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As many of the best webhosts offer their services within shared hosting environments, it’s important to be aware of CPU usage and how it might affect you. Although many hosts are now offering “unlimited bandwidth” there is a bit of a catch to it — you can use as much bandwidth at you need, but if you’re using too much of the CPU, you’ll need upgrade to a dedicated or VPS server.
Many webhosts limit CPU usage to less than 1% on a shared server, and the logic behind this is simple. Say you have 100% of the CPU available on a server, and 300 people are on that server, that leaves less that 1% available to each person so the computer can run smoothly. That doesn’t necessarily mean each person IS using their portion — some customers may have a very small site that demands little or no CPU, some may not have a site yet at all — but it means that if your site is consistently busy and your users are doing CPU-intensive actions, you’ll become a burden to the server, everyone else’s site will slow down, and you’ll have to upgrade.
Most people with small sites won’t ever have to worry about it but, let’s put it this way, just because a shared server says it offers “unlimited bandwidth” doesn’t mean a site like Facebook or Livejournal or Pogo can survive on it — they’re way too popular and will need much more than what a shared server can offer.
[…] rule, web hosting companies limit their hosting customers by setting a cap on what’s called CPU. CPU stands for computer processor unit and this unit measures how many times your website is accessed […]