Why my cron job was changed to run every 15 minutes

On shared hosting, cron jobs set to run more often than every 15 minutes are automatically changed to run every 15 minutes. This protects server performance for everyone on the server.

This only applies to shared hosting accounts.

Why this happens

On a shared server, many websites share the same resources. Cron jobs that run every minute or every few minutes can use a lot of CPU and memory, which slows down your website and others on the server. Limiting how often they run keeps the server stable.

Set your cron job to a supported interval

When you add or edit a cron job in cPanel, choose an interval of 15 minutes or longer. For example, to run a script every 15 minutes:

*/15 * * * * /usr/local/bin/php /home/username/public_html/script.php

See Setting up cron jobs in cPanel.

If you need tasks to run more often

• Rethink the task. Many tasks don’t need to run every minute. For example, a WordPress site can use a cron job every 15 minutes instead of its built-in WP-Cron.
• Upgrade to a Managed VPS. On your own server, you can schedule cron jobs as often as you need. See What is VPS hosting?

Related articles

• Running PHP scripts from cron jobs
• Disabling e-mail notifications from cron jobs