If your site is throttled, returns 508 errors, or you receive a resource limit notice from us, your account is exceeding the CPU, memory or entry-process allowance of your plan.
Check your usage first
In cPanel open Resource Usage under Metrics and click Details. The graphs show which limit you are hitting and when. Match the spikes against your own activity — a nightly spike is usually a backup or cron task.
Common causes
- wp-cron overload — resolved by disabling HTTP cron and using a real cron job.
- No page caching — every visit runs full PHP and database queries.
- Bot traffic — aggressive crawlers and scrapers. Check Metrics → Visitors in cPanel for repeat offenders.
- Brute-force attacks on wp-login.php — every attempt is a PHP request.
- Heavy plugins — statistics plugins that write to the database on every page view, broken-link checkers, and live-chat or "related posts" plugins that query on the fly.
- Backup plugins running hourly — set them to weekly and offload backups to remote storage.
What to do
- Enable caching.
- Install Query Monitor temporarily and look for slow queries and plugins with high query counts.
- Deactivate suspect plugins one at a time and watch the Resource Usage graph.
- Block bad bots via Cloudflare or
.htaccess.
If usage stays high after this, the site has genuinely outgrown its plan. Open a ticket and we will recommend an upgrade path.
