HostSeries

What is Overselling?
This is a great question. And it’s important that a consumer know what overselling is. Overselling is basically the practice of selling more hard drive space, bandwidth, and other resources that the web host has. Why would a webhost do this? Simple - to maximize profits.

As an example: A webhost may have a server which has a 250GB hard drive, and let’s say dual Xeon 2.0ghz, 2gb ram.
And they sell a hosting plan with 5GB Space, 100GB Bandwidth. So realistically you would only be able to put 50 accounts on the server, just because of hard drive limitations. However, the webhost might put 300-500 accounts on this server, because they know that most customers aren’t going to use the full 5GB alotted to them. That’s just one area of overselling.

What’s the big deal?
Other than the fact that it’s “dishonest” in a sense - there isn’t a problem. That is, unless the webhosting company oversells too much. There’s more than just disk space to consider when a webhost oversells. CPU and ram should be considered, as well as the amount of network bandwidth that’s available. So if done right, overselling can be to the advantage of the consumer and the webhost. Consumers usually get alot more bang for their buck (whether they use them or not) and the webhost can be more profitable. Unfortunately, alot of webhosts don’t properly oversell, and it ends up costing the customer - mainly in performance, because the server ends up being overloaded.

Is Overselling Okay?
This is a long debated question. And I’m sure that it will continue to be debated as long as the hosting industry exists.
My personal opinion… Yes it’s good to give customers loads of “stuff” with their account. Knowing that most customers don’t use the resources that they are given, doesn’t change the fact that you are “giving” them someone that you can’t reasonably give them. And knowing that customers don’t use the resources given - why give it to them? Why give them empty promises? Give them a little more resources then the average user uses, and give them over bundled services to make their experience good. And educate customers about overselling.

I hope this article has provided some incite into overselling. I would love to hear your feedback!