All Collections
cPanel
Website
How to Check Website Overload Causes on cPanel
How to Check Website Overload Causes on cPanel

Identifying the cause of website overload using Resource Usage in cPanel

Updated over a week ago

If you notice that your website loading time is increasing, it may indicate an overload. A website becomes overloaded when the usage of the hosting resources exceeds reasonable limits. You can find the cause of website overload in cPanel by following these easy steps:

Step 1 - Access Resource Usage

Log into your cPanel account, head to the Metrics section, and click on Resource Usage:

The cPanel Metrics section showing how to access the Resource Usage page

You can also find this menu by typing it in the search bar. The Resource Usage Dashboard will show the status of your hosting resources as follows:

  • Your site had no issues in the past 24 hours - your website is optimized and not overloaded

  • Your site has been limited within the past 24 hours - this indicates that your website is overloaded. You can also see which types of resources exceed the resource limits

  • Your site might hit resource limits soon - the resource limits for your plan have been reached, and your website will be overloaded. cPanel will also show the resource type that has exceeded the limits

Example of resource limit warning in cPanel that will cause website overload

Step 2 - Check Resource Usage Details

You can find the cause of excessive usage by clicking on the Details button or by navigating to the Current Usage tab. It will show the details of each type of resource, such as memory, CPU, inodes, and input/output:

Resource usage graphs in cPanel to check for website overload

The graphs will show resource usage of the day per hour by default. If you wish to change these settings, click on the Timeframe and Time Unit drop-down menu to select a different option, eg. change the time unit to minutes:

The Time unit drop-down list showing to select Minute

Step 3 - Check the Snapshots

You can also find the cause of website overload by clicking the Snapshot tab, where the processes for the selected timeframe will be listed, as in the following example:

Example of resource usage snapshot

There are four columns displayed in the process list, as follows:

  • PID - process ID

  • CMD - process name

  • CPU - CPU usage

  • MEM - the amount of memory used

In the example above, the process script.php exceeds the capacity of CPU usage as it reached 103%. This indicates that there is an issue with the script that slows down the CPU performance.

To check website overload issues at a different date, click on the date selector and, if available, on Choose snapshot to select a different time.

You can also click on the Database Queries and HTTP Queries tabs to find possible issues on database and HTTP processes:

The Database Queries and HTTP Queries tabs on the Resource Usage page
Did this answer your question?