Overselling Yes, it is done

[Spyda 0]

So many hosts out there oversell, like Host monster. They say they give out like 3000gb bandwidth for only 5.99 a month, which is ridiculous if you ask me. How can they give so much for so little of a price, and let me tell you that many hosts do that. One host would give you 30000gb of bandwidth, which is unmatched for only 10/month. Yeah there overselling, I'll tell you what!

Edited January 26, 2008 by bk2070 (see edit history)

[polter 0]

I tottaly agree with you. I;ve also been duped a couple of times by these so called unlimited space/Bw etc offers. You sign up, and say, you need somthing like MySQL, then you have to pay for it. And they advertise themselves as free web hosting sites. I could name a few but i won't cos it don't really matter now that I'm applying for Xisto, for which I've read almost every review that there is on the internet

[aegreatone 0]

I dont think it's overselling, I think the internet is growing, I remember owning a domain texasrap.com 2002 and it cost me 35 bucks a yr..now purchasing domain sites is 3-10 bucks or even free (co.cc) or .tk (ad supported)and with that website i mention, i was paying 20bucks a month for a measliy 5gigs/???bandwidth on powweb in 2002..circa 2008 powweb is according to ya'll "overselling" with unlimited everything..are they? no clue but I know bluehost also is doing the same thing and there getting rave reviews.I think unlimited is the pro paid web hosting of the future...internet is growing and growing.

[joeblogg 0]

i don't understand how it is bad. there are just giving you more for your money!

[galexcd 0]

The only way to compete with other hosts now is to oversell. Pretty much all hosts are doing it and it's not a bad thing. According to the law of large numbers the more samples of a random number you take, the closer the average will converge to one number, and that number will never be anywhere close to the maximum each number can be. In other words if a webhost oversells and has, say one thousand customers, even if many of those customers use all of their available space and bandwidth, the average space and bandwidth used by each customer can be calculated, and that exact measurement of disk size can be then met by purchasing that many hard drives for the server. Do you really think that google has 7+ gigs per gmail member stored in some building some where just waiting to be used? No. Even if I were to sign up over one thousand gmail accounts and upload the max 7 gigs of space on each one it wouldn't affect them in the least. Heck, i'm sure even xisto oversells, but I'm not entirely sure, I don't want to speak for a company I don't work for, but the fact that they've stayed in business as long as they have I assume they do.

[Ousk 0]

Overselling is not that bad i think they have some statistics, and that is how they cam up with this offer. U have 3000GB bandwidth but how many of their subscribers really use 3000 gb? If they did the math right there is no problem if not it's bad. It like when your email had 50m of space and then came another provider that gave 1g male for free. it's not like everyone uses that 1g.So in conclusion the users that pay 6$ and use 1g bandwidth actually pay for a guy that also pays 6$ but uses 3000g of bandwidth.The nice thing about these sites is not that u will really use 3000gb but at least u know that your not gonna hit your cap, and u don't have that thorn in the back that your bandwidth will run out when u hit 5g or 10g.

[networker 0]

It happens all the time.I thought there were laws against false advertising.You sign up with them and go through a whole thing of posting all kinds ofmessages on a forum,only to find that something likephp sendmail isn't enabled after all. I'm not talking about Xisto.Trap17 has been excellent.It's justsome of these others we all know.

Edited January 5, 2009 by networker (see edit history)

[rpgsearcherz 5]

The only way to compete with other hosts now is to oversell. Pretty much all hosts are doing it and it's not a bad thing. According to the law of large numbers the more samples of a random number you take, the closer the average will converge to one number, and that number will never be anywhere close to the maximum each number can be. In other words if a webhost oversells and has, say one thousand customers, even if many of those customers use all of their available space and bandwidth, the average space and bandwidth used by each customer can be calculated, and that exact measurement of disk size can be then met by purchasing that many hard drives for the server. Do you really think that google has 7+ gigs per gmail member stored in some building some where just waiting to be used? No. Even if I were to sign up over one thousand gmail accounts and upload the max 7 gigs of space on each one it wouldn't affect them in the least. Heck, i'm sure even xisto oversells, but I'm not entirely sure, I don't want to speak for a company I don't work for, but the fact that they've stayed in business as long as they have I assume they do.

There's actually a post about Xisto doing overselling, located here : http://forums.xisto.com/topic/356-unlimited-free-space-and-bandwidth/

 

As for my view of it...It really just depends to me. I don't see anything wrong with overselling as long as some people can get their maximum. Most will not even get near it. A lot of people who want websites hosted only use up a small part of their space and/or bandwidth.

 

The issue for me comes in when you expect to have a certain amount of bandwidth and then run out early and your site is shut down because of it(even if it is only until the end of the month when it rolls back over). That can be detrimental to websites for businesses and other important things.

 

Also, most web hosts that use "overselling" will kick you off for using them as file hosters. By "100 TB of space" what they mean is "If you can manage to use up 100 TB of space using nothing but .html and .php text files, sure, you can fill it!"

 

The issue is that a lot of people will view it and say "Hm $1.99 for 1 gb of space and 3 gb of bandwidth or $4.99 for unlimited of both...Let's go with unlimited." Everyone judges by the numbers, not the quality.

[liod 0]

Yea, lot of people out there are searching cheap host with plenty paln.Then, after registered, the felt regret because the don`t think the host`s quality

[princeofvegas 0]

Overselling is great for the companies in their advertising and is also great for certain users because they can get more space for a lower price. When companies sell you 3000gb of bandwidth they do not expect you to use all 3000gb of bandwidth. One thing to watch out for is most companies who will remain nameless (cough***hostgator***cough), will have a clause in their agreement that will state if you use more than 25 percent of the shared servers processor for more than a few seconds then your hosting account will be banned until you upgrade to a VPS or a dedicated server. And trust me, they are not afraid to ban your accounts when you are using that much space. I signed up for hostgator when they were giving away 50GB of space and I hosted a video site so I just started uploading... after about 33 gigs, hostgator contacted me telling me that if I used any more space they would suspend me. I was like, well your site says I have 50 gigs of storage. This lady on the other end of the phone then said something that I will never forget... "ya but we dont expect users to actually use all of the space provided". lol So in short, overselling can affect high volume web masters such as myself.

[Tramposch 1]

What you call "overselling" is really just enhancements in technologies. They can provide cheap space because they have massive hard drives for cheap now. The biggest HDD for a consumer to buy is 1.5TB; I think it is like $200. Now imagine what a company can get. Probably multiple TB drives for the same price. And when you have a lot of sites on one server, the break even comes quick. And for bandwidth, faster connections are substantially cheaper. I have a 6 MB/s connection at my house and pay $35/mo. A multiple GB/s connection at server farms is probably only a few hundred a month. It is just more available.Also, nobody who needs that much bandwidth will get those hosting packages. It is a selling point. If your website is that popular, you have multiple dedicated servers to distribute the load. Shared hosting can't handle that. Same with the massive space. Nobody needs it, but it is nice to know it is there.

[mandla 0]

Another thing we hav to take into account is that while some of the hosting companies are english websites that doesnt mean they are English based as in based in USa and England. They could be based in CHina and Japan where it is legal to actually exagerate and over sell. Similarly when you buy a phone on a chinese based sales point they will tell you it has 10Gig memory and 3G with a 12 Meg CamerA AND ON RECIEVING it you will find that Its had a cemera that is 2,5 meg only that the chip was made by a comany called Twelve Meg, and the The phone is the 3rd Generation model hence the term 3g.So be carefully. Another thing is trully most companies are just doing what many companies around the world do. You buy a Bugati Veyron the Speedometer will read max speed 320Km and hour but at its fastest the car will drive at 180km and hour and if you query they will say we didnt think you'd actually go that fast. I mean in England we get Mobile phone deals which say 35 pounds a month get free texts and unlimited calls and internet browsing but whne you read the small print it says fair Usage Policy. How can it be unlimited if you have a fair usage policy. Because maybe the only reason you are getting that contract is because you dont wanna use the phone sparingly. Maybe your girlfriend is moving to a different town and the two of you will be on the phone for hours on end who knows. Then again usually people dont question the overselling because it looks impressive on paper and is prestigous when telling freineds lol

[mra550 0]

lol that is ridiculously xD they just want to have some sales maybe they ran out of customers in their company that's why they are overselling their space with a low price and what if a 1000 users or webmasters purchase that? wow they sure have a very large computers and a monster softwares in their company if that so

[Spyda 0]

I posted this topic two years ago and it's still getting some responses :angel:The whole point of this topic was just to let people know that overselling occurs even with the bigger companies. The funny thing is, if anybody even used nearly that much space on their hosting account they would be suspended instantly. Though, like Tramposch mentioned nobody who needs that much space would be on shared hosting.