I think where overselling gets a bad image are from those companies that come out and offer the "Unlimited" bandwidth and disk space packages. However, I know that while building up my client-base I need to keep overhead down by either using a reseller account or a VPS. I will get something larger when I have enough clients to justify moving (ensuring that I do not get too close to my resource limit). Did some of you larger companies start out by overselling your allowed resources? Or did you jump straight into a dedicated server and just tried to market well to quickly build up clients and bit the bullet on your overhead?

I had a reseller and oversold just a little bit. None of my clients ever went over the limit for their account. It really depends on what the user requires in terms of resources. I never got in trouble or stuck into any bad position overselling wise. You just need to know your limits and depending on how many clients you have, it sometimes might not be a bad idea to oversell. I wasn't expecting to have TONS of customers at all. Just a smaller userbase, based off my reseller account.

A dedicated server is a good idea, if you are overselling. Just because moving over from reseller to dedicated, can get really annoying for your users. People hate having to move over or wait for services. So depending on what your strategies are just be sure you plan it all long term

All the best.

Actually,
When I started in the business, I never oversold. I use to run my own company a few years ago and I was given low limits on space and bandwidth so I had to learn then what many companies don't seem to understand now. No person out there is going to need a ton of bandwidth for a low cost. I use to have a policy when I ran my own business. The policy was if you could buy a brand new HDD with that my space (THAT WORKED) for that price I would offer it. Sadly no one ever was ever to show me a HDD for the price they were asking for. Now of course we all know that bandwidth is measured in different ways so.... But the point is that those individuals who want 300 GB for 2.00/month are not going to get it from me. I just don't see how a business who uses that much bandwidth a month is crying about anything higher than that price. I mean unless they just do not understand that some of our features cost money. Oh Well. Thats my story,

I think very few hosts don't oversell but then there is (at least in my opinion) 2 forms of overselling:

firstly a little bit of contention, but not enough to degrade service (usually at the network level) and secondly hyper-overselling where even if everyone used only 5% of their allowed space then the server would simply fall over (albeit due to full disk, maxed io or similar).

We don't oversell anything on our VPS (although there is contention on the network uplink the VPS don't notice any degradation of service due to this). Dedicated servers, what can you oversell? most networks (at least in my experience with UK networks) have more than enough capacity available to allow for a server to use all its monthly transfer and more.

The interesting part arises at shared hosting, on our small shared hosting platform we expect a user to use 75% of their resources but all servers have space for extra hdd and RAM if needed as opposed to maxing the server in terms of disk and ram then piling it high, as this gives us a last resort if a server is using a lot more io or whatever. Obviously then if you're offering reseller accounts then the reseller can start overselling but there's very little you can do there

Disable overselling, limit the overselling factor, or undersell enough to compensate the overselling of resellers would be some of the options. Not that a bit of overselling is likely to hurt anyone.

No, I did not get started by overselling. Dedicated clients see past the oversellers, because they realize that the plans they see are impossible to maintain. They will always come to the host with realistic plans.

No we did not start by overselling either. We have never oversold on our servers and never will do. Nor do we offer hosting at ridiculous prices of £2.00 a month for 300GB space and bandwidth. We set limits of how many users are allowed to be on a node at any one time which ensures each user can use their guaranteed resources without degradation in service.

We have never oversold and don't believe in doing so. However, each person is allowed to his opinion and since the overselling debate can continue forever and ever (until a law is passed)...I feel there is nothing really wrong in overselling as long as you have a backup ethical contigent plan for when the user starts using more storage or bandwidth than you have really..(like immediately upgrading and NOT dumping the client off).

Regards

I am selling vps, but I do not oversell them. This will only make problems and customer will leave and refund, if they payed via moneybookers or paypal.

I have never oversold any of the services that i offer to clients . As other posters have said , you will see more dedication from your clients if you can provide them with the service that they pay for. They want there website to load fast and to be availible all of the time. Also they want high quality support any time of the day or night incase something goes wrong

Well GeekRack had alot of start up oney from the owners. We bought 3 servers and and quickly made deals with the datacenters to get the lowes tpossible prices and then start selling and past savings to customes. We did not oversell and we make it clear we do not oversell. Now we are growing at about 26 new servers a week. (because of our high volume of dedicated servers)

We have never oversold since launch. We, like geekrack, negotiated awesome deals with our datacenter (only 1 server atm) and we're passing savings onto our customers that way, but without overselling.

IMO overselling = lying, but I see why so many hosts do it.

can you please define overselling? -- i think this will cause a difference for a lot of people

WHAT REALLY IS OVERSELLING??

I am no master of definitions, but that doesn't mean I can't access Wikipedia.

Overselling is a term used in the web hosting industry to describe a situation in which a company provides hosting plans that are unsustainable if every one of its customers uses the full extent of services advertised. The term is usually referred to the web space and bandwidth transfer allowance.

Just expanding on what Art said,

Say company X is offering 300GB space and 6TB Bandwidth for $5 a month - they dont expect you to use that much space (chances are you will never) so they thinkthey can oversell.

If all the clients on the server actually used up 300GB Space and 6TB bandwidth, unless the hosting provider had a HUGE HUGE NAS and a huge bandwidth allowence from their carriers, they would run into a hell of a lot of problems.

What i may do sometime is get one opf these huge cheap accounts from one of the providers and actually attempt to fill up 300GB space - if i get shell access to be able to create directories and copy them and download files using wget or ftp it should not be a problem.

If i do do this i will let you know how i get on