BlueHost & HostMonster User Alert: CPU Throttling

Bluehost.com and Hostmonster.com do not throttle “inadvertently”. There is ALWAYS a valid reason to being throttled. The current running configuration does not limit MySQL in any way (Although this will change in the next week). And we never allow an account that is being throttled to go below 33% usage of a single core. This means you get AT LEAST 1/3 or a core all the time, and 99% of the time our “throttled” account average double that amount. If you are being throttled for 30 minutes in a day there is some serious cpu usage going on with something you are running. It could be a simple plugin or something far more serious.

Also, please note that being “throttled” does NOT mean your site is running slower. It CAN mean that, but 90% of the time it doesn’t. It only means that you have been flagged as a site to put in the cpu throttling environment (Which lasts anywhere from 2-10 seconds at a time with our current config). I know this isn’t a great description, but its just far too complicated to explain on a blog comment.

Thanks,
Matt Heaton / President Bluehost.com / Hostmonster.com

Matt, I am surprise your reply came in so soon. And as you’d probably reading this, I’ve to tell you that what you’ve done with the Linux kernel modification is superb and in fact I was damn excited to learn what you’ve achieved at the first place.

Nevertheless with all due respect, I am not convinced that your support team knows the valid reason for my blog to be throttled. For example, in one email with the support, you staffs told me that it’s about my plugin and MySQL database (and you were telling me that the configurations do not limit database so far); on another email, I get this:

It could be a plugin or a theme that is causing the issue with your site or just having a lot of content.

The replies I got from the supports are contradicting to each others and no one can answer my question directly. Why does my site still get throttled even though there’s no error logged on the day (Oct 3rd)?

Or perhaps this recent ’support’ email explains everything?

Dear Customer,

As with most shared hosting companies we put a correct amount of accounts on each server an as accounts grow we will move them from one server to another to accommodate them to a point if you fill that you need a high cpu server you can purchase on at the rate of $19.99 a month as these servers have a lot fewer accounts on them it does give you a little more cpu time.

Thank you, Tim
Hostmonster.com
866.573.4678

Everything seems so ‘conveniently’ in the favor of HostMonster/BlueHost. It makes me feel that the supports are actually BS-ing me about the plugin and database errors; and at the end of the day, the solution is to BUY MORE from HostMonster/BlueHost.

And on top of everything, why we, the customers of HostMonster and BlueHost (I’m using both!), were not notified properly when this CPU throttle feature was introduced? Why do I need a reader to write in, telling me that my site is loading extremely slow in certain time frame? Why isn’t my host, which I had just renew for another 24 months subscription, drop me a notification email on that?

I agree Jerry at this second, the notification of throttling is not even in the TOC’s. ( least wasn’t 7 days ago ) at one point I was told “Well if you don’t have content on our servers then you won’t be throttled”. Since “Joomla” is VERY database heavy and has relatively few static pages I would expect that kind of a site to experience zero throttling. But infact its not so. Keep up the good work.

Explains why web site has been so slow lately at Blue host. Sometimes the web page won’t even load. Other times parts are missing like the background or links won’t work. Everything worked fine before they started this throttling thing. Thanks for the info. Now looking for a new reliable web host.

I have similar problem recently and I thought it was due to my recent upgrade to “web pro” account. But after looking at my CPU throttling graph I think this “feature” is the root cause. I got response from hostmonster support saying that I am over the threshold of 40 sec per minute of CPU time, and therefore I am penalized. I don’t remember I signed up for this when I choose this host.

I found some interesting log in my mysql-slow-queries file. Some very simple query takes more than 2 seconds. Would it be possible that the mysql DB slowed down because it is shared, and that affecting my CPU usage?

[~/tmp/mysql_slow_queries]# cat 20091008-13.log
# Thu Oct 8 13:32:11 2009
# Query_time: 2 Lock_time: 0 Rows_sent: 0 Rows_examined: 0
use crosspo2_tiwi1;
select `fromPage` from `tiki_links` where `toPage` = ‘CrosspointIT’ and `fromPage` not like ‘objectlink:%’

mysql> select `fromPage` from `tiki_links` where `toPage` = ‘CrosspointIT’ and `fromPage` not like ‘objectlink:%’;
+———-+
| fromPage |
+———-+
| The Team |
| HomePage |
| Desktop |
+———-+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> explain select `fromPage` from `tiki_links` where `toPage` = ‘CrosspointIT’ and `fromPage` not like ‘objectlink:%’;
+—-+————-+————+——+—————+——–+———+——-+——+————-+
| id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra |
+—-+————-+————+——+—————+——–+———+——-+——+————-+
| 1 | SIMPLE | tiki_links | ref | toPage | toPage | 162 | const | 3 | Using where |
+—-+————-+————+——+—————+——–+———+——-+——+————-+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

I think there is some problem in their CPU throttling algorithm. Please fix and I want to get back my snappy site.

So glad I found this post!

It’s clear to me that this is a ploy to drive more sales of higher CPU accounts. There is nothing in this for customers; just the host! When I experienced the same thing, knowing that nothing had changed on my site and therefore that the change must be at the host end, the support people didn’t even admit that they had changed their setup. They said it was my site that was at fault! Clearly not the case; they have changed their config, they have not advertised it, and they are now trying to force my hand by stealth! Poor! Very poor!

When I bought a service under a specific set of Ts&Cs I expected it to stay like that. Not one day to suddenly, without warning, get ham-strung!!!

A very annoyed BlueHost customer,
Pete.

[...] web host (BlueHost) has introduced… Read on to learn more. It wasn’t until I found the BlueHost & HostMonster User Alert: CPU Throttling article on another blog that I had my suspicions confirmed. There’s a reasonably detailed [...]

I am over it. I had the same issue a few years ago with mediatemple, that is why I moved to blue host. And here we go again. I don’t have time for this. I just want a host company that does what I pay for, and isn’t micro managing my CPU, and trying to squeeze every cent out of all of the accounts.

I’m having the same issue with Blue Host. This is absolutely nuts. They have destroyed my traffic on the site and I’m getting unbelievable complaints from my readers. Nothing has changed on my site EXCEPT for BlueHost and their deceptive changes recently.

What, no response from Matt? I am a web developer with literally over 100 websites on BlueHost. Same probems. Contradictory answers from their tech support, and now I have sites going down. When even the BlueHost site went down this morning, with an error screen with their logo, their tech support tried to tell me I must be having internet problems. Uggghhhh. I once had a brand new client whose site went down for 4 hours on the day it launched. When I called them, they said they were doing software upgrades. During business hours, I asked? The smartass tech support guy told me that their Japanese clients were more important. I was not amused and closed the account. Looks like I may have to switch all my clients

Same issue here with BlueHost

I get a WebCeo host monitoring report once a week. It alerted me to several time-outs occuring each day last week. I then looked at the CPU Throttling chart in my BlueHost admin and found that my account is being throttled nearly all the time (last 24 hours) with a few huge spikes of throttling interspersed.

The things is: I have only two sites with them. One is a static html site http://www.JohnRocheleau.com and the other is a wordpress blog http://www.zen-moments.com . The traffic between them is less than 60 uniques a day. I used to get up to 1200 uniques per day on the blog but have let it die out for the last few months. Time outs were never a problem when I had higher traffic, so I can’t understand why I’m being throttled now with such low traffic. Neither site has any resource intensive scripts (no chat, forums, video, etc.). The WP blog has only a few, popular plugins and no new ones.

I called support and they said that perhaps someone hacked into your site and inserted some script that is causing the resource usage. Pretty unlikely though as I have kept my WordPress versions totally up to date and no strange site issues have been reported.

I think they need to do some self-examination before advising clients to check for any strange scripts that hackers may have inserted into what should be a secure installation of WordPress. I can’t imagine how long it would take me to check every file for something added (assuming I would recognize it if I saw it).

Perhaps Matt is still reading this and taking notes. Is there a way for instance to track the exact source of the resource usage?

I too have a similar issue with Bluehost. When I was Farked earlier this year I was throttled to the point of essentially being shut down for a half an hour.

They also said that Bluehost management frowned upon sites that get Farked and if it happens more I would be booted out of Bluehost.

During this same phonecall they then complained to me about having things wrong with the MySQL database (and claimed that I wasn’t being throttled), but couldn’t elaborate anything else.

I didn’t touch the MySQL. Never before, never since have I noticed an issue with MySQL.

Since then I’ve had issues with Bluehost over their helpdesk, or lack thereof. I reached a level 3, or 4? for something and the end result was “I don’t know what’s happening and another developer will get back to you” I never heard from another mysterious developer or had a reply from the higher level folk.

Overall, AMAZING!

Well I’m “glad” I’m not the only one… The Website included with this post is the only active site on 1 of my bluehost accounts. Simple html homepage with coppermine modified to browse-only. Still, 3-5 users at the same time and account throttles. I’ve been investigating to see my processes real-time with SSH while it throttles and I only have time to see some 0.1% (of CPU power) to rarely 0.4% and never last more than 1 second. I’m truly wondering how this can get 40 out of 60 secs of a core?!? Also, like Matt said, I start feeling the throttling when it lasts for 30-40 secs and up, BUT can’t find what’s eating up THAT MUCH CPU on my account, if it really is…

I’d like to add that I’ve done this procedure on all of my accounts without any success. And Matt, in my opinion, your tech guys are too “always answer positively” and “I always know what I’m saying”. This results in me now feeling I’m going to lose my time everytime I need to talk to support, which is totally the opposite of when I used to write to you (Matt) directly in the good “old” times.

I’m a bit incredulous. I’m a customer who has looked into this as well, and from what I understand, even when you’re “strangled” you’re guaranteed 33% of a processor at a minimum. For a shared hosting service that’s pretty generous, if that’s not enough to run your site, then I’d say it’s time to either get off of $5/mo web hosting or take a good hard look at your code. I had a few things that I fixed, and I think perhaps there were a few bugs in their system that they’ve since worked out.

You might want to ask them exactly how much CPU your stuff is using, or SSH in and look yourself rather than deflecting the blame. From what I understand, a user has to monopolize an entire CPU for awhile before their system kicks in and says ‘hold on there, let others have a chance’.

A lot of “load and go” software, especially PHP stuff like wordpress and its plethora of poorly written plugins, is notoriously inefficient and cpu hungry. They’ll churn and grind on the CPU just to spit out a few dynamic elements. My guess is that beforehand, 5% of the users were monopolizing 90% of the CPU and ’strangling’ everyone else. Now bluehost is ’strangling’ those 5% (as opposed to the alternative of telling them to find another web host) and allowing the rest to breathe. Naturally, the 5% are going to complain.

It can’t be easy to make sure everyone gets their fair share on such a system, especially when some users are trying to get by on cheap hosting when they require dedicated resources.

Jerry, I appreciate your complaints about Hostmonster, but I think that you are at least partially misunderstanding the explanations given by Matt and Hostmonster support.

You say that they are unable to tell you why your site is being limited but that isn’t quite accurate. Your site is being throttled because it is using up too much CPU time. How much is “too much” is up to the hosting provider, and I am not claiming that whatever limits they have set are reasonable, but the question of whether or not you are exceeding those limits should be fairly black and white.

The thing that the support staff is not able to tell you, of course, is why your site is using up so much cpu time. This is only natural, since to know the real reason they would likely need to test and debug your code, which is clearly not their job. They can only guess that it may have to do with a poorly written plugin or a database problem. Also note that the kind of problems we talking about here are not the kind that will show up in an error log. The code may be perfectly valid and functional, but just run slowly. The same goes for the setup of your database.

My website was also throttled by Blue Host, and it did turn out that it was making much larger than expected demands on the cpu. Wordpress by default is already known to be rather inefficient (see http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001105.html), and on top of that I had made some modifications that were querying the database an excessive number of times. In my case, I was able to fix the problem by clearning up my code and most importantly, installing WP Super Cache.

This must be the worst case ever. I am getting CPU throttling of 35-40 secs each minute with my WordPress blog when just browsing around the blog without any other client accessing the site at the same time. And before I installed caching plugin I got even worse results. I have 50 unique visitors each day and I have already got suspended twice this fall. Already looking for new provider.

I just woder how many sites they are trying to squeeze on one server anyway…

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Basically, it is better to slow done sites temporarily instead of closing them totally.

If this is done good enough by the throttling function like described here, is a difficult question. I am a Hostmonster customer with several sites, only static content, so I have no problem risk.

I had problems like described from Tikiwiki CMS software with some other hoster – good quality hoster, no hoster fault involved. There was close to no user traffic…

I found out that 2 East Asian search engine crawlers created excessive traffic by dropping in some kind of infinit loop. I had to fine-tune the robots file up to a high level to get this 99 % of site traffic halted.

I stated at this occasion: While Tikiwiki is high quality, it is suffering like others from a significant volume of code execution and DB look-ups for basic user functions.
(I only like Tikiwiki and Typo3, do not like WP or Joomla or so.)
All this software is perhaps not enough speed-optimized?

My final solution – which can not solve the problems of most others – was to drop for CMS all use of external software,
to run my own proprietary PERL CMS software on the local PC and to generate over FTP, Javascript (Browser..) and other functions some kind of working / looking like dynamic content.

I am squatting external services – like RSS, advertisers etc. – in a way that I do not need / use any piece of software on the shared hosting account.

This should work fine with many hosters – including hostmonster, where the main system of this type is runnig fine. But I do not consider this as a generally helpful way out of the problem risk.

This has been an enormously useful post and subsequent discussion thread – thank you very much for making this conversation possible.

I can certainly understand that sloppy code via WordPress plugins can lead to unnecessary CPU usage. What I wish hosts like Bluehost could provide is a way to determine which scripts/plugins were using the most CPU so I could easily make judgement calls or modifications (if possible).

I think that’s the responsible thing for an account holder to do but why not focus more time and energy on making it as easy as possible for responsible users to do the right thing? Right now, the process is hopelessly convoluted and includes digging around in the MySQL database records and is a huge time drain.

In an ideal world, it would be much easier if I had a list of each WP install and subsequent plugins and a graphic meter measuring CPU use.

I’ve been using Bluehost for years and my accounts are throttled about 21 minutes per hour!!! I am now launching a new website design service that includes hosting and I need to decide if I should place all new accounts at Bluehost or consider other options such as Inmotion.

I contacted tech support about this and asked if there was some sort of guarantee they could provide that demonstrates the minimum improvement of moving to a High CPU server (a jump up in monthly price from $6.95/mo to $19.95/mo). After checking with several superiors, the tech support rep said there was no written guarantee or even written example illustrating the minimum level of improvement for an account moving to a High CPU server. Even using my existing account as a reference point, they wouldn’t provide any sort of quantifiable improvement.

I would love as much feedback as possible here as well as suggestion. Thanks in advance!

Yup. Been with Bluehost for yearrrrrs. But it’s really getting aggravating. My site is being throttled, dont know how much or how long. I’m a writer and artist and videographer, not a code expert and I don’t have time nor know-how to get deep into the back panel and figure out “scripts” etc. I try to do my best to find errors and do what I can, but it’s just not my area. I refuse to buy more CPU, as I don’t run huge site, it’s a modestly sized blog. Yes, I have a lot of plugins, but I know nothing about what they “use” or “Queries” or anything. So I’m sort of stuck and either have to just disable a number of plugins–I guess–or suffer the throttle. Or hire someone, as they advised me, hire a “web developer.” I dont have money for such a thing. Oh well. But its very aggravating. I think I’m going to look for another host who has not introduced this nifty crap device of “throttling” or who at least can help me figure out what’s wrong so I can fix it.

I will be canceling my bluehost account when it expires in 2 months!

Well, according to my “throttling” stats, “During the past 24 hours your account has been throttled for a total of 44280.535 seconds”.

Now I have had the same site with Bluehost for about 4 years, I don’t use any mysql, don’t use “off the shelf” scripts, don’t use chatrooms, wordpress or anything else that is CPU intensive. I found out long ago that none of this can be used on shared hosting.

I have about 3,000 – 3,500 unique visitors a day and use very simple php scripts that I wrote or adapted which use very little CPU time. It seems that I am being throttled simply because of the amount of traffic I have. What happened to “unlimited bandwidth”!

My guess is that Bluehost are putting far too many sites on each server and since we are all “supposed” to have unlimited space and bandwidth – we all know that this is not possible. Bluehost has become just another greedy monster where money is the main focus.

I have seen the change over the years, as my site used to run with next to no downtime and now it’s being throttled almost 50% of the time – and my site scripts etc haven’t changed!

Customers aren’t important, except as a way for money hungry people to make lots of money.

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