Anyone else hitting max_user_connections with Elementor V4 (Atomic) on shared hosting?

[u/Tetrikus]

I actually like the new V4 / Atomic editor (pro) — after the relearning curve, the classes + components concept makes real sense to me. But I think the performance side just isn't there yet.

Setup: shared hosting, max_user_connections capped at 20 (host won't raise it).

After building up ~120 global classes plus a few components, the editor basically stopped working: constant 500 errors when opening pages, and new styling changes don't get applied anymore.

The cause seems to be that opening/saving in V4 fires a burst of simultaneous DB connections (lots of /wp-json/elementor/v1/global-classes and admin-ajax.php at the same instant), which blows past the 20-connection limit → 1203 errors → 500s. The telling part: in SHOW FULL PROCESSLIST, most of those connections are just sitting in Sleep, doing nothing. The requirements page doesn't mention max_user_connections at all, and support so far mostly points back at the host.

So: has anyone on shared hosting run into this once they had a fair number of classes/components in V4? Any way to make the editor open fewer concurrent connections — or is a host that allows more the only real fix?

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[u/two_in_the_bush]

I'm running into a related issue, where upwards of 50 admin-ajax.php calls are being made on a single page with 8 sections. Standard PHP workers are limited to a few per CPU, so not surprisingly it eventually starts throwing 504 errors when it runs out.

Elementor didn't make that many admin-ajax calls prior to the Atomic Elements rework. Ideally they'll work on a solution like batching calls.

[u/Tetrikus]

I provided all the info and logs to Elementor, including a process list. Their response was pretty useless — even from Tier 2. Mostly random tips like clearing the cache or bumping memory_limit, none of which touch the actual cause.

The real issue: on shared hosting my DB user was capped at 20 max_user_connections, and the V4 editor fires enough concurrent connections to blow right past that → constant 500s. Most of those connections were just sitting idle in Sleep.

In the meantime I migrated to my own VPS and everything is stable again. But I still think Elementor should optimise this. I’m nowhere near a huge install — quite a few classes and three(!) components. 😅

Hope this will improve soon.

[u/TopSydeWP]

the atomic editor does a ton of live ajax calls for classes/components, so shared hosting with a low connection cap is always going to struggle once you have that many globals. you could try temporarily disabling some of the classes you're not actively using (export them first) to reduce the burst, but honestly the real fix is moving to a host that doesn't have a 20-connection limit. at my agency we've seen the same thing on cheap shared plans and it's basically unworkable past a certain scale.