Storage Quota
Definition
A storage quota counts bytes at rest. Every object you have uploaded and not deleted contributes, and the number only moves when you add something or remove something — no amount of traffic touches it. Retained older versions usually count too, so a 20 MB document kept through eight revisions can occupy 160 MB even though exactly one version is live. Deleted files often sit in a recycle bin for a retention window and go on counting until that window closes. The quota is the mirror image of the bandwidth limit: one measures what you keep, the other what you send, and a plan can be generous with one and stingy with the other.
Why It Matters
Hitting a quota does not break your existing links — files already up keep serving perfectly well — but it stops you publishing anything new, which is invariably discovered on a deadline. Version history is the usual culprit. A team uploading a 15 MB deck twice a week accumulates roughly 1.5 GB a year from one document, none of which anyone will ever open again. Knowing whether versions count against you, and how many are kept, is the difference between a quota that lasts three years and one that quietly fills in four months. Pruning is also the cheapest fix on the table, since deleting three superseded archives usually recovers more room than an upgrade adds.
How It Works
The host keeps a running total per account, incremented on each successful upload by the stored object's size and decremented when an object is permanently removed. An upload that would carry the total past the ceiling is refused before anything is written, typically with a 507 Insufficient Storage or a provider-specific error naming the space remaining. Where file versioning is switched on, each retained version is a separate stored object with its own size, so hosts cap the number or the age of versions to stop the total growing without bound. Compression only helps if the host stores the compressed form: an archive uploaded and left as an archive counts at its compressed size, while one unpacked into a live site counts as the sum of every extracted file.
Real-World Example
A small agency keeps 40 client decks on 99helpers, each around 12 MB, with roughly six versions apiece — about 2.9 GB in total, of which under 500 MB is the current set. The rest is history nobody has opened in a year. Trimming to the two most recent versions per deck frees close to 2 GB in an afternoon, and every live address, brightwell-deck.99helpers.site among them, is untouched. Rollback still works; it simply reaches back two steps instead of six.
Common Mistakes
- ✕Counting only the current files — retained versions and a recycle bin are often most of the total you are being charged for
- ✕Deleting a file to free space while its link is still in circulation — the space comes back and the link starts returning 404
- ✕Unpacking a folder when the archive would have done — extracted files are stored individually and count at their full uncompressed size
Related Terms
Bandwidth Limit
A bandwidth limit is the total volume of data a host will send out on your behalf in a billing period, usually a month. It counts what leaves, not what is stored, so a tiny file can exhaust it and a huge one may never touch it.
File Size Limit
A file size limit is the largest a single file may be for a host to accept and store it. It is measured one file at a time, so it says nothing about how many files you may keep or how much traffic they will generate.
File Versioning
File versioning keeps the previous copy of a file when a new one is uploaded under the same name, instead of overwriting it. Every publish adds to a history you can read back from, rather than replacing what was there.
Object Storage
Object storage keeps each file as a self-contained object — its bytes, its metadata and a key that names it — inside a flat container reached over HTTP. There is no directory tree and no file handle to open, seek and write.
Web Asset
A web asset is any supporting file a page pulls in once the HTML has arrived — stylesheets, scripts, images, fonts, icons, videos. The HTML is the page; the assets are everything it asks for next.
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