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Yes, all your email data and website traffic are included in your hosting plan’s monthly bandwidth limit and disk space allocation.
Additional Information:
All online communications between various servers were originally measured in bits per second (bps), however with today’s greater capacity via network links and hardware, it is more likely to be measured in Mbps (Mega bits per second) or Gbps (Giga bits per second). This is not to be confused with Megabytes and Gigabytes, a byte is a digital storage measure i.e., files, images, documents, etc.
What is bandwidth?
When you send or receive emails, the data is uploaded to, and stored on, your email server, this data transfer uses bandwidth. ‘Bandwidth’ is the quantitative measurement of the actual data stream.
In addition, bandwidth also covers the data transferred between your website’s hosting provider and your website pages, visitor interactions and/or user interfaces. Every element on your website is measured in bits. These include files that have been uploaded (HTML pages, documents, images, etc.) that are displayed on your website, and ‘unseen’ files that run the look and feel, like CSS and PHP scripts. The more data that is transferred, the more bandwidth is consumed.
Monthly bandwidth allocation
This means that the size of your emails, including attachments, will be counted towards your monthly bandwidth usage. When you purchase any hosting plan, you are typically given a certain amount of bandwidth per month.
If you exceed your monthly bandwidth allocation, your provider may charge for the additional usage over and above your monthly fee, or your email service may become unavailable, in which case you may need to upgrade your hosting plan for more bandwidth.
Factors that can impact bandwidth usage
Size
The main email data factor affecting monthly hosting bandwidth would be the actual size of the email communications. Content heavy emails and large attachments may consume an above average amount of bandwidth.
NOTE: Attachments that contain text are sent via SMTP however, ones that are not text are Base64 encoded. This increases the original size by an estimated third e.g., if the attachment is an image of 2MB, the Base64 size = approx. 2.67MB.
Multiple Recipients
When sending emails to multiple recipients, each one will receive an individual copy of the email, thus increasing the amount of bandwidth consumed. Should more than one recipient be on the same email server, this may be constituted as a single email, this is server-dependent.
Spam Emails
Spam emails are another factor affecting hosting monthly bandwidth. Even though these are generally unsolicited, your email server is still receiving them and therefore they affect your allocation. Using email and spam filters will help to reduce their impact.
Obsolete Email Message
Old, or unnecessary emails stored on your email hosting server can also affect your bandwidth allocation especially when using a synched ‘mail client’ like Microsoft Outlook and when accessing emails on multiple devices. Deleting emails from the server after downloading to a specific device, e.g., your laptop, will free up storage space and help reduce consumption.
Email Spamming
Malware
Spamming malware, is script that is sent out in bulk and delivered on unsolicited email, either via a link, or via an attachment. Most email hosting providers have set up spam filters on their servers to recognize and block incoming spam.
Spoofing an Email Address
A spoofed email address is used by a cyber criminal to send out bulk email spam that appears as if it is coming from your email account. It is highly annoying and usually doesn’t last long, as they tend to change spoofed email addresses quite quickly. Spoofing is seldom harmful to you, or your email account, and it is easy to verify, as your account will not have a record of sending out these bulk emails.
Hijacked Email Address
This is serious. A cyber criminal has taken full control of your email account and can read and emails as they please. If you think your account has been hijacked, it is imperative that the first thing you do is change your password. If you can do that, you will have locked them put. If not, and you do not have the technically expertise, immediately contact your email hosting provider for assistance.
