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Copyright © 2016 - 2026 SiteDistrict, All Rights ReservedSometimes we will see a large spike in bandwidth for an account or site on SiteDistrict. Almost every time, it's because a site is hosting a video directly on SiteDistrict, and it's caught in a reply loop in people's browsers.
Bandwidth refers to the amount of data that is transferred between two devices over a network. In the case of website, that usually means the data that a browser downloads in order to display different pages.
The more files & data that is required to display a web page, the higher the bandwidth usage, and in some cases, the higher the costs to your hosting provider, as well as you, the site owner.
When a user visits a web page, their browser connects to the server or content delivery network (CDN) that is hosting the content, and downloads everything that is needed to display the page.
This includes the page content (HTML), files used for styling (CSS), custom fonts, and images. In some cases, if the page is set to display automatically display a video, it will also start downloading the video(s).
Most website inform the browser that these additional files can be saved and re-used again (caching), if the page is reloaded, visited again, or if other pages on the website use the same files. This both improves website performance, and also lowers bandwidth usage.
The first problem with videos is that they are big. The size of video files is often many times that of all the other files that a web page might need to load.
While browsers can often cache many of the files that they download, and use them again, larger videos are an exception. Browsers have a limit on the size of the data they store for each site in their caching, and many video files are larger than that limit.
When a video is set to loop automatically, this presets a problem. It means that the browser must continuously re-download the parts of the video in able to display it.
If a user leaves a browser tab active with a website page loaded that contains a looping video, this might men the browser is constantly downloading large amounts of data.
Bandwidth is unfortunately a limited resource, and though it tends to be rather cheap in comparison to some other types of resources, the costs for it can add up.
Unfortunately, Amazon Web Services (AWS), on which SiteDistrict is built, charges for most bandwidth usage, meaning that we must pay them for all the bandwidth consumed when people visit sites on SiteDistrict.
Due to our flexible billing system, most account include a bandwidth allowance that covers typical bandwidth usage, and do not directly pay any additional fees for bandwidth.
However, sites that host video files and serve them directly from SiteDistrict, via the SiteDistrict CDN (which is built on Amazon's network), may incur additional fees for excess bandwidth usage.
There are multiple places with the SiteDistrict dashboard to review your bandwidth usage, as well as actual and estimated overage fees.
Probably the first place to look is your account-level Analytics, which let you see the bandwidth usage for your sites over time.
Which sites are using a large amount of bandwidth, as well as the periods of increased usage, are often immediately obvious.
Many customers will want to open the Last 30 Days view of their Analytics -> Bandwidth page. You can view this page across all your SiteDistrict accounts by clicking here, and then logging in if necessary.
Once you have a high-level overview of bandwidth usage for your account(s) and site(s), you will often want o know specifically which files are using the most bandwidth, and often, which pages are causing those files to be downloaded.
In this case, we recommend jumping over to the Reports -> Bandwidth page, which you can view here.
To see the estimated usage and any overage costs for your account, you will want to select a specific account, and then pull up the Account -> Usage page.
Note: This page is only accessible to users who have Billing privileges for an account. Contact the Owner of the SiteDistrict account if you need access to this page and do not already have it.
If you're interested in any historical bandwidth overage fees, you can open the Account -> Invoices page, and review the BW column.
Note: This page is also only accessible to users who have Billing privileges for an account.
Now that you've seen the analytics pages inside SiteDistrict regarding your bandwidth usage, and you've confirmed that some videos are consuming a large amount of bandwidth, you might want to see the problem for yourself, inside a browser.
Typically, the best way to find the pages that are causing high bandwidth usage is to look at the Referer column of the Reports -> Bandwidth page, and click the link to open it in a new tab.
There are multiple to reduce bandwidth usage and associated costs. In many cases, you can combine any or all of these recommendations.
Many large video can actually be compressed significantly, to reduce their file size, while retaining the actual video quality.
We recommend that you speak with your WordPress developer, or search Google for ways to compress video files. If someone else provided the video file to you, you may also ask them about possibly compressing it better.
Once you've compresses a video file, you'll typically need to upload the new file to SiteDistrict, and then replace references to the old file, so that the newer (and hopefully much smaller) file is used instead.
One of the best ways to avoid high bandwidth usage on SiteDistrict is to host your videos with a service such as Vimeo, and then embed the video using the code or URL that they provide.
You might also choose to try Cloudflare R2.
In some cases, using these services for video hosting may incur additional fees, but they are typically small compared to the bandwidth fees that you might rack up if you continue to host the videos directly on SiteDistrict.
While browser might not cache larger videos, Cloudflare will typically cache videos from your website on their CDN, and subsequent visitors from the same region will typically download the videos directly from Cloudflare, rather than needing to download it from SiteDistrict again.
To benefit from this, you need to have the Cloudflare proxy (orange cloud) enabled for your DNS records.
While using the Cloudflare proxy is typicall not recommended for sites on SiteDistrict, this is one exception where it may be better to use it. See our page titled Cloudflare and SiteDistrict for more details.
Another method for reducing bandwidth usage with SiteDistrict is to either disable autoplay or disable looping of the videos that you display on your website. This prevent browser from getting stuck downloading parts of the video over and over.
While we strive to provide one of the best WordPress hosting platforms on the market, and also to quietly and automatically prevent most issues that might occur with other hosting providers, high bandwidth usage from hosted videos is one issue we can't currently solve on our own, and the reason this page exists.
Luckily there are many good solutions to this problem that can reduce you bandwidth usage, lower your hosting fees, and in some cases, even improve your website performance and user experience.