sharing of space, time, or resources, and that means good things for website speed, monthly data, and full control over every aspect of both the hosting service and the final product presented to visitors.

Related Resource: Incorporating Social Media Into Websites

Improvements to Bandwidth Require Careful Planning

The key to obtaining better website operability is to continually monitor traffic levels and bandwidth usage through the control panel software that comes with each hosting account, according to PC Mag. By being vigilant and understanding how traffic levels impact available data transfer each month, website owners will be able to make a cohesive plan that improves bandwidth for website services over the long-term.