Web Hosting - Overselling

[neilrbowen]

I agree its an unfair comparison, a better way of showing it is;

When a host oversells all customers are effected
When a bank oversells normally nobody notices any change in service.

[[Tsohost] Darren]

Overselling with banks can affect everyone or it can affect a tiny minority.
Overselling with hosting can affect everyone or it can affect a tiny minority.

It depends how it's done entirely. The only difference as I see it is that the banking industry is highly regulated (in most western countries) and that in the web hosting industry people can practically "make up" numbers and put them next to a price with no intention of providing that service.

Overselling is what makes hosting and servers affordable to the masses. It's what makes broadband available to practically everyone, it's what makes mobile telephones available to everyone (do you think your phone provider has enough capacity for everyone to send a message all at the same time...? Think about New Years Eve).

Getting the balance right is the tough part - most mobile phone networks seem to have it together, because 99.9% of the time, you can call and send messages instantly with no "network busy" messages.

[Midlandi]

Overselling has become a requirement of most host providers, though the term is a little misleading.
Ok so they are selling space and bandwith that they have not nor ever will have, but without being able to utalise this most providers would not be able to operate.
As already stated, its a fact that 99% of users will never use the masses of resources they buy, from the large number of clients I have now and in the past, I have never had one come even close.
The fact that this is driven not only by the greed of the customer but the downright stupidity of those companies who started it in the first place.
Part of the problem is the market is so flooded with hosting companies, a huge number of which are individuals who buy "off the shelf" Hosting sites with little or no experiance in this genre, and to attract new customer feel it appropriate to offer what they can never deliver.
Having said that, was it this area of the market that initiated overselling, or was it the bigger copmanies?
My only advice is if you need the amount of resources that are offered, dont buy it, but then if you have a site that size you will know that already.
Either way overselling is a way of life in this industry and it looks like its here to stay, the question is how outrageous will the packages become?

[davidSclek]

i my self do admit if at overselling but you find that once you use about 3 gb of webspace u find the customer then wants their own server so it does not make much of a difference realy.

But its a sneaky way of getting clients lol

[temi]

Its nice to be frank like you are but I think this is and unethical way to acquire clients.

i my self do admit if at overselling but you find that once you use about 3 gb of webspace u find the customer then wants their own server so it does not make much of a difference realy.

But its a sneaky way of getting clients lol

[krystalpaul]

We have a policy of not overselling, which makes it impossible for us to compete with the cheaper hosts. Amazing packages are being sold at ridiculous prices, until you realise that one way or another the host will find a way of terminating your account through a loophole in the contract (as the OP pointed out with the CPU usage) should you use too much resource.

Responsible overselling is fine, though, and makes good business sense if pitching to the cheaper end of the market.

[temi]

We have a policy of not overselling, which makes it impossible for us to compete with the cheaper hosts.

I am sure you customers will appriciate it, I am happy to pay extra for quality hosting.

[krystalpaul]

I am sure you customers will appriciate it, I am happy to pay extra for quality hosting.

I'm not sure whether many of them are even aware that this is our policy to be honest. I think for us it's more a matter of principle than a selling point.

[temi]

I am sure you customer will not be aware of the policy but if they have hosting with multiple providers they will notice that the sites hosted on your servers are faster.

[krystalpaul]

Yeah that has been the feedback we've been getting. It's potential customers like you, those who are willing to pay a little bit more for a better service, who we are targeting.