Checking your disk space and bandwidth
Find out what you are using, what is eating it, and whether you actually need to upgrade.
Your plan includes an allowance for storage (disk space) and monthly data transfer (bandwidth). Running out of disk space is the one that causes trouble — websites stop saving and mail stops arriving, often with confusing errors.
Check your usage
Look at the cPanel sidebar
The right-hand statistics panel in cPanel shows current disk usage and bandwidth against your limits. It is the fastest check available.
Find what is using it
Open Disk Usage under Files. It breaks usage down by folder, largest first — the quickest way to spot the culprit.
The usual culprits
Old backups sitting on the server
Backup files generated in cPanel and never downloaded are the number one cause. Delete any .tar.gz files in your home directory once you have a copy elsewhere. See Downloading a full backup.
Email, not the website
Mailboxes count toward your disk space, and years of attachments add up fast. Check per-mailbox usage under Email Accounts, then empty Trash and Junk folders — on IMAP, deleted mail still occupies space until the folder is emptied.
Uploaded media
WordPress media libraries balloon over time, partly because WordPress generates multiple resized copies of every image. Straight-from-the-camera photos at 5 MB each are the usual offender; resizing before upload is worth the habit.
Logs and cache
Error logs and caching plugins can grow to gigabytes if something is repeatedly failing. A large log file is a symptom worth investigating, not just deleting — email us if one keeps regrowing.
Bandwidth, and when to upgrade
Bandwidth is the data sent to visitors each month, and it resets on your billing date. Most small business sites use a fraction of their allowance; if yours is climbing unexpectedly, the usual causes are very large images, video hosted on your own server rather than YouTube, or bot traffic.
Contact us before you hit a limit rather than after — we would rather move you to the right plan than have you discover the problem through an outage. Upgrading from Business to Premium is one click with no migration or downtime.
Your feedback helps us fix the guides that aren't working.