Resource usage is how much CPU, memory, disk I/O, processes and storage your hosting account is consuming.
Resource usage is a measure of how hard your website is working the server it runs on. Every page view, database query, cron job and email uses a little CPU time, memory and disk activity. On most hosting plans each account has limits for these, so one site can't use up a whole server.
For example, a WooCommerce shop running a big sale might suddenly use far more CPU than usual as hundreds of shoppers fill carts and check out at once. If it hits its CPU limit, pages slow down until the rush passes.
Types of hosting resource usage
On shared and cloud hosting, the main resources measured are:
- CPU: processing power used to run PHP, database queries and other code. See CPU cores.
- Memory (RAM): space used by running processes, such as PHP workers and the database.
- I/O: how fast your account reads and writes data on disk.
- IOPS: how many separate read and write operations happen per second.
- Entry processes: how many PHP requests your account handles at the same time.
- Processes: the total number of processes running for your account.
- Inodes: the number of files and folders you store.
- Disk space and bandwidth: how much you store and how much data you transfer.
Why resource usage matters for your website
When your site reaches a limit, it doesn't usually go offline straight away. Instead, it's slowed down or new requests are queued. Visitors may see slow pages, "508 Resource Limit Is Reached" or "503 Service Unavailable" errors. Limits on shared hosting also protect you from the bad neighbour effect, where another account's busy site would otherwise slow yours down.
What causes high resource usage
- Pages that can't be cached, such as carts, searches and logged-in areas
- Heavy or badly coded plugins and themes
- Bots and crawlers hammering your site, including fake search engine bots
- WordPress's built-in cron running on every visit
- Malware or spam scripts running in the background
- Large backups, imports or image processing
How to check and reduce resource usage
Many cPanel hosts show a resource usage page with graphs and a record of when limits were hit. Use it to match spikes to times and then look at your access logs for the cause. To bring usage down:
- Turn on full-page caching and an object cache.
- Remove plugins you don't need and replace slow ones.
- Block bad bots with a firewall or WAF.
- Run scheduled tasks with a real server cron job.
- Clean up old files to stay under your inode limit.
If your site is busy for good reasons and still hits limits after tuning, it's a sign to move to a bigger plan.