This article was originally posted by HarzeM at Simeple Machines Community and his respective website. Here are the sources :
HarzeM's post at Simple Machines Community
HarzeM's website


What a great offer isn't it?

Unfortunalety, no. It isn't. This is a total lie.

How can you say it a lie?

Simply because - it is. You can't get that much of resources for such a small fee.

But they say they are giving it!

They say, because they want you to believe it. This is a simple case for overselling, and these type of hosting companies are called oversellers. They promise more than they will give you.

Oversellers? What are they?

Oversellers are the hosting companies that offer you huge amount of hosting resources for too small fees. Here are some examples:

"10 GB space, 400 GB traffic for just 4.95$/mo! We are insane!"
"20 Gb space, 900 GB quality bandwidth, only 5.95 USD per month! No setup fees!"
"30,000 MB space, 1 TB bandwith for 4.25$/mo ! More than you'll ever need!"

Do you believe these? If so, please keep reading to the end of this text.

Oversellers offer such great deals for a fee of a cup of tea. If hosting was so cheap, why would there be that great companies on the market? Why would be so many companies? Would you work into a market that is so cheap?

If they are not true, why do they offer these?

Because a newbie internet user will believe them. An internet newbie is someone who:
- doesn't know much about hosting market
- has a limited budget, that is less than 10$ per month.
- has a small website that doesn't require much resources. Usually 200 MB space and 5 GB bandwidth is more than enough.
- is willing to get as much resources as possible.

You are a very good customer for an overseller host! You have a small website, and a small fee to pay. You search the internet, and find one of these great offers! Even if you need less than 1% of the resources, you are amazed by the great offer!

You sign up for an account. You pay for a cup of tea, and use very small resources. Yet still you believe you have great resources to be used when needed. But you actually never need them.

What you don't know is, the company also doesn't give you that much resources. They give you 1Gb space, 10 Gb traffic for 3.95$/mo. But you think you've paid for 20 Gb space, 800 GB bandwidth!

They get more customers by telling a lie, so they make money by these little but many websites.

What if I use close to my limits? Does the company lose money?

No, the company doesn't lose money when you use more than 1 GB space and 10 GB bandwidth. Because you can NEVER use that much.

Once your website uses more than the "hidden" tiny space and bandwidth limit, you get a sudden e-mail from your hosting company!

"Dear customer,
Your account's activities are on the limit of preventing other customers' websites work properly. Your website loads our servers beyond the reasonable level. Please look for ways for decreasing the load of your website, or we will have no choice but temporarily suspend your account."

And if your website keeps using more than the limit, your account gets suspended or even closed!

Do they have the right to close my website?

Yes! They have! You accepted it! You signed their "Terms of Use" when applying for an account. Have you read it? No?

What are written in the "Terms of Use", or sometimes called "Acceptable Use Policy"? Here are some examples of what are written:

This is written for an overseller account for 40,000 MB space:


What do you see here? You think you pay for 40 GB, but you are no way allowed to use more than 5,000 MB! This is taken from the "Terms of Use" of SiteGround.com
(Browse to the bottom and click on the link "Terms of Use")

There are a few more examples:


As you can see, they have the ability to suspend or close your account in case you use more than you are expected to use.


How can I understand whether a company is overselling or not?

It is simple. If it is too cheap, they are overselling.

Here are some examples that are NOT overselling, I mean they are trustable companies:

"1 GB web space, 20 Gb bandwidth for 14 $/mo"
"500 MB space, 5 GB traffic for 6.95 $/mo"
"20 GB space, 300 GB bandwidth for 49.95 $ per month."

These are more expensive than an overseller company, but at least they are not lying. They can give this much to you.

Can you give any example companies that are overselling?

Sure. Visit the websites:
- SiteGround.com
- BlueHost.com
- DreamHost.com
- ZZhosting.com
- Servage.net

They all look like normal hosts, but they are overselling.

Now visit these:
- FutureHosting.biz
- DEHE.com
- SolarVPS.com
- PowerVPS.com
- LiquidWeb.com

These ones are all much expensive than the oversellers! But then how do these companies still exist in the market? Why do people apply for an host at FutureHosting.biz, when they have an opportunity to pay less at DreamHost.com?

Because someone who knows even a little about oversellers also knows that the "expensive" ones give the actual resources, the "cheap" ones can't.

Why shouldn't I buy hosting from an overseller?

- They will never give you the resources they have promised.
- They can suspend your account for almost any reason, if you begin using more than they secretly allowed.
- They are liars. You won't like liars.
- They have many many accounts on one physical server, so your site will be poor in performance.
- Since you pay very little, you will get very little support.
- You get what you pay for.

What should I do if I see an overselling host?

You don't have much to do. Just browse to another website that is not overselling.


Again please note that this article was not originally written by me, take a look at the beginning of this post for the sources

Nice offer, but i have one from geekpoint...

It would be nice if people read the topic's content instead of just looking and then posting.

That's a great little blurb, you wrote there. I was surprised when I saw DreamHost on there, because I've seen so many good reviews regarding it.

He has not posted an offer.
It's an article, regarding overselling webhosts.

@Nguyen : Great article. That shall help a lot of new webmasters,
who don't know much about hosting and overselling.

+rep.

Thanx.

I use hostgator ... and they are very big overseller..

Yeah !

But the excellent quality of service (support, uptime)
they provide overshadows the fact that they oversell heavily.

I totally agree with HarzeM (The author of the article I have posted above) that Dream Host is overselling, you can take a look at their plan, it is too cheap to be true, then take a look at another fairly reliable host's plans (A Small Orange for example) and you will see the difference.

There may be a lot of good reviews about them, but the people who have made such reviews if not work for Dream Host themselves, then they probably are just new users who haven't used really much resource on the server. One day if one of them ever reach the tiny hidden limit, I am sure he/she will change the title of the review he/she has posted

Thank you for the +rep while I was just copying and pasting and sure, if I find some more useful articles like this one, I will probably post them.

Thank you very much

Considering that there are hosters out there that offer 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50 and even 100 GB webspace for free, I seriously doubt that overselling (as in, giving that much away for MONEY) is that big a problem.

This is a big problem especially in business (commercial) webhosting. Many small companies spend much time and efforts (sometimes also money ;-) into their websites and then try to save money at webhosting.

Most of them forget that overall network performance is low, customer service either charged separately or just not available. Not to speak about the technical side (backups, hardware investments, staff training).

It isn't anything free in life and such hosting offers are only suited for personal websites not taking care whether or not they are unable to reach for hours...

Let's face it - if a company cannot afford to spend around $30USD per month for webhosting, then they face to bankruptcy sooner or later and do not need a website overall ;-)