Why is it that some hosting companies can offer you 400GB/ Month for a lower price than other hosting companies who may only offer you 100GB/month? Is bandwith really that expensive? I mean it's the second most important part of running a website.

Different companies offer different specs because of many reasons, not the least of which is purchasing power. A larger hosting company may be able to receive servers at a discount. Also, some companies oversell resources, providing attractive plans, which they hope that you won't use all of your disk space and bandwidth.

Finally, I'd have to disagree with your blunt statement of "second most important thing". What is the most important? Some people care about uptime, customer support, etc.

This answers his question, but I'll add to it. You get a bandwidth that you most likely will never need and the support that you will need is never there when you do need it, especially when your site is down due to poorly managed overselling. No one says that you have to pay an arm and a leg to get what you need, but why pay less for something that you do need and can't use it!

Link did say

I was not saying that it was the most important thing for EVERYONE. I think it is the second most important thing following space. You need space to make a website, then you would need the bandwith so that users can see your website. In my opinion the third most important thing would be uptime, obviously those three things are really close in importance but that is the order I would put them in.

You know guys, for me it's important that my hosting will be not only reliable, with not high prices, uptime 99.9% (especially in the late evening hours), good support 24/7, but not to oversell as well (or at least not much) because then it causes a lot of issues later.

Different Datacenter have different prices for bandwidth =D... You just have to find the right datacenter...

Hello,

the allocation of bandwidth really depends on the hosting company that how much they have to offer to their clients depending on the server and also on the datacenter. The datacenter should allocate ample bandwidth to the server that the hosting company offers so that they can offer you better bandwidth..

Thank you.

Regards,

That's really interesting, i mean I've never given a thought to looking for a datacenter, but not for a hosting company. Maybe, it makes sense, after all.
But one more thing I'd like to ask is who has seriously suffered because of overselling? People are afraid of this thing, but if properly done, it's just for everybody's benefit.

Bandwidth definitely has gotten ridiculous lately. I used to think we offered a lot of bandwidth, but we aren't even close to some of the offers out there now. Support and uptime can be issues with hosts overselling. That's the main reason we've backed off on playing the super resources game. We'd rather have great support and uptime than up the resources just to get new people that think they need that much stuff (and usually don't).

One thing to keep in mind is that bandwidth quality can vary from host to host. Not all IP transit providers (the Internet backbone companies hosts buy bandwidth from) are equal. Some hosts may use lower quality IP transit providers which will decrease their bandwidth costs, allowing them to offer you more bandwidth, but the bandwidth performance will not be as good. That could result in higher latency (slower ping times), packet loss, more frequent downtimes, etc., which will all have a negative effect on the performance of your site. Also, some hosts may only have one transit provider, which may decrease their costs but it also decreases reliability because if that one connection goes down, everything goes down. Good bandwidth isn't inexpensive. Much of the reason you see big bandwidth offers from hosts is because, like others have said, they are overselling.

You know, guys, overselling can be controlled and without any one. As far as I know nearly all hosting companies do it. I think if the company is big and reputable it cares about it very much because if the client is unsatisfied with the service of the company he informs the community about it and nobody else applies to this one for hosting service. But for me personally overselling (BIG) = often downtime.

It's called "Overselling". Overselling is the practice of selling more disc space and/or bandwidth then you actually have. So what they do is this.

If the host has 1,000GB of bandwidth, and 80gb disc space, they sell it as if they have 2,000GB bandwidth and 160GB disc space. This is because when a user buys a hosting package, they generally only use about %20 of what they purchased. They might buy a 1gb /20gb package, and only use 250mb/5gb . This leaves room for the host to oversell.

The bad part about this is that when / if any of the users actually use what they have purchased, the server then becomes extremely unstable, and can cause downtime, or decreased server performance. The only upside goes into the hosts pocket. If you see a host offering a crazy amount of bandwidth for pennies, it is best to find another host, as you can almost guarantee that the server will soon be overloaded, and you'll be left with very little uptime, or very slow speeds.

There is also a difference in bandwidth. Teir 1 bandwidth, or level 1 bandwidth is the best obviously, and then there is cognent bandwidth. It's like the difference between bootleg clothes and genuine. While the bootleg clothes might look great, they will never last as long, or fit as well as the genuine clothes.

Its either the company is overselling. Our they acutally mean it. Also it can be corporate scams

not one of these are actually a good thing.

1. If they are overselling, you're placing your bets on that host, that they are overselling properly and efficiently. Most do not. Which is why you see so many complaints everywhere, about new hosts.

2. If they mean it, typically this can mean one of two things...1. They've received a nice discount, or 2. They purchased really cheap stuff. Ask the host which they've done, and I'll bet you 10 of 10 will say they got a discount, when in reality 2 of 10 actually did.

3. Corporate scams of course speak for themselves and can fall into either of the above two categories.

Exactly. Its all about the Corporate scams. that the average user sometimes does not pick up