How do bandwidth and storage restrictions work

User Groups are set up with bandwidth and storage space restrictions, but a lot of users don’t understand exactly how this works. The Secure Messaging Platform is different than basic email in a lot of ways, especially when it comes to file attachments. With basic email, attachments get uploaded and downloaded far too many times, and they get stored redundantly all over the place.

Here’s an explanation of how bandwidth and storage space work within the context of the Secure Messaging Platform:

Bandwidth is another name for data transfer, and it is consumed any time a file moves from a local environment (your PC) to the server or vice versa. This means that when you upload a file to the server, you are consuming bandwidth, and when your recipient downloads a file, he or she is consuming bandwidth. However, once a file has been uploaded, it does not need to be uploaded again every time it is sent. Bandwidth is only consumed once when a file is uploaded, but it is consumed every time that a file is downloaded.

Storage is a bit different. When you upload a file to server (by attaching it to a secure message) it is stored on the servers encrypted. Storage is only consumed once per file, regardless of how many user download the file attachment. This is because they are downloading the file to their local PC, not to an email server.