I have a reseller client get all mad at me for not having overselling enabled on his reseller account. It is our policy not to allow overselling, but I was curious to know how many hosts provide overselling on their reseller packages.

Got to say no, overselling is a no no, causes too much problems later on, but you will probably find a lot of hosts do it, even if they don't admit to it, anything to squeeze those extra $ out of a server.

Stick with no overselling, why compromise your network and server for a few extra $ ?

We currently do not offer reseller services, but we plan to do so in the near future. When we do so, as of now, we do not plan to allow overselling (things could change, but I doubt it).

Why? It's a good idea to place some sort of limit on how many customers the reseller can sell to. With overselling, the reseller could theoretically purchase a reseller package with 10GB of disk space and resell 5GB hosting plans to 50 users. Each of these users may have CGI-intensive sites, and each of these users (despite them going through one of your resellers) is bound to require a certain amount time from your support team (or you, depending on how large your business is).

If you're carefully planning business growth and accounting for all of your expenses, it's probably not a wise idea to allow overselling on reseller accounts -- just my take.

-Russell

Bandwidth overselling (only within reason though). Disk space must be purchased in advanced. Simply put, once disk space is sold/accounted for a new server is purchased. Disk space can not "grow" with the accounts, bandwidth usually can.

As for your customer, did you advertise overselling, or did they just assume it? If you advertised it, and then didn't come through - well then...but I get the impression you didn't do that.

Anyways, hope I help in some meager way...good luck!

Originally posted by VanHost
Bandwidth overselling (only within reason though). Disk space must be purchased in advanced. Simply put, once disk space is sold/accounted for a new server is purchased. Disk space can not "grow" with the accounts, bandwidth usually can.


Yes, but I think we're talking about two different things. I believe the original poster was talking about allowing resellers to oversell. I think you're talking about overselling space to resellers. These are fairly different topics.

A hosting provider with 100GB of available disk space could sell 10GB of space to 10 resellers. No overselling there... but each reseller could oversell if overselling is allowed, thus, allowing the reseller to sell to 1GB to 20 clients. In my opinion, this is somewhat of a bad thing for the reasons I mentioned earlier.

-Russell

we dont and we dont allow our resellers to either, its just wrong.

Originally posted by VanHost
Bandwidth overselling (only within reason though). Disk space must be purchased in advanced.

Originally posted by Rusty500
A hosting provider with 100GB of available disk space could sell 10GB of space to 10 resellers. No overselling there... but each reseller could oversell if overselling is allowed, thus, allowing the reseller to sell to 1GB to 20 clients.

In regards to my original post, perhaps I was unclear. We only allow resellers to oversell their bandwidth NOT their disk space. Meaning, a reseller who purchases 1gb/10gb could sell 20 accounts at 100mb/1gb if they wanted. Whatever DISK SPACE they sell, they have to have to purchase. For the simply fact that hard drives are physically fixed amounts of space. Bandwidth is "usually" expandable if need be.

I understood the original post, perhaps I was just unclear in my response. Hope this helps clear things up. In summary, we allow resellers to oversell BANDWIDTH WITHIN REASON, but NEVER DISK SPACE.

Thanks.

No, we don't advertise overselling. Most of our ads state we don't oversell our servers in fact. It just kind of got my steam up that he is on a promotional plan paying $10.61/month for 3GB/30GB and assumed that he would be able to oversell when we do not advertise or allude to overselling anywhere. He was arguing to me that most hosts allow this which raised my curiosity and is why I posted this poll. I agree with Rusty500 on overselling. It is hard to maintain quality service if you oversell.


Originally posted by VanHost
Bandwidth overselling (only within reason though). Disk space must be purchased in advanced. Simply put, once disk space is sold/accounted for a new server is purchased. Disk space can not "grow" with the accounts, bandwidth usually can.

As for your customer, did you advertise overselling, or did they just assume it? If you advertised it, and then didn't come through - well then...but I get the impression you didn't do that.

Anyways, hope I help in some meager way...good luck!

No I don't. A little lesson to be learned from it as well. I had a reseller who I was allowing to resell. One of his clients clocked up just over 55GB in a couple of days. The reseller was on a 10/1 plan!

It was a very good job caught them, since the reseller ran and didn't pay the bill.

And yes, typically that same reseller accused me of trying to "con" more money out of them when I told them they needed to up their plan, and that I wouldn't allow them to oversell.

My advice- don't do it. It's so much more simpler. If it's the kind of client you want to be dealing with- they won't be overselling their services. If it's the kind of kid who's overselling the bandwidth and space- then more often than not, they are problematic...and I cannot be doing with the hassle.

Did you accounting / control panel system not limit their actual space used?

What your resellers do with their space and bandwidth allotments is really their business. If they want to oversell their space I don't think that is our area to judge really.

We allow limited oversell of bandwidth only by a reseller, and only if they request it and they must have a current credit card on file with us, no paypal payments. The limit can be anywhere from 20% of their plan to 50% depending on which of our plans they have.

Space cannot be oversold on our servers.

Allowing overselling(space & BW) reseller accounts is a great way to get them upgraded to larger accounts after a while?

I allow overselling personally. When deciding on a business plan and business practises it was a very difficult decision to make.

Overselling is allowed on both disk space and bandwidth. But the difference is that we do not over sell disk space ourselves.
Admitidly we do oversell bandwidth a little but to be honest I believe that is acceptable as none of our servers come close to the allocated datacenter limits (700GB + 1000GB limits).

Overselling can certainly go drastically wrong, but it is all down to how you manage your servers. Crazy overselling will just lead to trouble, like squeezing as many clients on a server as possible for one.

We allowed "controlled overselling." We do have a clause in our TOS relating to ethical business practices. We would certainly allow someone with a 1GB/15GB Reseller Account to sell 10 100MB/2GB accounts priced at $7.95 per month per account. However, we will not allow someone with that same account to sell 10 500MB/10GB accounts for $2.95 per month. It is a judgement call, but we do communicate with our resellers. However, we want successful and profitable resellers. We do not want those who are going to leave their customers stranded.