Hitting the entry processes limit often: when to optimise and when to upgrade

The short answer: hitting the entry processes limit now and then, at a peak, is normal and clears by itself. Hitting it often, on ordinary days, means one of two things: requests take too long and pile up (so you optimise), or there are more real customers than the plan holds (so you upgrade). What entry processes are is in entry processes. This article is about choosing between those two answers with your own account’s numbers.

Reading the pattern of the faults

Pattern in Resource Usage	What it usually means	Likely answer
Faults always at the same hour, even with few visits	A cron job, a backup, an import, a newsletter going out	Optimise: move it, space it out
Faults while CPU stays low	Requests stuck waiting on another service (an API, a payment, an external font): they do no work, but hold the slot	Optimise: timeouts on outside calls, caching
Faults with CPU at the limit too	Heavy requests that take long to build	Optimise first: CPU usage at your plan limit
Faults while someone is in the WordPress dashboard	An open editor, admin-ajax called non-stop	Optimise: WordPress Heartbeat
Faults with many requests from the same address or bot	Aggressive bots, or break-in attempts on the login	Optimise: refuse or block
Faults that follow real visits, with caching working and fast pages	The site has grown	Upgrade

Deciding with your own numbers

1	Gather the data. In cPanel, open Resource Usage, pick a long period and write down the days and hours of the entry process faults. On the same screen, look at CPU and memory at those hours.

2	See who was asking. Open the access log for those hours (Metrics > Raw Access) and look for the same address, the same bot or the same file repeated: reading the Errors and Raw Access pages.

3	Time a page without the cache, with the site quiet. If it is slow to start answering even when nobody else is there, the problem is the page, not the plan: what to measure before you change plan.

4	Apply the quick fixes: page caching working, aggressive bots and login attacks refused, heavy jobs at a quiet hour, Heartbeat slowed down in WordPress.

5	Compare after a few ordinary days. If the faults are gone or rare, it was optimisation. If they still come at the hours you have the most customers, it is the size of the plan.

6	If it is the plan, upgrade in Meu Interweb and look at Resource Usage again over the next few days.

Optimise or upgrade?

Question	If the answer is yes
Do the faults line up with a job, a backup or an import?	Optimise: move the job or split it.
Are most requests at those hours bots or login attempts?	Optimise: refuse or block them.
Are pages slow to start answering even when the site is quiet?	Optimise: caching, a recent PHP version, lighter queries.
Is there caching, are the pages fast, and do the faults follow your customers?	Upgrade.
Is a campaign or a busy season coming?	Upgrade beforehand, and downgrade afterwards if your usage fits the smaller plan again.
Do you need many long requests open at once (APIs, real-time connections)?	VPS or Cloud: shared hosting vs VPS.

Bigger plans

Each plan up lets more requests in at the same time: from 20 entry processes on Pro to 100 on Business Ultra (table below). Yours is the limit line in Resource Usage. Keep in mind what an upgrade does and does not do: more requests fit at once, but a slow request is still slow. You upgrade in Meu Interweb, pay only the difference until renewal, and the site, the e-mail and the files stay where they are: how to upgrade your plan. Which plan comes after yours: which hosting plan comes next.

Plan	Entry processes (EP)
Pro	20
Plus	30
Ultra	40
Business Pro	50
Business Plus	75
Business Ultra	100

Our warnings: when the account reaches 75%, 85% and 95% of the limit of a plan resource, you get an e-mail with every resource on the account, each with its limit and the percentage you use, and the upgrade plans (between 75 and 85%, every 15 days; between 85 and 95%, every 7 days; from 95%, every 3 days). If several resources are close to the limit, they all come in the same e-mail. The limit is 100%. Above it the account may be suspended, and we always warn you the day before. To bring it back, upgrade (the account reactivates by itself straight after) or ask for 24 hours to sort it out from the link in the e-mail: the account stays active for 24 hours and, if it is still over the limit at the end, it is suspended again straight away (you can ask for the 24 hours once every 7 days). If usage drops back below the limit, the account becomes active again by itself. What each warning means is in usage warnings at 75%, 85% and 95%.

Do not raise PHP’s maximum execution time to «fix» entry process faults. A request allowed to take longer holds its slot longer, and the faults get worse. What fixes it is the request taking less time.

The 508 error a customer shows you has a time. Ask for the rough time: the faults in Resource Usage are marked by the hour too, and that is where the cause shows. See website errors explained.

Already optimised, and the faults follow your customers? Compare the plans and pick the next one.

See the plans

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