Guide Control Panel

How to check your account resource usage

Finding your current disk space, bandwidth and usage figures, and what to do when one is close to its limit.

iFastHosting Support Team Updated 26 August 2026 5 min read Beginner

Every hosting plan has limits on things like disk space and bandwidth, and it is worth knowing how to check where your account actually stands against them — both so nothing catches you by surprise, and so you know whether a slow or misbehaving site is actually a resource problem rather than something else entirely.

Where usage figures are shown

Most control panels show a usage summary on the overview or dashboard screen you land on when you first open the panel, with more detail available in a dedicated statistics or usage section. Expect to see, at minimum, disk space and bandwidth, usually shown as both a raw figure and a percentage of your plan's allowance.

What is measured can vary slightly by plan

Some plans measure and limit specific resources more granularly than others — for example, separate limits on the number of email accounts, databases, or simultaneous processes a script can use. If a figure you expect to see is not on the main usage screen, check whether it is broken out separately elsewhere in the panel.

Disk space

This is the total size of everything stored in your hosting account: your website's files, your databases, your email if it is hosted on the same account, and any backups the account itself keeps. A site with a lot of large media files, or a database that has grown substantially over time, can use meaningfully more disk space than the files you can see would suggest — database size is easy to overlook when eyeballing usage.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth is the total amount of data transferred out of your account to visitors over a given period, typically measured monthly. A page with large images, a lot of traffic, or visitors downloading large files all consume bandwidth. Unlike disk space, which is a snapshot of what currently exists, bandwidth usage resets each billing period and only reflects that period's traffic.

Resource	What increases it	Resets each period?
Disk space	Files, databases, email, stored backups	No — it is a running total
Bandwidth	Visitor traffic, downloads, large media	Yes — typically monthly

What to do if you are approaching a limit

Close to your disk space limit. Check for large, unused files first — old backups, abandoned uploads, media nobody links to any more — before assuming you need more space outright. The file manager's ability to sort by size makes the biggest offenders easy to spot.
Database taking up more than expected. Old data — spam comments, expired sessions, revision history on a CMS — can bloat a database considerably over time. phpMyAdmin lets you see the size of individual tables, which usually points straight at the cause.
Close to your bandwidth limit. Check whether a spike in traffic, or a sudden increase in the size of files being served, explains it. Compressing images is often the single biggest lever available on a typical site — see compressing images for the web.
Genuinely outgrowing the plan. If usage is climbing steadily because the site itself has grown — more content, more traffic, more customers — rather than because of something removable, that is a sign to look at upgrading rather than continuing to trim. See how to tell when you have outgrown your plan.

Check usage occasionally, not just when something breaks

A quick glance at the usage summary every so often catches a slow climb toward a limit while there is still time to act calmly, rather than discovering it because uploads have started failing or the site has been paused for exceeding a plan allowance.

If a limit has already been hit

Exceeding disk space typically prevents new files, including new email and new database entries, from being saved — existing content usually keeps working, but nothing new can be added until space is freed or the plan is increased. Exceeding a bandwidth allowance is handled differently depending on the plan; some slow the site down temporarily, others may pause it until the next billing period or until the plan is upgraded. If you are ever unsure what happens on your specific plan once a limit is reached, that detail is worth confirming directly rather than assuming, since it genuinely differs between hosting products.

If you are not sure how much disk space or bandwidth a site of your size actually needs, our guide to disk space and our guide to bandwidth both cover realistic figures for common types of site.