Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Running a Web Hosting Business : Publishing an Overselling Policy?

[KMyers]

Hello,

This question is for any host, it does not matter if you oversell or not, however I dont.

Do you think it is important to publish an official (and honest) Overselling Policy. If you dont oversell then you should state it, however if you do oversell, you should say to what extent)

[BroadlineTim]

Absolutely. Transparency is always best for the customer.

[dbbrock1]

For the people who actually care about that stuff, they will tell right away whether or not you oversell.

But I'm willing to bet that the average customer could care less whether or not you oversell. Heck, they probably don't know what overselling a server means.

[ZKuJoe]

When I ran a paid hosting company I explained our overselling policy very clearly (ie. what resources were oversold, by how much, and how we determined when the server was "full").

[ldcdc]

Is there a reasonable chance that you will be overselling in the future? If so, don't make "non overselling" a marketing strong point.

But if you're 100% sure that you will not be tempted to go for even a bit of overselling, sure, go ahead. It's something that some people care about.

If you dont oversell then you should state it, however if you do oversell, you should say to what extent

I don't see it happen in seriously regulated markets (say airlines), I don't see why it would be a requirement for hosts. It would lead to unfair comparisons.

If anything, an airline company should state (for a competitive advantage) just how low is the chance to not be boarded due to overselling. In the case of hosts, I'd much rather have them publish real statistical data regarding server uptime and performance.

Stating an overselling policy is like giving an employees:customers ratio. The ratio in itself means nothing. The response time, the quality of the response, the experience and expertise of the employees are things that actually matter to me as a customer. A bloated staff team is easy to achieve.

[Tristan Perry]

We have a link to our 'No Overselling' policy on our homepage.

Looking at the visitor footprints, quite a few people click there straight from arriving on the homepage.

It can be worth having, especially since some customers may think "Huh? [Some host] offers 500 GB disk-space for $2 per month, but [Your host] only offer 1 GB for $5 per month" - if they see the policy, they may understand it more.

They may not care and still opt for the other host, but if you don't oversell (or not massively), it can be worth listing to avoid any ambiguity.

[KMyers]

Originally Posted by ldcdc

Is there a reasonable chance that you will be overselling in the future? If so, don't make "non overselling" a marketing strong point.

But if you're 100% sure that you will not be tempted to go for even a bit of overselling, sure, go ahead. It's something that some people care about.



I don't see it happen in seriously regulated markets (say airlines), I don't see why it would be a requirement for hosts. It would lead to unfair comparisons.

If anything, an airline company should state (for a competitive advantage) just how low is the chance to not be boarded due to overselling. In the case of hosts, I'd much rather have them publish real statistical data regarding server uptime and performance.

Stating an overselling policy is like giving an employees:customers ratio. The ratio in itself means nothing. The response time, the quality of the response, the experience and expertise of the employees are things that actually matter to me as a customer. A bloated staff team is easy to achieve.

Hello,

From someone who has done Overselling in the past, I do not think I will be going back to it. I have just published my Overselling Policy on my site.

[jcarney1987]

Honestly if you don't oversell yea you should publish it. But stating that you oversell publicly and letting customers know that there is a chance the may not get what they paid for (all though if you oversell right this sort of thing won't happen) that could be a bad thing. Personal I wouldn't oversell or encourage any body to oversell. Because its oversellers who make the market a hard place. For example hostgator.com They are a great host but people like them kill the market.

[ItsJustHosting]

It's very frustrating competing for the average customer against hosts that advertise huge resources for the same or less price. We've had clients who bought but decided not to pay because at the last minute they decided to go with a host that offers 500GB of disk space for the same price. Then of course there are people who grill you, saying "you're too expensive" because what you offer for a few bucks another company offers ten times the resources for the same price.

Eventually I think everyone will have to oversell or go the unlimited route just to compete. Heck I'm positive if we'd gone down that route we would have attracted more clients, regardless of stating our no-overselling policy on our website. For many average clients, seeing the "500GB disk space and 1TB of bandwidth" is still a tempting sight, regardless of overselling, and regardless of if they're only going to use a tiny tiny fraction of that for their blog.

[KMyers]

Originally Posted by ItsJustHosting

It's very frustrating competing for the average customer against hosts that advertise huge resources for the same or less price. We've had clients who bought but decided not to pay because at the last minute they decided to go with a host that offers 500GB of disk space for the same price. Then of course there are people who grill you, saying "you're too expensive" because what you offer for a few bucks another company offers ten times the resources for the same price.

Eventually I think everyone will have to oversell or go the unlimited route just to compete. Heck I'm positive if we'd gone down that route we would have attracted more clients, regardless of stating our no-overselling policy on our website. For many average clients, seeing the "500GB disk space and 1TB of bandwidth" is still a tempting sight, regardless of overselling, and regardless of if they're only going to use a tiny tiny fraction of that for their blog.

Hello,

I know your point of view on this and I agree. I am hoping that a few more "Unlimited Alpha Resellers" come aboard and die 3 months later. It would help the cause.

[foobic]

Frankly I don't much care whether a host is overselling, and I care far less about whether they claim they are/aren't. The term is subject to so much individual interpretation (and downright lies) that it's worthless.

Example: 49 x 20GB hyper-super-alpha-master-reseller accounts (hence thousands of end-user accounts) on a P4 with single 1TB SATA. Oversold or not?

If you really want to impress me with your transparency, show me your hardware spec, maximum number of clients per server (or other method of determining when a server is full), policies for resource abuse, long-term uptime records etc.

[AdelaideHost]

Originally Posted by ItsJustHosting

It's very frustrating competing for the average customer against hosts that advertise huge resources for the same or less price. We've had clients who bought but decided not to pay because at the last minute they decided to go with a host that offers 500GB of disk space for the same price. Then of course there are people who grill you, saying "you're too expensive" because what you offer for a few bucks another company offers ten times the resources for the same price.

Eventually I think everyone will have to oversell or go the unlimited route just to compete. Heck I'm positive if we'd gone down that route we would have attracted more clients, regardless of stating our no-overselling policy on our website. For many average clients, seeing the "500GB disk space and 1TB of bandwidth" is still a tempting sight, regardless of overselling, and regardless of if they're only going to use a tiny tiny fraction of that for their blog.

I completely understand where you're coming from and I get that same sinking feeling when I see an offer for as much space as your average hard drive for 99c a month. The same questions: how am I going to compete with THAT? Why would the average customer even look at anything other than what overseller x is offering?
But then I think of it as a long-term race. While they're gaining customers at a speed probably 10, 20, 30 times faster than I am, I like to think that in a few months or a year while I'm happily turning over a nice profit with happy customers, overseller x is in hiding because his customers want his blood after he lost all their data when his server exploded.

While there will always be oversellers I definitely think there will always be a place for those of us who are sensible about what we do and the effort we put into offering high quality hosting at more sensible prices will be rewarded.

Or I'll buy you a beer and we can recommend good bankruptcy lawyers to each other

[JRSEOMarketing]

Originally Posted by dbbrock1

For the people who actually care about that stuff, they will tell right away whether or not you oversell.

But I'm willing to bet that the average customer could care less whether or not you oversell. Heck, they probably don't know what overselling a server means.

I 100% agree.

Most people really do not care, and most of the time it never becomes an issue. So why portray it as so special? All I see it as is another way to market yourself. Besides that... *bleh*

[Mekhu]

Honestly, I think you guys tend to get too caught up in this type of stuff.

I'd bet my left arm that 90% of customers could care less about overselling, unlimited bandwidth, etc. Obviously it gets discussed to the max on here but heck, we're a hosting forum.

Clients want reliable service. Oversell or not, keep them online and you'll have no complaints.

[speedcolo]

In any business line, the actuaries crunch the probabilities, and the businesspeople crunch the P&L, and the product matrix is born. Do you think your cellphone network would work if everybody with "free friends & family" nailed-up a call 24x7? Or if every person going to KFC really ate "all they could eat"?

What matters is: are your customers happy with your product?