Bandwidth Explained

With specific regard to running a website, the term bandwidth, or data transfer, is like... imagine a bath tub full of water which represents your data. Everytime someone visits your webpage, an (albeit very small) cup of water is taken out of your bathtub. Whether its the same person looking at all of your pages over and over again, or many people looking at just a bit, each one counts, so if you have 500mb of bandwidth, your visitors can collectively view 500mb worth of your data.

The bandwidth is reset (bath tub refilled) every month. However, if you do happen to run out of 'water' before the end of the month, your website will display an error message 'Bandwidth exceeded' until the 1st of the next month when your bathtub water is automatically restored to full.

All our hosting packages include a control panel called 'CPanel' that allows you to proactively check your running bandwidth total at any time, so you can work out if you're going to exceed your total amount.

Of course you can upgrade your account at any time to a package with a higher bandwidth limit. Ideally, this will be proactive enough so that you are upgraded before your existing limit is exceeded.

Emergency Bandwidth

Do you think the high bandwidth may just be a one-off, or not ready to upgrade just yet ? For a small charge, we can even offer you 'emergency bandwidth' (the loan of a bigger bathtub) so that your site will continue to run even if you exceed your normal bandwidth limit.

Emergency bandwidth is offered on a monthly basis and at the end of that month, your limit is set back to normal. The current rate for emergency bandwidth is 50p per 10mb for each day left of the calendar month.

Example One
On the 25th of the month, you want emergency bandwith of 10mb; 7 days (25th to the 31st) multiplied by 50p multiplied by 1 (one multiple of 10mb). Initial charge of £3.50

Example Two
On the 26th of the month, you want emergency bandwith of 20mb; 6 days (26th to the 31st) multiplied by 50p multiplied by 2 (2 x 10mb). Initial charge of £6.00

Example Three
On the 23rd of the month, you want emergency bandwith of 10mb; 9 days (23rd to the 31st) multiplied by 50p multiplied by 1 (one multiple of 10mb). Initial charge of £4.50. Then on the 27th you want another 10mb... 5 days (27th to the 31st) multiplied by 50p multiplied by 1 (one multiple of 10mb (on top of the 10mb you already have)). Second charge of £2.50. Total Charge £7.00.

Of course the cost will vary, depending when you want the bandwidth to start, how much extra you want and whether its a 28, 29, 30 or 31-day month.

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