Bluehost CPU Throttling Introduction

Many people complain about Bluehost CPU Throttling when their accounts are suspended because of using too much CPU resource. In below, we will introduce what is Bluehost CPU Throttling and why is a helpful feature in shared hosting.

What’s CPU Throttling

Below is what we copy from Bluehost Online Knowledge base, in which Bluehost defines what the CPU Throttling is:

“Throttling means that our proprietary CPU Throttling System has automatically tied your account to its own dedicated core temporarily to keep your account from dominating too much CPU time. Throttling for less than 600 seconds in any given hour will not usually negatively affect your site’s performance for visitors. In some extreme cases, our admins may suspend the account until the problem(s) is/are resolved or optimized.”

From above, we can find that

  • Each account from Bluehost is assigned with a certain amount of CPU resource
  • Now, the threshold is set to be “600 seconds in any given hour”
  • If an account use more than “600 seconds in any given hour”, it will be suspended temporarily.

And according to our experience, the account will be resumed after 30 minutes when it’s suspended.

Why CPU Throttling

CPU throttling exists for some reasons. In a shared hosting environment, different account shared the same hardware including CPU, memory, I/O and the others. If one account occupies too much CPU resource, then the speed and reliability of web sites of the other accounts will be impacted negatively.

To make sure one account won’t do harm to the other account in the same server, most of the web hosts choose to monitor the whole server status. When the server is overloaded, their engineers will step in to investigate on which account causes the problem and suspend it.

This is not a good method actually as when they take action, the benefit of their customers has been hurt already.

Bluehost does it in a different way. They rebuild Linux kernel, and develop a system to monitoring CPU, I/O, MySQL and Bandwidth usage of each account, and then set a thread hold at account level. When an account use too much resource, system will know it and suspend it immediately.

The advantage of Bluehost CPU throttling system could prevent the issues happened instead of reacting to issues have happened. The system has been tested for many years, and it was formally announced by their founder Matt Heaton in 2010. Right now, this system could be licensed to the other web hosts at a very low fee, and we expect more and more web hosts will deploy it.

What to Do After Bluehost CPU Throttling

As you know CPU throttling is every where in Shared Hosting, different company follows different strategy. But if an account is suspended by Bluehost for CPU throttling, it’s highly likely that it will be suspended by the other web host as well if people simply switches to another shared hosting package.

So, below are what we suggest to:

  • Check MySQL log, I/O log and system log Bluehost offer and diagnose what application and source code cause the issues.
  • If you could optimize it, then do it and see whether the situation has been released.
  • If what even you have done cannot lower the load of the server, then the best option is to upgrade the hosting options to VPS, Cloud Hosting or Dedicated Server. Shared hosting is designed for individuals or small businesses whose web site not very busy.

Bluehost is Recommended

Bluehost is one of the best hosting in the industry. Its shared hosting includes rich features and is back up with Anytime Money Back guarantee and top-notch customer support. Unlike the other web host, Bluehost guarantee you what you have paid for.

The list price of Bluehost is $6.95/month, and now with the exclusive Bluehost discount, people could subscribe to its award-winning hosting solution at 44% off, after which the price is $3.95/month. To know more about Bluehost and the deal, please visit www.bluehost.com now.

Bluehost CPU Throttling