What is Bandwidth?
When looking at bandwidth from a hosting standpoint, it is the amount of data transferred through the website. There are many factors which cause and effect bandwidth usage, which we will outline below.
Bandwidth Effects
WP Engine plans are designed to perform with the amount of traffic as promised, when the bandwidth levels are in the low to mid-low range. Once bandwidth exceeds this threshold, multiple effects occur:
- Slow Performance. When used in excess, bandwidth is a burden on page speed.
- Traffic Spikes Impacted. More bandwidth equals less successful page loads during a spike.
- More Data Transferred Per Visit. Page size should be as minimal as possible.
- E-Mail Relay Delayed. Excess bandwidth will reduce e-mail deliveries.
Determining Your Site’s Bandwidth Usage
Within the WP Engine User Portal, you can check your site’s 30 day average bandwidth by navigating to the Overview page for each environment.
To view day to day usage, select Download Usage CSV from the top right of the Environment stats pane.
Cause and Best Practices for Reducing Bandwidth
Bandwidth can be caused by multiple aspects of a site, such as excessively large media files or content not distributed through a CDN. For information on page size and media aspects, you can run a quick WP Engine Page Performance Test. When used alongside the information below, the test will outline the methods to reduce/offload the majority of bandwidth usage.
- Use a video streaming service like YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia or similar to host your video assets. Rich media uploaded directly to your site can drain your bandwidth quickly.
- Use third party image hosting. Using our proprietary LargeFS integration service or free image hosting services like Google Photos, Dropbox, or Flickr will go a long way in protecting your bandwidth.
- Compress your media. Smaller media files mean less bandwidth usage. Learn more about image compression options.
- Use SMTP mail services to offload email load if you’re sending 200-500+ emails a day. Learn how to configure SMTP services.
- Enable CDN through your User Portal to distribute your static assets to global servers and increase speed. Note that customers who are experiencing bandwidth overages will incur additional fees. Please contact your Account Manager for an estimate or further information.
- Purchase additional bandwidth by contacting your Account Manager. They can guide you to the best solution that meets your bandwidth requirements.