Why Your Webflow Bandwidth Bill Is So High

You awaken to an email from Webflow. Your heart falls when you read, "Your site has exceeded its bandwidth limit for the second consecutive month."

Before you can grasp what has occurred, you check your billing, and there it is. Your CMS package, which was formerly $23, has now increased to $39. Worse, your $39 Business plan suddenly includes an additional $30-50 in bandwidth add-ons that you had not budgeted for.

If this circumstance seems familiar, you are not alone. Webflow's bandwidth modifications from 2024 to 2025 caught thousands of users off guard, and many are still trying to figure out why their hosting prices skyrocketed.

Let's look at what's going on, why your bandwidth bill is increasing, and, most importantly, how to fix it without jeopardizing the quality of your site.

Bandwidth Reduction That Changed Everything

Many Webflow users were surprised to learn that Webflow's bandwidth allowances across all plans had been significantly cut in 2024.

The Old Limits (Prior to 2024):

• Basic: 50 GB

• CMS: 200 GB

• Business: 400GB

New Limits (2024–Present):

• Basic: 10 gigabytes (80% reduction)

• CMS: 50 GB (75 percent reduction)

• Business: 100GB+ (customizable, starting 75% lower)

Yes, you read it right. The Basic package was reduced from 50GB to 10GB, representing an 80% decrease. Sites that were previously under their bandwidth constraints suddenly found themselves above it for two months in a row, necessitating automatic upgrades.

This was not a bug or error. A purposeful pricing restructure transformed the economics of hosting media-rich websites on Webflow.

Understanding Webflow's "Surge Protection"

Webflow advertises their bandwidth overage policy as "surge protection," which sounds promising. Here's how it really works:

Month One of Overage: You have exceeded your bandwidth limit. Webflow sends you a notification without charging you. This is your "surge protection," which is simply a grace period to resolve the issue.

Month Two of Overage: If you exceed your limit again, even by 1GB, Webflow will immediately take action.

• Basic and CMS Plans: automatically advanced to the next tier.

• Business Plans: Automatic bandwidth add-ons are applied (50GB, 100GB, or more).

The upgrade occurs at the beginning of your next payment period, and you are charged appropriately. There are no refunds for bandwidth overages, and the change is automated; you cannot decline it.

The Real Cost

For many users, this meant:

• Basic to CMS upgrade: +$9 per month ($108 annually)

• CMS to Business upgrade: +$16 per month ($192 annually)

• Business plan bandwidth add-ons range from $30 to $1,449 per month, depending on use.

Some Webflow subscribers stated that their monthly fees increased from $25 to $170 overnight owing to unexpected bandwidth additions. That's not a typo; it's the true financial cost of exceeding these new, stricter limits.

Hidden Bandwidth Killers on Your Webflow Site

So, why is your bandwidth so high? Let's take a look at the real culprits, many of which may surprise you.

1. Background Videos (The Number One Offender)

The stunning full-screen backdrop video on your homepage? It's probably your largest bandwidth hog.

The Math:

• Average compressed background video: 5-15 MB

• One visitor watching: 5-15 MB bandwidth consumed

• 1,000 visitors: 5-15 GB bandwidth consumed

• 2,000 visitors: Your entire Basic plan allowance gone from one video

Even if you've compressed the video, each visitor to your homepage initiates a full download of the file. If your homepage is your landing page (as it normally is), this video alone can consume 50-80% of your monthly bandwidth.

2. High-Resolution Images

Modern webpages require sharp, retina-ready visuals. But here's the actual cost:

Typical image sizes:

• Standard quality product photo: 200-500 KB

• Retina-ready (2x resolution): 500 KB–1.5 MB

• Hero pictures and full-width banners: 1-3 megabytes

If you have a portfolio site with 50 high-resolution photographs of 1MB each, and each image is viewed an average of 100 times per month:

50 photos x 1MB x 100 views = 5,000 MB = 5GB.

Images account for half of your CMS plan bandwidth.

3. Downloadable Resources

Downloadable resources such as PDFs, whitepapers, case studies, and templates consume a lot of bandwidth.

A 5MB PDF downloaded 500 times equals 2.5GB of bandwidth. If you provide several resources (say, ten distinct PDFs) and they are popular, you can easily spend 20-30GB per month just from downloads.

4. Bot Traffic (The Sneaky Culprit)

Most people don't recognize this: Webflow counts all traffic, including bots, when calculating your bandwidth limit.

This means:

• Crawlers from search engines (such as Google)

• Social media preview bots (Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn)

• SEO Monitoring Tools

• Malicious bots and scrapers

All HTTP status codes (even 404 errors) waste bandwidth.

According to industry estimates, bots account for 30-50% of total web traffic. If half of your bandwidth is going to non-human visitors, you're effectively paying double for your actual human traffic.

5. Unoptimized Assets That Slip Through

Even if you believe you have optimized everything, there are hidden bandwidth drains.

• Multiple picture formats loaded (not WebP)

• Unused CSS and JavaScript

• Custom typefaces (100–300KB per family)

• Embedded frames and widgets

• Redundant API calls

6. The Compounding Effect of Traffic Growth

Here's the awful irony: success compounds the problem.

When your marketing efforts succeed and your traffic increases by 50%, your bandwidth consumption rises accordingly. What about the blog post that went viral? Was that a successful advertising campaign? That feature in a big publication? All of these get you closer to (or beyond) your bandwidth limit.

Quick Fixes That Actually Work

Now for the good news: there are instant steps you can take to lower your bandwidth use without completely overhauling your website design.

Fix #1: Convert Images to WebP

Webflow features a built-in image converter that can reduce image file sizes by 25-35% while maintaining quality.

How To Do It:

• Go to Site Settings > Publishing

• Navigate to "Image Options" and enable "Convert to WebP"

• Republish your website

This simple operation can save you 10-20GB per month on an image-heavy website.

Fix #2: Enable Lazy Loading

Lazy loading guarantees that images and videos load only as a visitor scrolls to them, rather than all at once when the page loads.

Impact:

If your average page contains 20 images, lazy loading may prevent 10-15 of them from loading for users who exit quickly. For a site with 3,000 visitors and a 50% bounce rate, this may save 5-10GB per month.

How To Do It:

• Select an image or video element

• In the Settings panel, enable "Lazy load"

This applies to all images below the fold.

Fix #3: Compress Videos Aggressively

If you're hosting videos on Webflow, compression is required.

Use HandBrake or Adobe Media Encoder to:

• Reduce the resolution (720p often looks identical to 1080p for backgrounds)

• Lower bitrate (2-4 Mbps instead of 8-10 Mbps)

• Trim unnecessary seconds

A well-compressed backdrop video should not exceed 3-5MB.

Fix #4: Remove Unused Styles and Clean Up Code

Webflow produces CSS for every element you've ever produced, including deleted ones.

How to Clean Up:

• Open Style Manager

• Look for styles marked "unused"

• Delete them

• Republish

This will not save a lot of bandwidth, but every little bit counts, and it significantly improves load speeds.

Fix #5: Remove Unused Fonts

Each font weight and style you load consumes additional bandwidth.

Check the fonts:

• Go to Project Settings > Fonts

• Audit your font usage and remove unwanted fonts and weights

A single font family with numerous weights might range from 500KB to 1MB. Removing 2-3 unneeded fonts could save 1-2GB per month on a busy website.

External Hosting Solution (Flowdrive)

Here's the uncomfortable truth: if you're operating a media-rich website on Webflow, all of your optimization efforts may not be enough to keep you under the new, tighter bandwidth constraints.

You have compressed your photos. You have enabled lazy loading. You have trimmed your videos. And you're still reaching your limit because you have:

• People wanting to see more than 50 portfolio pieces in full resolution

• Product videos customers should watch

• Case studies with extensive photography

• Downloadable resources your audience values

This is where external file hosting is required, not optional.

The argument is straightforward: Webflow's bandwidth constraints are for serving your website. Your media files, such as videos, high-resolution photos, PDFs, and music, do not need to count against that limit if they are housed elsewhere and supplied over a CDN.

What Does External Hosting Actually Solve

When you transfer your large media assets to a platform like Flowdrive, you receive:

• Unlimited bandwidth – offer your films to 100 or 100,000 users at the same cost

• Upload files up to 2GB (compared to Webflow's 10MB restriction)

• Custom domain delivery: files supplied from your domain while keeping brand consistency

• Better performance—global CDN tailored exclusively for media delivery

• Predictable costs: a fixed monthly price with no surprise overages

• Adaptive streaming audio

The Workflow Is Straightforward

• Upload Media Files to Flowdrive

• Obtain a direct URL for each file

• Use this URL in your Webflow project

Files are distributed using Flowdrive's CDN, not Webflow's capacity. Your Webflow site continues to function normally, but bandwidth-heavy assets no longer count against your Webflow limit.

Visit tryflowdrive.com to see how much you could save.

The goal is not to leave Webflow, as it remains the greatest no-code website builder for style and functionality. The idea is to use Webflow for what it does best (creating attractive websites) and specialized solutions, such as Flowdrive, for what they do best (providing media files at scale).

Your bandwidth bill does not have to keep increasing. You simply need to understand what is consuming it and make intelligent judgments about where your data reside.

Ready to tackle your Webflow bandwidth issue? Begin with optimization, but if you have a media-rich site, consider external hosting services like Flowdrive for unlimited bandwidth at a predictable cost.

Visit tryflowdrive.com.