Well, I guess this whole overselling thing is hard to keep up. Just 10 months ago I was doing hosting plans with 25GB space which I thought was overdoing it. It seems ever 3 months or so the web space just keeps going up for most of the big companies like Hostmonster, BlueHost, IX web Hosting, etc..

Were already at 1TB for $7/mo. When thinking about it I guess it makes sense. I mean, if your gonna offer even 50GB space-thats overselling. . whats the difference between 50GB or 500GB if you don't even have storage to handle 10GB per customer.

I say just get it over with and start to standerdize on Unlimited space/bandwidth. . .

Hey Moe,

Just because I'm curious, did you see much of an increase in customers when you were raising your allowance or are you raising to compete with the larger over-sellers?

Also curious to see the answer to Tom's question :)

1 terrabyte for 6.95.. what a JOKE. I challenge anyone on WHT to prove that this can be done. Unless every damn customer is allocated and entitled their own 1000 GB storage, then this is nothing more than a blatant lie and utter false advertising. This is what makes me sick about this whole industry. Overselling should actually be banned industry wide. Then we'll see some real competition. Until then, its just a circus act.

Starsky: I'm not siding either way, there is a long debate over overselling and not overselling so I won't get into that.

However, it's not a lie as long as the people who want 1Tb of storage can get it. Having 1Tb per customer wouldn't work as we both know, but as long as somebody doesn't get up to 400Gb and run out of disk space and is told 'hard luck' then it's not a lie.

Overselling is not that bad..But as long as you have got a limit over yourself

1TB for $7 a month is possible if its really true. But if its a lie than it wont last long.

Honesty is very important not just oversell and hope to get profits and lots of signup from others.

However, it's not a lie as long as the people who want 1Tb of storage can get it.

Well that's exactly what I'm getting at.

Having 1Tb per customer wouldn't work as we both know, but as long as somebody doesn't get up to 400Gb and run out of disk space and is told 'hard luck' then it's not a lie.

It's really very simple -- if it's not a full 1TB, then it IS a lie. No if ands or buts about it.

1TB for $7 a month is possible if its really true.

That doesn't really make sense! It's possible if it's really true? How do you determine it's possible? :laugh: :eek:

How can any hosting provider offer a TERRABYTE of data storage per customer? First of all, to even need that much is beyond ridiculous, but that's besides the point. Think of the storage hardware required on the host "if it were really true". I have no doubt it is untrue, and complete BS.

Overselling is getting to the point where it is just stupid.

If you look at: http://www.webhostingstuff.com/ you will see all/most are overselling with 300GB hosting space for $6 (ish). Now to me and my staff we look at that and think maybe we should buy from one of these hosting companies plans and just upload 300GB worth and see what they do.

Seeing that a 300GB hard drive (a good one) is around £75-£100 ($150-$200) and they charge £3 ($6) per month... I just dont understand why people go with these companies, they must do the maths.

Take my advice be one of the good companies that you find on here (mostly ;) ) do not oversell to the point of being destroyed if someone starts using up your servers resources.

Thats a lot of my mind lol...

see i think over selling is bad idea. thats why we dont do it lol,
what happnes if u over sell and client actually uses that space then ur screwed, and then ull have to shut them down, and for false advertising they could sue u, and for shutting them down might cause them to lose money depended on what there hosting, then ur in trouble cuase theyll take action or spread bad things about company these are couple reasons why over selling is a bad idea,...

Well, I guess this whole overselling thing is hard to keep up. Just 10 months ago I was doing hosting plans with 25GB space which I thought was overdoing it. It seems ever 3 months or so the web space just keeps going up for most of the big companies like Hostmonster, BlueHost, IX web Hosting, etc..

Were already at 1TB for $7/mo. When thinking about it I guess it makes sense. I mean, if your gonna offer even 50GB space-thats overselling. . whats the difference between 50GB or 500GB if you don't even have storage to handle 10GB per customer.

I say just get it over with and start to standerdize on Unlimited space/bandwidth. . .

In most cases the only new customers you will get from that sort of marketing technique is those that are uneducated about the industry. When I was into games I always thought that bigger was better, but in most cases, bigger doesn't even exist.

Do you really think that hosting provider even has a hard drive that large? I rest my case.

1TB for $7 a month is possible if its really true. But if its a lie than it wont last long.

I'm sorry. But I disagree.

These companies use these limits because they are fantastic for marketing. I've noticed that most hosting clients use roughly the same amount of space. So if you have customers using like 500mb per month, then regardless if you are lying or not you are still able to offer that service.

It's an impossibility that a person would use 1TB of download, everyone knows that. It's also impossible to "Eat As much as you like" but they catch the eye of customers who love big numbers.

It's not about the company lying, its about the greed of the customers, people want bigger better things at lower costs.

I lost! I surrender! The maths simply does not tally, did they teach maths in high school nowadays? Is it blatant overselling. I remember seeing a thread recently about 10T. All in all those oversellers are approaching infinity I guess, wonder when 1 GOOGLE bytes will be out :)

1 terrabyte for 6.95.. what a JOKE. I challenge anyone on WHT to prove that this can be done. Unless every damn customer is allocated and entitled their own 1000 GB storage, then this is nothing more than a blatant lie and utter false advertising. This is what makes me sick about this whole industry. Overselling should actually be banned industry wide. Then we'll see some real competition. Until then, its just a circus act.

Please, not another topic on overselling.

Having said that, 1tB of space, over the top, with all my games, music and Windows I barely use 120gB, what on earth would people store up to 1tB?

1TB of space? Wow, I could fit over 500 clients on that $6.95 account. Sweetness!

i agree 1TB of space for $6 a month is ridiculous. when i was still running infrenion.com a couple of years back, i found it hard to make profits offering 2GB for $7.95 without overselling... imagine 1000GB for $6. sheesh... :confused:

anyway, now that i have left the industry and am now just another customer :D, i find it very interesting scouting around looking for a host that can offer the most for my measly $10/m. Currently I'm with hostgator and using over 200GB out of my 600GB allotment. (haven't been booted yet). The speeds are good, the bandwidth is fast, support is very decent and i have not had any downtime since being with them for 3 months. :agree:

I have been in contact with a BlueHost client and he is about to leave. His download speed to his website is <100 kb/sec. When he contacted BlueHost they told him that is to be expected and acceptable.

Oversold box = poor performance

As much as everyone may hate overselling, it is here and it's not gonna be going anywhere. If anything, any host that wants to keep their head above water will need to change business plans to keep up. While I see [most] people have valid points, I find it hard for me to get upset about it because I know theres nothing we can do about it.

I think more companies even us are starting to make it a big point to show that we do not oversell...

Making it clear to people almost as soon as they go onto your website that this space is dedicated to you and know one else makes people think maybe I will be better off with them instead of someone that clearly does over sell.

Take a look at site5's reselling package, it's another joke.

Please buy from them, why should ppl buy a real dedicated svr if such thing exist.

i agree 1TB of space for $6 a month is ridiculous. when i was still running infrenion.com a couple of years back, i found it hard to make profits offering 2GB for $7.95 without overselling... imagine 1000GB for $6. sheesh... :confused:

anyway, now that i have left the industry and am now just another customer :D, i find it very interesting scouting around looking for a host that can offer the most for my measly $10/m. Currently I'm with hostgator and using over 200GB out of my 600GB allotment. (haven't been booted yet). The speeds are good, the bandwidth is fast, support is very decent and i have not had any downtime since being with them for 3 months. :agree:

Jeremy right? I thought you make it big and sold ur biz to sb already? :agree: I'm still in biz anyway, lucky me. :cool:

zettabyte of space is around the corner... I've been saving for years and will launch 1 Jan 2024.

Seriously, for home customers, I think if you attempted to load that much data online, your dsl/cable (or whatever) provider would shut you down. Even 500 gb is a lot of data.

I had a large account and what I found is the transfer was so darn slow it was not worth it. I'd hate to think how long it would take to upload 500 gb (or even 100 gb) of data onto a 1 and 1... honestly... you would get gray hair. (I still host some of my domains with 1&1 though.)

Not so much that they can't offer the space, I don't think a user has the ability to actually use that much space (not a normal user anyway).

The problem is if you not Oversell you don´t get customer. Because too much hosts are selling "unlimited" space/bandwith for $1,00 for example.
If you try to be honest you don´t get money.

The problem is if you not Oversell you don´t get customer. Because too much hosts are selling "unlimited" space/bandwith for $1,00 for example.
If you try to be honest you don´t get money.

Yes you do, you get higher quality customers. It just takes time.

Yes you do, you get higher quality customers. It just takes time.

For me quality is everything.

Take a look at site5's reselling package, it's another joke.

Please buy from them, why should ppl buy a real dedicated svr if such thing exist.

I have my own dedicated server because my download speeds will max out at your ISP's download speed. My client's pages load fast and my box is not oversold. Something you can't get at those guy's sites.

I had a reseller package with Hostgator a long time ago. Their server was a very poor performer before they started overselling. I can only image what it is like now. I remember I would look at the server status in WHM and the RAM was at 90%-99% usage. Pages took forever to load and checking email took several minutes just to pull it off of the their server.

Jeremy right? I thought you make it big and sold ur biz to sb already? :agree: I'm still in biz anyway, lucky me. :cool:

Hi,

Yup, it's me. :) And yes, I sold it off to another company. Sold it at a time when all the rubbish 300GB for $6/m plans started to eat away the profits. :D

I bet they'd have something to say when you actualy use the 1tb, they are just bargaining on people not being able to possibly use it

In 2004 when I joined the industry. Everybody hated me because I offerend 4 GB of space and 150 GB of bandwidth for $9.95. Back then hardly any company had similar offers. I was laughing at everybody and my plan worked well...

Now it's 2007 and everybody sells 1000 GB/1000 GB for 5 bucks a month and I am feeling like an idiot because I fueled the overselling and now it's killing me... LOL... 1000 GB is more than twice as much as all of my approx 1000 customers are using combined !!!!

I wonder what they are going to offer by 2010... maybe you can buy shared hosting in datacenter units... Like this:

Economy: 1 datacenter: $3 per month
Business: 5 datacenters: $7 per month
Premium: 10 datacenters: $10 per month

LOL !!!!!

The web hosting industry is like a burger restaurant where you get 150 million burgers for 10 bucks but only if you can eat them in the restaurant.

Guys you just have to face the facts in this industry.

Today, you can basically split the hosting industry into 2 worlds.

A host can target

- People, usually uneducated about hosting, looking to host a site that usually takes up no more than 2-3 gb.

These people are usually new online, and yes, they go to the companies that offer more for their money.

These are the people that the hosting companies target if they where to oversell hosting plans.

- And the people who have been through all the overselling, been around, and online, and learned from there mistakes, or others mistakes. These people obviously take up more reasonable plans because they know what they need, and understand that quality over quantity is best.

There is a much more uneducated crowd than educated which makes it easier to lure in. Why do you think the big companies oversell. Its not because it makes them look good, its because if done correctly there is big money in it. However a new host offering overselling, is unlikely to survive without a serious investment to back it up.

I think if one wants to eliminate overselling, which at this point seems impossible. It will take a lot more than one person launching a site explaining why overselling is bad, or a 1 web host out of 10 that explains to its clients the difference between overselling and not.
These methods have a good effect, but as much as you reach out, you won't hit the spots your looking for unless you found away to get on google's main page or something to educate the crowd :) which would cost a good amount of money.

At the end of the day, the above methods are just two different ways to market. And people should stop getting pissed at it, because business has always been like this, its just that its only just hitting the web hosting industry.

Toyota, offers something, Honda offers something better,
Burger king offers burgers for 1.29, McDonalds offers burgers for 0.99c.
and so on and so forth.

I am not in favor of overselling, Its just at this point and time I am not against it either.

Just my 2 cents in. :)

It's easy to fill up a 1GB hosting plan. Upload a movie, rename it to .iso for instance, or .jpg so that the web host thinks it's a "very" large image :D

Then SSH into your account, copy-paste, copy-paste a number of times, then copy-paste the directory itself several times, etc... You'll reach 10GB...50GB...100GB...200GB...500GB...1TB! In 1-2 minutes :)

Now wait and see, check your mailbox every once in a while :D

And yes they can offer these quotas, as they use SANs, so you can use more than a HDD.

Unlikely, SAN is far too expensive to allow for 1 TB at $6.95/mth. I seriously doubt they will be able to handle just a couple of clients using to capacity.

It's easy to fill up a 1GB hosting plan. Upload a movie, rename it to .iso for instance, or .jpg so that the web host thinks it's a "very" large image :D

Then SSH into your account, copy-paste, copy-paste a number of times, then copy-paste the directory itself several times, etc... You'll reach 10GB...50GB...100GB...200GB...500GB...1TB! In 1-2 minutes :)

Now wait and see, check your mailbox every once in a while :D

And yes they can offer these quotas, as they use SANs, so you can use more than a HDD.

10TB of bandwidth is also way too expensive for $6 a month :)

1 user in every 1000 (maybe more) actually attempt to use the amounts. The larger amounts entice users to sign up more so even though they do not need them. SO it's simply a smart business move

Sadly I would say most customers dont know that they are being oversold.

They just assume BIGGER is BETTER..

so i do feel you on this one, but nothing you can do :(

Well, I guess this whole overselling thing is hard to keep up. Just 10 months ago I was doing hosting plans with 25GB space which I thought was overdoing it. It seems ever 3 months or so the web space just keeps going up for most of the big companies like Hostmonster, BlueHost, IX web Hosting, etc..

Were already at 1TB for $7/mo. When thinking about it I guess it makes sense. I mean, if your gonna offer even 50GB space-thats overselling. . whats the difference between 50GB or 500GB if you don't even have storage to handle 10GB per customer.

I say just get it over with and start to standerdize on Unlimited space/bandwidth. . .

Well that is playing with the chances. What are the chances that most customers use more than 1GB in web space? and 10 GB in monthly bandwidth?

Those oversellers are mostly 'big' companies, and they know there is a big market for new users; put big bucks in campaign and affiliates, its actually worth doing it. Sure there are downsides, people that got occasionally slow connection or got suspended might give negative feedbacks on public forums like WHT; but as long as they keep that percentage low and have a smart way of re-locating those clients; they can still do it well better than other claim-to-be not overseller.

Just my own 2 cents.

I think there is one really good point in this thread that got overlooked.

I say just get it over with and start to standerdize on Unlimited space/bandwidth. . .

It's a good argument and I entirely agree (although maybe "unmetered" is the word to use). Overselling is here to stay, and these offers are going to constantly be getting bigger and more stupid until we really are being offered a zetabyte of space for $2.

Offers of an unlimited/unmetered nature always seem to get shot down by hosts, but is it really that bad? Is it any worse than offering stupendous amounts of space and bandwidth that even Google probably couldn't provide?

see i think over selling is bad idea. thats why we dont do it lol,
what happnes if u over sell and client actually uses that space then ur screwed, and then ull have to shut them down, and for false advertising they could sue u, and for shutting them down might cause them to lose money depended on what there hosting, then ur in trouble cuase theyll take action or spread bad things about company these are couple reasons why over selling is a bad idea,...

That's why they invented the Acceptable Use Policy. To be honest with you, most hosts would suggest that you're using unacceptable amounts of server resources, including RAM and CPU-time. Check the AUP of any random host and you'll find that they protected themselves against such use, whether the host oversells or not they usually have a strong AUP.

Sadly I would say most customers dont know that they are being oversold.

They just assume BIGGER is BETTER..

so i do feel you on this one, but nothing you can do :(

That's true.. but once again that has a lot to do with who your target market is. If your target market is the inexperienced then that would be true. The reverse with the experienced :)

Clearly overselling is an issue for an Association of some sort to perhaps put a strong limit or some restrictions on ?

Dont think that there is an association powerful enough to actually enforce the restrictions.

Clearly overselling is an issue for an Association of some sort to perhaps put a strong limit or some restrictions on ?

Dont think that there is an association powerful enough to actually enforce the restrictions.

Well if they're going to do it on the shared hosting sector. Then be prepared to pay $800/month for 2000GB of bandwidth again because every dedicated provider is overselling their bandwidth.

Overselling is here to stay and is a valid way of doing business. Lots of other industries do the same ting and have done it for ages since the amount of usage user to user is so varying and confusing them with dozens of packages to choose from.

It's a good argument and I entirely agree (although maybe "unmetered" is the word to use). Overselling is here to stay, and these offers are going to constantly be getting bigger and more stupid until we really are being offered a zetabyte of space for $2.

Offers of an unlimited/unmetered nature always seem to get shot down by hosts, but is it really that bad? Is it any worse than offering stupendous amounts of space and bandwidth that even Google probably couldn't provide?
:agree: Agreed, although I'd say unmetered is no better than unlimited - it's just a word that has arbitrarily been given a counter-intuitive meaning ("limited on rate of transfer instead of total data transferred").

Isn't it really more honest to say "Unlimited (subject to AUP)" rather than "100TB (subject to AUP)"? The latter implies that the user might actually be able to use the space / transfer offered, which for the latest round of escalation is obviously not true.

Hi foobic,

Humorously enough, I have a feeling that the same people who would jump at a 1TB plan for $6/mo. would look at "unlimited" space/bandwidth and say to themselves, "nah, couldn't be -- that's simply too good to be true!"

Cheers -- and happy holidays (to everyone),

David

Overselling is here to stay and is a valid way of doing business.

If lying to customers is ok, then I guess overselling is valid. I don't agree with that though, as I think you should sell an honest product. The reason you think overselling is a valid way of doing business, is only because so many others do it and it's a proven strategy to bring in sales. That doesn't make it ethical or "valid" in my book, but hey that's just me. :stickout:

In most cases the only new customers you will get from that sort of marketing technique is those that are uneducated about the industry. When I was into games I always thought that bigger was better, but in most cases, bigger doesn't even exist.

Do you really think that hosting provider even has a hard drive that large? I rest my case.

Yes,
http://wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=385

Great Drives for Storage Clusters :)

(Disclaimer)Overselling is Bad don't do it. I am not endorsing it just stating that 1TB Drives do exist and in clusters (http://www.google.com/search?q=storage+cluster&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1) can become quite massive for those over-sellers. Over-sellers play the odds that 1 in maybe 500 clients will actually even come close to using 1TB of space.