I'm thinking of getting into hosting and have been looking for good reseller packages. But I'm very puzzled by the huge differences between the Web space in the retail packages for individuals and the reseller packages. For example, hostgator offers 600 GBs of web space on its basic retail $7.95/month program. But it offers only 24 GBs of web space on its cheapest $24.95/month reseller program. I'm not picking on hostgator--that spread in offered disk space seems typical as I look at other reseller packages.

Why is that? How can you split up a relatively-small amount of diskspace among many clients as a reseller while the competition offers such enormous amounts of diskspace for a very low price? I don't get it.

I understand that most people don't need so much Web space and won't use it. But when you advertise your hosting plans, don't your offers look terrible in comparison to the offers of the same firm you yourself have signed up with under its own reseller package?

This is quite linked to the thread I started today. Asking that can new resellers make any profit? ~ You are asking the same question that comes to my mind -- but the answer seems to be tough. Members said that you need to have hosting specialized, niche targeted and not compete with big boys.

As I see it the reseller is likely to use the space 24Gbs his purchased whereas the person paying $7.95 to host a website will never use 600gb simply because of the catch me all's in the TOS i.e limits on file upload sizes consumption of CPU processes and so on.

In other words they cant give you 600gb as a reseller for that price as that (on many older servers at least) would probably be the whole server disk space assigned to one client .

It's called bullsh** (sorry I mean overselling) to lure in the punters who think their getting massive amounts of space for peanuts.

If you wish to be a serious reseller and want to have 600Gb disk space available to sell to clients (this means of course you can lower your price as you have a much larger drive to split into customer blocks) you probably need to go to a VPS or dedicated to get the drive sizes you require

If I'm wrong I'm sure someone will come along and correct me.

admad1

Hostgator oversells the servers in my opinion, because not every person will use that 600GB of webspace. If each customer really would use that, im sure that they can't make it true.

Majority of hosts offer low disk space because if you require more then you will have to migrate to a VPS or a dedicated server. If you were to have a 50gb reseller, it would be a waste anyways or you won't have enough CPU or memory power to fully utilize the 50gb. I don't see any point in large bulky resellers, because you don't have root access or the ability to resell reseller accounts.

as stated already resellers will most likely use the space they buy as where a shared account user will most likely not use what buy.

Other than space resellers will use other resources more on average than most shared customers as in CPU and RAM due to the number of accounts which means more connections and more databases.

Also you have realize if you allow a reseller to have that much space your support tickets could go through the roof as the reseller is very limited on what they can do with the server.

Hostgator oversells the servers in my opinion, because not every person will use that 600GB of webspace. If each customer really would use that, im sure that they can't make it true.
I totally agree with you.
If someone uses more than 100GB disk space on a shared hosting account, they would violate one or more terms of service.

But when you advertise your hosting plans, don't your offers look terrible in comparison to the offers of the same firm you yourself have signed up with under its own reseller package?If you're a certain car maker's reseller, you don't go against your provider. You go against the other resellers. Same thing with hosting.

No, if you want to go for the market that these "overselling hosts" target, you don't stand a chance as a reseller. I'm not even sure you'd want many of the customers they get - you know, the kind who want the world for peanuts.

The point is you don't signup with the huge oversellers, you get a smaller plan that actually lets you use what you pay for and then you target your own plans accordingly and to the market you want to target.

Many domains can be host on a reseller hosting. Each resold accounts have its own server resource limit. But you cannot host many domains on a shared hosting pratically. Because each of them share the same resource that allow to you by hosting provider. Many domains can be use many disk space or bandwith in total. But one or few sites cannot "on a shared server". So most companies can be make big overselling on their shared hosting plans.

The point is you don't signup with the huge oversellers, you get a smaller plan that actually lets you use what you pay for and then you target your own plans accordingly and to the market you want to target.

I agree. Get a plan with the resources you actually need for a fair price. Those resources are likely to be real and not oversold.

If it looks too good to be true, it is :)