How much space you use and what takes it up

What you'll achieve

• see how much of your plan you've used;
• find the websites, databases and mailboxes that take up the most space;
• free up space without breaking your website.

Before you start

• Log in to Enhance (see How to log in to Enhance and Webmail).
• Before you delete anything important, make a copy (see Backup and restore in Enhance). Our daily backups don't use up your space.

The steps

A. Quick overview

On “Home”, the “Package subscriptions” card shows your plan and how much of it you've used: under “Disk space” you see the space used out of the total, and on the other rows how many websites, email addresses and databases you have out of what your plan allows. You see the same on any website's page, in the “Overview” tab, in the “Package usage” card.

The figures are recalculated periodically, not instantly: what you deleted a few minutes ago may not show up right away.

B. What takes up space

Enhance shows you space usage by website, by database and by mailbox:

1. Websites. On “Home”, the “Website disk usage” card shows the 5 largest websites in the account, by files. It's especially useful on plans with several websites.
2. Databases. On the website page, in the “Databases” tab, the “Size” column shows how much each database takes up.
3. Emails. In the left-hand menu, “Emails”: the “Mailbox usage” column shows, for each address, how much of its mailbox space it uses.
4. Files. On the website page, in the “Files” tab, you see the size of each file (the “Size” column). Enhance doesn't add up sizes per folder, so look first in the places listed under D. If you still can't find what's taking up space, write to us and we'll tell you which folders are large.

C. Emails: freeing up space in a mailbox

In Enhance you see how much each mailbox takes up, and you delete messages from Webmail:

1. Log in to Webmail with that address, at https://mail.nbt-host.com.
2. Go to Settings » Folders and click a folder: you see how many messages it has (Messages) and how much space it takes up (Size).
3. Delete old messages with large attachments, especially from Sent, Trash and Spam.
4. Empty Trash and Spam: in the folder list, open the folder's menu and choose Empty. Messages in the trash take up space until you empty it.

Messages deleted this way can no longer be recovered from Webmail. We can restore them free of charge from a copy from the last 7 days (see Backup and restore in Enhance).

If you want to keep the messages, increase the mailbox space: in “Emails”, click “Manage” next to the address and change “Mailbox size”, in the “Mailbox” section. Mailbox space still counts toward your plan's space.

D. What often takes up space without you knowing

• Archives uploaded and left in the account: .zip, .tar.gz or .sql files left over after a migration or after extracting. Download them to your computer if you still need them, and delete them from the account.
• Backups made by WordPress plugins, for example in wp-content/updraft (UpdraftPlus) or wp-content/ai1wm-backups (All-in-One WP Migration).
• Logs: the error_log files in the website folders and other files with “log” in the name. You can delete them. If they fill up again quickly, the website has an error that needs fixing; you'll see it in the “Developer tools” tab, on the “PHP” card, in the php-error.log log.
• WordPress plugin caches, for example in wp-content/cache. Clear the cache from the cache plugin's settings, not from File manager.
• Old emails with attachments, especially those in Sent, Trash and Spam.

In File manager, “Delete” deletes permanently: there's no trash to restore them from. If you're not sure about a file, download it first (right-click » “Download”).

The backups you download from Enhance with “Download website data” don't stay in the account, so they don't take up space.

E. If you need more space

Write to us and we'll move you to a bigger plan. Your files, emails and settings stay unchanged.

If something doesn't work

1. You deleted files, but the space used doesn't go down. The figures in “Package subscriptions” are updated periodically. Check again later.
2. The space used exceeds your plan's space. Free up space (see sections C and D) or ask us for a bigger plan.
3. Emails sent to an address bounce with “mailbox full” or “quota exceeded”. The space allocated to that address is full, not necessarily the whole account. Increase it from “Emails” » “Manage” » “Mailbox size” or clean up the mailbox (see section C).
4. You can't find what's taking up the space. Look at the databases, the emails and the places listed under D. If you still can't find it, write to us and we'll take a look.