The Hosting Market

Hi all,

Been so long since i posted here! Whats with the new layout? WOW! Talk about simplicity


Anyway, back to the topic....

The market... from what i seen on the recent posts and on some boards, other companies (not all, just some) are really overselling. When i say overselling i mean TBs are being provided in hosting packages? For... $1 ? *example*

Anyway, i read replies from topics like this half a year ago, but would like to know what your thoughts are now on this.

You see, in web hosting at least, customers have WILDLY
varying usage levels. To top it off, no customer even knows what
their own usage level is going to be like beforehand.
Any business with this sort of customer profile, simply MUST
“oversell”.. it comes with the territory.

Imagine we didn’t “oversell” at all. We still offer 20GB of disk
space and 1TB of bandwidth on our $7.95/month plan because
that’s what the competition has forced us to offer. 1TB of bandwidth
is about an average of 3Mbs. 3Mbs for a month costs us about
$90/month. The 20GB of disk space actually costs us about $100
(BELIEVE IT OR NOT!), because of the level of availability and
backups we provide. So, we’d be losing about $100 up front and
$82 / month on each and every customer!

Of course, we do actually do have people who use their full
20GB, and actually DO stream porn and use the TB of bandwidth,
all for just $8/month. And we actually DO lose a crapload of
money on these people! But we only lose it on these people. And
there are very few of them. And, as a bonus, they love us. And they
refer their friends. Who, on average, don’t use their full 20GB
and 1TB.

we didn’t “oversell” at all - is it true? I think nearly all companies do it and yours isn't an exception IMO.

The hosting market is very saturated, i own http://www.greenlush.com and we just market so much and still we cant compare to 1and1,dreamhost ect..

not yet any way l:D|

As mentioned, overselling comes with the territory. It can hurt your hosting if not done correctly. You just need to find a company that does it right. I can see my server statistics (CPU usage, memory usage, etc.) so I know if overselling is hurting my website. It's not.

sorry guys, but what does overselling term mean?

It means that webhosts sell more than they have. For example, say a webhost has one server with 1000 GB of disk space. They can realistically sell 10 100 GB accounts. Instead, they sell 20. Obviously they don't have enough space to do this but it's very rare that every user will use all of their disk space.

Not every company oversells - it certainly offers cheaper price points - and it can be done correctly - however, companies exist which undersell their resources - and the reason they do so is to offer scalable, burstable solutions.

Different markets - and as long as the consumer is willing to pay the price, they can easily host in undersold environments....

I think overselling takes place virtually everywhere, if properly done and controlled, it's profitable for both sides. Even those who claim they don't, oversell, they need it to stay afloat on the hosting market where disc space and bandwidth are getting cheaper.

overselling usually happend in small hosting company that trying to fight for market. will offering anything you need for just 1-2 dolar/mth. thats not the place i want to host with, there is thousand people sitting in that server, and i dont think my page will response fast enough. budget hosting with huge features.

i rather go for branded hosting like: godaddy, lypha, ixwebhosting, hostgator etc etc etc. although bit more dolar/mth. its still worth it.