Overselling

[BVZ]

As a victim of overselling (kicked off a host for using "too many resources") and having many friends who were also victims, I dislike it with a burning passion. Whenever I order a hosting plan, I ask the Sales representative how much I actually will be allowed to use before I get kicked off for some BS in the Acceptable Use Policy. What is the point of overselling a server? It's considered harmless business practice because most customers only use a fraction of their alloted amount and because most web hosting customers frankly don't care much. But it still causes problems when someone tries to use the space they have been guaranteed. Because the AUP states that the host can kick someone off at their discretion for overusing, theoretically someone who used 1TB of data at iXWebHosting could stay on while someone who uses 1GB could be cut off from the AUP if the one using 1TB had good standing with the owners or admins. Ridiculous!

The problem is that most customers don't care and look for the most value at eye level (i.e. whichever one offers the most "GB" or "TB", lol) which could explain why a lot of hosting companies give you the amount of space in MB because the number is larger. It could also explain the thousands of cheap hosting companies that offer 1TB of space and 1,000TB bandwidth for $1 and die within a matter of weeks or rarely months because they can't support themselves. Customers come and leave in droves as they realize that they are getting what they paid for.

Would you rather get 25GB of space and 250GB of transfer for $2.95 or 1GB of space and 5GB of bandwidth for $2.95 if the 1GB plan was not oversold and the 25GB plan was heavily oversold? I'd rather the 1GB plan because it is guaranteed. You can still earn profit without overselling...sadly, most customers don't know about overselling, which is why the large companies keep growing and the smaller companies can't use these tactics due to a lack of resources and therefore cannot compete.

I'm hopefully going to be starting a web hosting firm and one of my main goals is not to oversell - ever. The problem is reaching the mass consumer. I don't think that I'm alone in this goal to reach the mass consumer without resorting to undesirable tactics. Therefore, I would like to see what you guys think about overselling, reaching the mass consumer, and other related information.

Do you think that overselling hurts the web hosting business? How do you feel about cheap hosts and large hosts (is there any resentment or are you indifferent)? What's your opinion?

If you are a consumer of hosting - do you look out for overselling hosts?

[Eclouds]

I completely agree with you. Customers do look at the eye level, which is how overselling hosts are able to gain such a big customer base (And also bad reviews thereafter ). There has been a significant amount of companies that have gone 'under' recently and new ones will just keep on popping up.

I do believe it hurts the hosting business, nowadays you seen countless numbers of VPS hosting companies that are starting up and offering VPS servers at very low costs just like the web hosting industry is.

Its a cycle and clients should definitely do a lot of research on their host before signing up (ie: legally registered? how long in business? good or bad reputation? do they have experience?).

[[DWH]Yuxuan]

Overselling is a disgusting practise, I think if you can't really offer it to the customer, then don't provide it!

I know that I won't ever be able to compete with big companies so I never try to oversell. Small companies can only beat big companies in terms of customer service and more of a personal (1 on 1) support.

But the other thing is, I guess we all get fooled and tricked into these overselling services from time to time. So it's "kind-of" hard to tell for sure for consumers which provider is overselling, and which is not.

[TSO]

Regardless of any earlier comments I've made, I do think overselling is getting ridiculously out of hand. I can only take consolation in the fact that in the next 5 years, major consolidation will happen in the industry, plan specs will come more in line with reality, and prices will rise at least 20% (thereby making hosting a somewhat profitable endeavor again, though regrettably the most for the major players).

[fnixws]

Ye, i can see why people do it. But its definetly out of hand, way too many hosts there offering plans that are obviously not economical for them. Unfortunatly 95% of customers dont know any better.
Yes it hurts the business. Especially when those "legit" hosts end up out of business because they cant compete with the over sellers.

[ikick]

As a hosting coordinator myself,
I do see a lot of overselling around. It is getting more and more popular as more and more web hosting business come onto the market.

I fell a victim to overselling about 2 years back when mythichost was hosting me.
I must admit.. their service was out standing; but i was very angry to see an email in my inbox one morning at work stating that mythichost was terminating my account for "over usage".

Thats when i became apart of Host Alpha and the MCW Network.
And my guarantee is never to oversell. We tell it like it is

[~ServerPoint~]

I believe that the ones who offer the oversold hosting do know how to handle that. But is bumbing web hosting market for sure and not good tendency at all...

[Darknight]

My bet is it was your issue that got you removed from the company,
You prob used your account to store large files, or excepted to be able to use 2000GB of bandwidth running a 100,000 user forum.
9/10 times its the client stupidly expecting the impossible that gets them removed from a host. (See above)
Eitherway,

1TB of space and 1,000TB bandwidth for $1

I agree that would be stupid to do,
Most established oversellers, dont sell for under 9.99/month.. (Cheaper if you pay 2 years ect)
Them hosts are the ones to go with for sites you just want to run, without having to worrie about space and bandwidth,

Also, I would rather be with someone like dreamhost than any host here, I know dreamhost isnt going to die.. I know by the end of the year atleast 20% of the hosts on here will.

[ikick]

But still....
The way i see it is: If it says "150gig Diskspace" for example, You would expect to get that.
Not 5gig.

Same with bandwidth

[~ServerPoint~]

You would expect to get that.

But you won't get it because of CPU and RAM limits etc

[ikick]

Exactly right

[Dynash]

You do get that. They have to give you it, it's just there is no way you can use it by following their terms. You can't host huge files, you can't use it as a file hosting for your personal files, and I doubt you'd have a huge website that is 150GB is size and doesn't go over their minimum resource limits, which is also stated in their TOS.

You don't have to be overselling to offer 150GB of space, because you can, it's just you build up on it over time, just you will loose money. It's a stupid thing to do, but look at how much they make / year, you aren't making that much are you?

[Darknight]

LOL, 99% of plans on the internet are oversold...
Even if you are buying 1GB HDD and 20GB Bandwidth for say 5$/month chances are you are still a victim of overselling,
Most big ISP's oversell internet connections data allowance...
And with good reason, No one in there right mind would leave a shared hosting server half full, Under 20% of the accounts on the server will use all the HDD/Bandwidth the other 80 od % do not..

IMO, If you where to leave your server just because you gave all its HDD/Bandwidth away (But no one was using it, You still had 1000GB bandwidth/month out of 2000GB)
You would be insane.


And as for these mega oversellers, at the end of the day it isnt there fault you was stupid enough to think you could run a forum that uses 1000GB/month bandwidth on a shared hosting server.

But with computer power getting stronger and stronger and stronger, one day you will be able too...
Mega Overselling will start to die off as hardware gets better & IT grows..
We keep out doing ourselfs 4:1 each time a new chip is made...
LOL some CPUs are so powerful we cant even fully utilize them with any software/OS's we have.

[fcolor]

The main difference between the overselling done by the huge companies and the onces that oversold because of endless efforts to reach the big ones is that the huge overselling companies can handle it, BUT never do. It is easier to continue overselling, attract customers and make profit from them restricting their actions by a silly TOS and refund policies.

There are a lot of victimized people out there and after not more than an year the tendency will be quite different I think. Yes, the prices may go little up because of the quality and customer service but I guess that all those '0's in the offered GBs should also start to disappear.

But this is the way it is - you have no rules - you get what you pay for. In the end this is a market as any other and there are ups and downs in its development. If we continue to see big mergers in the industry - after 2 years probably the hosting business will start to be as good as it was some years back (at least of terms of quality and real offerings).

A.

[HostingITrust]

Almost all plans on the net are oversold. The companies cannot be blamed alone. The customers is also responsible. They just want more and more for less and less. The majority will only buy from the host who is offering the most. So the companies are forced to oversell to get a percentage of the market share. How can you buy a terabyte of space for a couple of bucks? The server on which your site is hosted will most probably have only 500GB max.