Myth: "Our shared CPU is plenty for a small store"

Myth: "Our shared CPU is plenty for a small store"
A store doing 40 orders/day was fine — until traffic hit. The host's CloudLinux LVE capped them at 100% of one core. Checkout PHP that ran in 50ms started taking 4,200ms under throttle. Conversion dropped from 2.1% to 0.7% during peak hours. Three weeks of "why are sales down" before someone read the LVE faults log: 1.2 million throttle events.
Follow the money: 200 sites per server only works if each one is punished for using what it pays for.
Reality: shared CPU is a queue, and you're never first in line.