This may be a big stupid question, how do most web hosting companies sell there web space for real low prices?
I see 200 GB and 2000 GB of transfer how do that do all that and give them the world for $4.95 or so?
Most drives out there are 160 GB and our servers allow you 1500 GB transfer per month. You would have to give the WHOLE server for $4.95.

So just wondering HOW do they do that?

First,
Not all of the clients use these specs.
Most of the clients(90%) use the 5% of this(10Gb + 75Gb Traffic)
And these are high for medium traffic site.
Second many of the companies are doing the famous " overselling"
The safe overselling is good,have as a result to provide low prices,in high quality(most of them out there)
So,dont think that the customers uses 100% of the specs;)

Regards,

Hello,

I understand over selling but what I see looking around most hoster are doing the over selling. All you would need is some one to use what you sold them use up the 160 GB of space and 1500 gb of transfer you will lose out big time.

As i Explain you,overselling isnt the only solution.
The reason which the hosts offers too many specs is that customers in 90% of them,doesnt need all of these!
Because i was customer of such a king of companies,years ago,many customers thinks such like " I would take a big package,with big specs so if i will need it in the future,not to pay more"
So the most of them use veri little specs so the companies can give so high specs.
Also it is a marketing tip(Other sounds the 5gb Space and other the 100Gb space;)
Regards,

The key is that generally server resources such as CPU and memory are used up long before such high amounts of space and bandwidth will ever be reached.

I dont think that these amounts of bw and space even reach by the customers ;)

I dont think that these amounts of bw and space even reach by the customers ;)


There not

I used to have a hosting account with 500mb space and 25GB Bandwidth back a few years ago when it was all a bit more "sensible"

I didnt use more than 125mb space and 1.5gb of bandwidth

So why people by 20GB of space and 200GB b/w I dont know

I had a customer, who had a blog, on this blog he just put pictures in 3 days he spend 20 giga of bandwidth, I adviced him to change format of the picts and reduce the size a little, he answered "I dont want to compromise the quality of my blog" ....

20Gb by 3 pictures?
Oh!
What format was? bmp?
And what size to have so much traffic?

I currently host my website on a 250GB/2000GB , unlimited domains package. I use 100mb and have a 300mb bandwidth average for the last two months(thats when i bought the hosting). The customer service and all isn't very good but the specs were quite tempting at such low prices.

Nthrax, I think you're the stereotype for why these hosts do so well. I don't mean that in a bad way by any stretch of the imagination and I appreciate your honesty for that matter.

These hosts capitalize on our natural desire for security (in terms of enough resources) and a good price. Most people are willing to sacrifice a little on support. The reality is most client sites don't use that many resources in a shared environment.

20Gb by 3 pictures?
Oh!
What format was? bmp?
And what size to have so much traffic?

not 3 pictures but in 3 DAYS, he spend 20 giga, the pictures were much more then 3, and all of them in bmp format, I think to load the page was like 10 mega the interesting thing he had a lot of readers....:mad:

Oups,my mistake!
But again,20GB for pictures(not for filehosting service,this is other) are too much!

Overselling is 100% marketing gimmick. Hosts that oversell are counting on you to use a fraction of your resource allocation. If they were to actually allow the full usage of what you purchase, they would go out of business very quickly. Bandwidth, power, support, billing all cost money to run.

Companies that oversell also have to count on high volume due to the low prices. This in turn creates a huge support nightmare for many of them where they struggle to provide quality support for huge client bases (if at all).

On top of that, if you get anywhere near using 50% of the resources offered, you'll likely have your account suspended or even worse, terminated.

I would not be surprised if 70%+ of all the complaints on these forums about bad hosts stem directly or indirectly from overselling in one form or another.

It's unfortunate but since hosting at the entry level (new to hosting, small site clients, etc) is now commoditized, that means there's nothing left to compete on but price. Since everyone is trying to compete for these clients, they crank down already absurdly low prices and offer their entire operations worth of resources in each package.

The road to a poor hosting experience:

1) Host has limited resources (Reseller account, VPS, single dedicated, etc). They must pack as many users as they can onto every resource they have.

2) In order to get clients they offer enormously oversold hosting packages in the hopes that users will see that and think they are getting a great deal.

3) Host takes on tons of these clients with no solid support structure in place and is being hit with large ticket loads daily which they can't address efficiently.

4) Overselling host doesn't want to spend the money for new servers and resources so service quality goes down the tubes.

5) By taking on any and all clients, host has let in those users who have high traffic sites or serve tons of content (or even spam) and they actually start using those ridiculous amounts of resources promised in the host's packages.

6) Everyone sharing a server with these users suffers serious issues with their own site's usability.

7) Host has no choice but to suspend or terminate the user because now his ticket load has tripled with complaints.

8) Banned user now shows up on WHT and flames your company because you didn't honor your advertised offer.

9) This causes a ripple effect as more clients up and leave (often sadly for another host doing the same thing).

10) Host gets fed up with the hosting business (or realizes that it actually is a business that requires serious commitment) and sells you off to another overseller or worse, shuts the server down with no warning. These forums are filled with this kind of story.

In hosting, like anything else, you get what you pay for.

My two (maybe four) cents.

Search: overselling. No further discussion on this topic is required.

IMO people that offer those kind of plans speculate on how much a certain website is going to use.

I would never host any of those huge plans due to server performance.

I would offer a maximum of 10gb disk space and 30gb bandwidth to one customer who wishes to host 5 websites on 1 account.

Resellers are different though as most people are resellers when it comes to shared hosting.

They offer UNLIMITED plans which truely is not possible.

Dom