Overselling

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Phlint.com

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Overselling s a very big issue that almost everyone is aware of. But, is it totally wrong?

Most people say it is beacuse you are selling and promising more than you can offer. But if your clients, like most clients, dont use as much as you have given them, why not add a few more clients and 'Oversell' when you know it wont be a problem? Most clients dont use that much space anyways, they feel comfort when they have a gig of hosting space and tons of bandwidth.

Personally, Overselling is totally wrong, its not ethical, if you sell someone a house, and they only use their bedroom, kitchen and family room, would it be okay to give someone the keys so they can use the dining room? No, its just not right. Now, take away the fact that there are privacy issues and thats the same as overselling, its wrong!
 
I completely agree. Overselling is an unacceptable way of squeezing more money our of a server. Not only is it selling other clients' space and bandwidth, but it often ends in a server becoming overloaded and having serious uptime problems.
 
IMHO, overselling is a lie to the clients. For the clients it's like paying for 100% even if they are not using the 100% alloted resources and their unused resources are also sold to other clients. So it generates a considerable amount of profit for the overselling hosts. In short they are sacrificing quality performance, security and reliability to achieve profitability.
 
Overselling is wrong it is like you going to a company which you dont have much knowledge about and getting cheated for giving your custom all customers should be given there needs and served respectibaly thats when a company succeds and also gets a good reputation :)
 
Ok, I'll play devils-advocate here.....

Overselling is absolutely necessary in today's market, and if done correctly, will have no negative effect on the customers.

(Now let me hide behind my desk as you all start throwing tomatoes.... tomoatoes please.... no rocks!)

I think it's pretty obvious that hosting companies offering lots of space and bandwidth for under $5/month are indeed overselling. The truth of the matter is, hosting customers rarely use more than 50 MB of storage space..... even though they went with company A who offered 5,000 mb, over company B who only offered 500 MB. The extra storage space is a seller, a benefit.... even if it will never be used.

The same goes for bandwidth. You'll buy as much as possible, just in case your business takes off and your website gets really popular. But in reality, most sites don't come anywhere close to using 5 GB of monthly data transfer.

In order to make a profit (and yes, that's what hosting companies must do in order to stay in business), if a hosting company wants to offer 5,000 mb storage accoutns with 50 gb bandwidth for $5/month, they MUST oversell. And if it's managed properly, that is, if the company tracks what accounts are using what resources, and pro-actively moves accounts to other servers to balance the load if and when needed, then the customers will never see any negative effects from over-selling.

But again, the reality is, hosting companies will rarely ever have to do this, since the vast majority of customers won't use anywhere near the storage and bandwidth limits given to them.

Am I right? Or am I right?

Cheers :)

Rob.
 
I don't agree with you Rob,

It is totally understandable that the hosts oversell because of profits. For the overselling hosts there really is no limit and there is no too much. Ultimately it comes down to what a customer thinks is ridiculous or too much. As long as these hosts can get away with it without running into too much hassle, they will continue to push the line a little further until one day the line can be pushed no further.

As long as consumers remain uneducated about the industry, they leave themselves open to be taken advantage of. Infact by driving down the prices and increasing the number of customers per box, these hosts are actually driving themselves out of business. Low prices will result in poor service and ultimately a bad experience for the customer. So many hosting clients have been harmed by overselling, poor performance, reliability issues as well as poor customer support due to which they have become suspicious of trusting any hosting company.
 
ah but I think we're talking about two different things now.

Overselling (if done properly) will not result in poor service. Overloading a server will. There is a difference. You CAN oversell without overloading a server.

Maybe I should clarify what I deem to be overselling.

Overselling: When a host sells accounts with a certain amount of storage space, and when you add up the maximum amount of storage space an account is allowed to use for all accounts on a given server, the total amount will be more than what the hard drive in that server can hold. That's what I consider overselling.

Overloading: This is a little fuzzier. But it's when a host has too many accounts on a server, such that the performance of the server decreases. The result is typically slow response times, servers going down and often needing reboots, customers not being able to connect to their accounts, etc.

My point is that it is possible to oversell, and not overload..... as long as the web host monitors their servers closely in case they've mis-judged how much storage space their customers will be using.

But I think you'd be hard pressed to find many hosts tha only sell as much storage space as their hard drives allow.

Example: A host sells only 5 GB storage accounts, and has a large 120 GB hard drive in his servers (= 100 GB usable space). 100 GB / 5 GB = 20 hosting accounts. That means without overselling, 12 accounts is all the host could put on that server. That's not practical, especially since most customers won't come anywhere near 5 GB of used storage space. A server (even if it's just a P4, 2.4 GHz with 1 GB RAM) can typically handle MANY more accounts than that (it's hard to say how many, because that depends on the types of scripts, etc that customers will be using).

So my point is this: I have no problem with hosts overselling their storage space, as long as they manage it properly. But I would have a problem with hosts overloading their servers. That, I think, is the bigger problem.... many hosting companies today do not know how to properly manage their servers, and end up getting into trouble with servers getting overloaded.

And that is definitely bad for the industry in general.

Bring it on guys!! :)

I think this is a good discussion.

Rob.
 
We also not vote for overselling. Overselling can be understand in this way:-
"Disk Space and Bandwidth are based on Usage. That means that you can sell more disk space to your clients that actually provided in your plan as long as the actual disk space used by your all clients is less than what is allotted to you. If your total client's disk space usage exceeds the amount allocated in your current reseller plan, you can easily upgrade to the next plan." Although we doesn't encourage this sort of overselling, it can be used to boost profits if done in reasonable limits.
 
very interesting comments made by everyone, end of the day everyone is entitled to their own opnions and views... and all seem capable of deciding what is right and wrong.... and am sure you al have valid arguments as to why you are right and why the opponent is wrong..
 
The only way to know if a host is oversold is to query existing clients. Only they know how well their site is resolving, and what outages there are.
 
No, overselling is not completly wrong. Overselling helps a company grow. You just have to know how to use it. As you start, you might need to oversell a few accounts to allow pay the bills and improve your server. After that, just move a few accounts to a new server. Make sure people do not take their space and bandwidth to the top. It's not totally wrong, it's just another way of trying to succed. Many companys use it the wrong way. That's true.
 
You have to know when to draw the line or it will undermine your servers and your customers. Keep a close eye on things and make sure none of your systems get overloaded. You have to know when to stop or else you end up losing a lot of resources if you do not.
 
siteseer said:
rjnsmith what the heck is that kid doing on the couch?
Click to expand...

haha... i dono.. they have had that for years.

I think its suposed to be someone "dreaming" because it is called "dream"host
 
oh. well, to reiterate my point, one whiff my host was overselling would incite me to withdraw and start anew somewhere else. Why run the risk of refferring your urls and have them stall or hang?
 
Lucas said:
No, overselling is not completly wrong. Overselling helps a company grow. You just have to know how to use it. As you start, you might need to oversell a few accounts to allow pay the bills and improve your server. After that, just move a few accounts to a new server. Make sure people do not take their space and bandwidth to the top. It's not totally wrong, it's just another way of trying to succed. Many companys use it the wrong way. That's true.
Click to expand...
Good point, but need to be careful and manage it properly so no client ever gets restricted to acccess anything that he/she have paid for.
 
I agree with hostaddicts the industry is built on overselling. Even the companies which advertise they do not oversell are telling lies. I would say more than 90% of the industry oversells to stay competitive with the hosting world as we know it.
 
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