Understanding your hosting account's limits

Applies to: All plans.

Your hosting account has two kinds of limit: a storage limit (how much you can keep — disk space) and resource limits (how hard your site can work at once — CPU, memory and processes, controlled by CloudLinux). This article explains each one in plain terms, lists the per-plan numbers, and shows how to know when it is time to upgrade.

None of these limits mean a permanent outage. Storage limits stop you adding more once you are full; resource limits briefly slow or queue requests when you are at peak. Both clear once you free up space or reduce load — or move to a bigger plan. The one thing to watch: while your account, or a single mailbox, is full, incoming email to it is bounced back to the sender rather than held, so keep some headroom.

Storage limit: disk space

Disk space is the total size of everything in your account — your website files, images, databases, email and your own cPanel backups all count towards it. Your mailboxes share your plan's storage, and each mailbox also has its own maximum size (see the mailbox table below). Professional Email mailboxes (Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace) are stored by Microsoft or Google, so they do not use your hosting disk.

Plan	Disk space
Self-Managed Lite	10 GB SSD
Self-Managed Plus	50 GB
Self-Managed Pro	100 GB
Managed Starter	40 GB
Managed Growth	80 GB
Managed Business	200 GB
Managed Enterprise	By quote

What about inodes? Many hosts also cap the number of files and folders an account may hold — that count is what "inodes" means. We do not apply a file-count limit, on any plan: disk space is the only storage figure your account is measured against. A very large number of files does make backups, restores and migrations slower, so it is worth clearing out stale caches, logs and old archives, but nothing is blocked or suspended for having them.

You can see your live disk usage in cPanel. See How to check your disk usage and file count.

Resource limits: CloudLinux LVE

We run CloudLinux, which puts every account in its own isolated container called an LVE (Lightweight Virtual Environment). The LVE caps how much of the shared server one account can use at any instant, so a busy neighbour can never slow your site down — and vice versa. The main LVE limits are:

CPU (SPEED) — how much processor power your site may use, shown as a percentage (100% ≈ one full CPU core).
Physical memory (PMEM) — the RAM your scripts may use at once.
Entry processes (EP) — how many requests can be actively running PHP at the same moment.
Number of processes (NPROC) — the total processes your account may have open.
IO and IOPS — disk read/write speed and operations per second.

Plan	CPU	Memory (PMEM)
Self-Managed Lite	100%	768 MB
Self-Managed Plus	150%	1 GB
Self-Managed Pro	200%	1.5 GB
Managed Starter	150%	1 GB
Managed Growth	200%	1.5 GB
Managed Business	250%	2 GB

Entry processes run from 20 on Lite to 50 on Business, processes from 40 to 100, IO from 2 MB/s to 10 MB/s and IOPS from 1024 to 4096 — each scaling with the tier. The full per-plan table is in Understanding CloudLinux resource limits (LVE). Bandwidth is unmetered under fair use — the real ceiling is these CloudLinux IO limits, not a traffic cap.

When you briefly hit a resource limit, requests are queued or momentarily refused and a visitor may see a 508 "Resource Limit Reached" page. This is not a crash; it clears the instant your usage drops. The fixes are to lighten the load (caching, fewer plugins, optimised database queries) or to upgrade. See "Resource limit reached" and 508 errors explained and Understanding CloudLinux resource limits (LVE).

What is CageFS?

CageFS is the CloudLinux feature that gives each account its own private, walled-off view of the server. You see your own files and a safe set of tools, but you cannot see other customers' accounts or sensitive system files — and they cannot see yours. You do not configure CageFS; it works silently in the background to keep your account secure and isolated. It is part of why one account's problem never becomes everyone's problem.

cPanel feature limits

Separate from storage and resources, each plan caps how many of certain cPanel items you can create:

Plan	Addon domains	Subdomains	MySQL databases	FTP accounts	Cron jobs
Self-Managed Lite	0	5	2	2	5
Self-Managed Plus	4	25	10	10	20
Self-Managed Pro	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Managed Starter	0	25	10	10	20
Managed Growth	4	50	25	25	40
Managed Business	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited

Mailboxes

Every plan includes mailboxes on your own domains. The allowance covers the whole hosting account, so mailboxes on addon domains count toward the same total, and all of them share your plan's disk space.

Plan	Mailboxes	Max size per mailbox
Self-Managed Lite	10	5 GB
Self-Managed Plus	50	10 GB
Self-Managed Pro	Unlimited	10 GB
Managed Starter	25	10 GB
Managed Growth	100	10 GB
Managed Business	Unlimited	25 GB

A new mailbox starts at 1 GB, and you can raise it up to your plan's maximum. Sending limits and the other email limits are in Email limits by plan.

When you reach one of these, the path forward is to upgrade your plan.

How to know when to upgrade

Consider moving up a plan when any of these are true:

You are consistently above ~80% of your disk space allowance, with no junk left to clear.
Visitors regularly see 508 / "Resource Limit Reached" errors at busy times.
Your site feels slow even after caching and optimisation.
You have run out of websites, databases, subdomains or mailboxes you are allowed to create.
You want the uptime SLA and 24/7 monitoring that come with Managed (Self-Managed has no SLA).

Our team makes plan changes on request: email billing@maxinodes.com or open a request in our Help Center. The change is prorated from what you actually paid for your current term, first-term prices never apply to it, and your data stays in place. See How to upgrade or downgrade your plan and When should I upgrade my plan?.