Published overage rates on 13 October 2026
| Provider | What is metered | Published overage rate | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kinsta | Visits: unique IP addresses seen within a 24-hour period | $0.50 per 1,000 visits | Kinsta says it keeps sites running |
| Kinsta | Server bandwidth | $0.50 per GB | Charged at the end of each month |
| Kinsta | Disk space | $2 per GB per month, prorated | Calculated daily |
| Kinsta | CDN bandwidth | $0.05 per GB | |
| WP Engine | Visits: one unique IP address logged per day (UTC) | $2 per 1,000 extra monthly visitors | Startup, Professional, Growth, Scale and Agency plans listed |
| WP Engine | Bandwidth on shared plans | Not charged as overage | Support may contact you about usage or plan changes |
| DigitalOcean | Droplet outbound transfer beyond the pooled allowance | $0.01 per GiB | Inbound transfer is free |
How each provider counts
WP Engine's billable-visit article excludes static assets such as images, CSS and JavaScript, and excludes known and suspected bot user agents. It states visits are calculated and any overages charged monthly, regardless of whether the plan is paid monthly or annually, and that extra visits cannot be bought as an add-on, only by upgrading. Its worked example: a Startup plan 10,000 visitors over its limit pays $20.
Kinsta counts visits as the sum of unique IP addresses seen within a 24-hour period in its logs. For bandwidth, Kinsta says the overage is charged at the end of each month, but if you exceed the limit by more than 250 GB without upgrading, you are charged at the end of the first week, and if a second billing attempt fails it may suspend the account.
DigitalOcean's billing documentation says transfer allowance and usage are pooled across all Droplets at the team level, unused allowance does not carry over, traffic over the private VPC interface is separate from public transfer, and outbound transfer dropped by a DigitalOcean firewall rule is not billed. Usage and projections appear on the team billing page, updated daily.
Why course sites hit visit limits differently
Because both Kinsta and WP Engine count a unique IP per day, a student who logs in every day counts every day. Hypothetical example: 1,000 active students who each open the site on 25 days of the month generate about 25,000 visits from students alone, before any marketing traffic. A brochure site with 25,000 monthly page views from mostly one-time visitors and a course site with 1,000 daily students can look identical on a visit meter.
Launches add a second spike. Hypothetical example: a launch email produces 24,000 visits over plan in one month. At Kinsta's $0.50 per 1,000 that is $12; at WP Engine's $2 per 1,000 it is $48. Neither is ruinous, but repeated monthly it is a signal to resize the plan rather than pay overages.
Why video and downloads hit bandwidth instead
Bandwidth overages come from large files served by your server. Hypothetical example: a 500 MB lesson video watched 400 times is about 200 GB. On Kinsta, server bandwidth beyond the plan at $0.50 per GB would make that $100. On DigitalOcean, the same 200 GB is well inside the 2,000 GiB monthly allowance DigitalOcean lists for its $12 Basic Droplet, and beyond the pool would cost about $2 at $0.01 per GiB. WP Engine's shared plans do not charge bandwidth overage, but its own guidance recommends hosting video with YouTube, Vimeo or another provider.
Note that edge caching does not make visits disappear from Kinsta's meter: its overage page says the visit count does not match unique IPs in access.log because that log omits edge-cached visits. Offloading video to a video platform does remove those files from server bandwidth; our guide on moving course video off WordPress covers the trade-offs.
A pre-launch overage checklist
- Read your plan's visit and bandwidth allowance in the host dashboard and note the overage rate in your launch budget.
- Estimate student visits as active students multiplied by login days, not as monthly unique users.
- Move lesson video and large downloads off the server before launch.
- On DigitalOcean, check the pooled transfer projection on the billing page; it covers every Droplet in the team.
- After the launch month, compare the invoice line items with your estimate and decide whether to resize the plan.
- If overages repeat for two months, price the next plan tier against the overage total; WP Engine does not sell extra visits separately.
Questions before you decide
Do bots count toward WP Engine visits?
WP Engine states that known bot user agents and suspected bot user agents are not counted as visits.
Does DigitalOcean charge for incoming uploads?
DigitalOcean states that inbound transfer to Droplets is free; only outbound transfer beyond the pooled allowance is billed.
Sources & verification
Product details and prices can change. Check the linked provider before buying.
- Kinsta: WordPress hosting overages Accessed 13 Oct 2026
- WP Engine: Understand billable visits Accessed 13 Oct 2026
- WP Engine: Reduce bandwidth and storage usage Accessed 13 Oct 2026
- DigitalOcean: Bandwidth billing Accessed 13 Oct 2026
- DigitalOcean: Droplet pricing Accessed 13 Oct 2026
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