Overselling!!!!

Ashish's picture

They have: 85 posts

Joined: Jul 2004

Very recently a client asked us about overselling and that made me think a bit... so I just wanted to get your opinions on it….. Do you think overselling is justified? Still thinking about what to answer Sad

Cheers,
Ashish

They have: 6 posts

Joined: Sep 2004

Overselling HardDrive space is horrible! Overselling on bandwidth is not a good practice but you can at least purchase more bandwidth should you need some. With my experience in the hosting industry Once a host goes toward overselling their service goes down hill fast. Less reliablity, slower support, just all around drop in service I am not sure as to why these all tie together you would think saving money in one spot you would put it into the others but who knows.

Adam Wilkinson
http://www.mthoodhosting.com (web hosting)
http://www.namecounty.com (buy/sell domains)
http://www.xtreme-studio.net (Webmaster forum)

teammatt3's picture

He has: 2,102 posts

Joined: Sep 2003

I would stay away from it, it's just bad business ethics

He has: 46 posts

Joined: Jun 2004

I agree with Waterlogged and teammatt3. But not overselling and making it a point to tell potential customers that you don't and won't oversell makes for some great marketing. Guarantee them that they'll get what they paid for and all other things being equal they'd be more likely to go with you. After all, you said you don't oversell and the other guy didn't say that. Heck, be honest about why you won't oversell and they'll be more likely to trust you.

"In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is." -- Yogi Berra

openmind's picture

He has: 945 posts

Joined: Aug 2001

Grrr my favourite pet hate!!!

Overselling is the worst thing any sel respecting web host can do. I am sick and tired of hosts engaged in this purely for the marketing aspect. I had a very long discussion with a client who could not understand why for the saem price he could go to host abc and get three times the bandwidth I was offering.

It wasn't until I explained how bandwidth worked and if he honestly though he needed 75GB of bandwidth per month that the penny actually dropped with him.

Why advertise stupid amounts of resources that people will not need just to inflate the marketing value of the package? It just chepens the hosting market as a whole and skews customers perceptions of what true value and resources are.

And dont take this the wrong way Ashish but you are guilty as charged! 160GB of bandwidth for $31!!!! Looks great on a site but say the average page weight is 50K that equates to a site pulling 3.2 million page views!!!

Theres my point. If someone NEEDS that level of bandwidth they will be able to afford a dedicated box not a shared hosting plan. I can guarantee that if you has someone on that plan using all that bandwidth you would be a) having kittens and b) thinking how cheap am I and how have I lost out?

They have: 6 posts

Joined: Sep 2004

lol Flipper no need to point fingers...

Ashish's picture

They have: 85 posts

Joined: Jul 2004

dear flipper,

No offence, but the kits you talk about are meant for resellers and yes we do encourage resellers... and we do try to give them a big margin (bandwidth)..... so that they do not run into any trouble with their own customers...

I asked the question above as we were also thinking of refurbishing our plans...... we want to introduce plans for individuals now.... and we wanted to know what are the views of the people regarding overselling.

Cheers,
Ashish

openmind's picture

He has: 945 posts

Joined: Aug 2001

Hey Ashish,

Its ok no offence taken! I just have a pet peeve with plans that offer way more than a user will ever need... It simply cheapens the hosting industry IMHO Smiling

He has: 6 posts

Joined: Mar 2004

The ones who really lose are the clients, all crammed into one little box, trying to get a slice of CPU, they all wind-up with unresponsive hosting. Sux!

openmind's picture

He has: 945 posts

Joined: Aug 2001

Quite agree there. We limit ourselves to less than 200 sites per server. If one of thos sites becomes resource hungry, we move it to a less populated box...

They have: 4 posts

Joined: Oct 2004

Hosts that oversell count on their customers not to use up all the resources that is promised. Risky but on average most customers do not use all their resources.

However, I do see a problem growing because of the popularity in marketing "multidomain" hosting now. That is, hosts now allow customers to point many domains to their site and host multiple sites.

So my question is, doesn't this set up a situation where a successful "reseller" customer will use up a lot of their alloted resources over time? Doesn't this mean that over time, the hosters services will be degraded the more successful their "reseller" customers become?

DiscountASP.NET
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They have: 14 posts

Joined: Oct 2004

I agree. Over selling now could cause you problems later.

He has: 152 posts

Joined: Jun 2004

lol look at zoneserv they have big big problems now

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