Fair use and traffic
What happens after the included traffic is used up.
Traffic is the amount of data the website delivers to visitors per month. Every page view loads images, scripts and texts, and all of them are counted. The plans have a monthly quota (see Plans).
What is fair use?
Fair use means fair, reasonable use. The webspace runs on the same servers as many other customers. Everyone should get sufficient performance. That is why there is a monthly traffic quota as a guideline for normal websites. Anyone who clearly exceeds it burdens the shared infrastructure and endangers the availability of other websites.
Fair use therefore does not limit the normal operation of a website. It applies when usage goes far beyond the usual level, for example with file sharing, video streaming or a website that constantly delivers large amounts of data.
What happens when the quota is used up?
After the monthly traffic is used up, the connection can be limited to 1 MB/s (8 Mbit/s) until the end of the month. Additional volume can be booked. Details are in § 7 of the terms and conditions.
What does this mean for the website?
Throttling noticeably slows down page views but does not switch the site off. Visitors then see long loading times, for example with large images.
Save traffic
- Compress images: Reduce large photos before uploading them. A 5 MB photo can often shrink to a few hundred KB.
- Use caching: A cache plugin stores finished pages so that everything is not generated again on every visit. This saves computing time and traffic.
- No unused files: Remove old downloads or videos that nobody needs any more.