Overselling Questions

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Posted by audaciously, 08-15-2010, 04:33 AM
I am looking to better understand overselling. While looking through the reseller offers on the forums, I noticed many offer overselling. My question is: how can you oversell if you can't go over the allotted space that you have? Also, when hosts offer unlimited email, etc.-- is it really unlimited?
Posted by Server Management, 08-15-2010, 04:49 AM
Overselling simply is selling the resources you dont/do have. IE if you have a 5GB reseller account, you could sell 20 1GB accounts... Thats depending on the users arnt using that much... All your doing in simple terms is selling the space clients are not using thus creating a profit... The average 10 page html website is say 20MB in size... Overselling isnt bad if managed correctly: IE making sure diskspace is kept under control, bandwidth usage is monitored... Nothing is unlimited... You will be still limited per hour on the emails...
Posted by Faris Aziz, 08-15-2010, 06:07 AM
I think he was referring to UNLIMITED EMAIL Accounts creation, not number emails send per hour.
Posted by Server Management, 08-15-2010, 06:16 AM
Your still limited upon the number of emails you can store and send... So effectively regardless of how many "email accounts" one has your still limited somewhat...
Posted by Faris Aziz, 08-15-2010, 06:18 AM
Did not know that because never tried
Posted by akaisenpai, 08-15-2010, 05:39 PM
There is a limit to email accounts, but the limit is a very large one so that's why they say "unlimited".
Posted by linktricities, 08-15-2010, 05:42 PM
Overselling shouldn't be a problem if you keep track of your space. If you start running out of space, you could move accounts around to other servers or purchase an additional HDD.
Posted by TheChemist, 08-15-2010, 09:30 PM
They allow you to create packages that go beyond the alloted space that they give you. You can create a bunch of accounts but once your clients reach the amount of space or bandwidth that is provided your account will get suspended. Say you have 5GB space and 50GB bandwidth, you could offer 10GB space and 100GB b/w for 9.99/month assuming that your client will use only 500MB of space and and 1GB of bandwidth. If you assume and monitor right then you won't run into a problem. If they know they neeed all the space/bw you are screwed from the gate. I know it's a hard explanation. Don't oversell. If you do, you need to monitor and make sure that the host will automatically upgrade your account instead of suspending it if you go over your quotas.
Posted by Yujin, 08-15-2010, 10:36 PM
I agree to HS-SB Matt. However, if you oversell make sure you always have reserved buffer and at least you try monitoring your control panel once in a while.
Posted by adollarhost, 08-17-2010, 09:52 AM
i think overselling means selling more accounts... like on a dedi where there should be 200 accounts they allow you to sell 300 increasing your profit and decreasing speed and performance
Posted by HostXNow_Chris, 08-17-2010, 10:15 AM
A little overselling is OK. Just avoid hosts that do Extreme Overselling. If your not sure whether a host is doing extreme overselling or not, just ask here and we will tell you.
Posted by Yujin, 08-17-2010, 12:02 PM
What is really the basis for overselling the resources? Like how many number of account etc...
Posted by JixHost, 08-17-2010, 07:01 PM
Say you have a reseller account with 50GB space and 250GB BW with overselling disabled you can sell 5 10gb/50gb accounts or 2 25gb/125gb accounts even if those accounts do not use the space.
Posted by BrightLightHosting, 08-18-2010, 09:21 AM
Overselling is not always a bad thing, just depends on the situation. If you run a dedicated server for shared hosting then as long as you are managing the resources to make sure you don't over extend the server then you can increase your profit. If your just using a reseller account that has overselling enabled, than IMO I would stay away. I have used several different hosts for reseller accounts in the past and they all were the same. They way oversold reseller accounts on a server and then the resellers would way over sell their clients which always caused server slow downs and crashes. I can't say that 100% of hosts run it that way, just from my experience every host I ever tried had very poor performance do to overloaded servers. If you aren't ready to go dedicated and need to stick with a reseller account for now then I would recommend looking for something realistic. Don't go for one of the "unlimited" space/bandwidth accounts or even a account that offers extrememly high amounts. In my experience those are generally the hosts that over sell beyond reason and will cause you the most grief with server slow downs and crashes.
Posted by JasonD10, 08-18-2010, 11:01 AM
Overselling is a good thing. See the thread last month here. It's not just about increasing profit, but frankly I say it's to just be competitive. costs are so cheap nowadays if you are not overselling, you simply cannot be competitive. If you are, then there are business sacrifices happening behind the scene's. The cpanel "overselling" feature is not by definition true overselling. That is just a single feature. This IMO is crucial for a reseller as otherwise they are going to be wasting a lot of resouces. Ie: Host A provides a 10GB storage and 100GB transfers quota for a reseller account at $10/mo. This host does not enable the "overselling" feature on the reseller's account. Therefore, the reseller could sell 10 x 1GB/10GB accounts and that is it. Host B provides a 10GB storage and 100GB transfers quota for a reseller account at $25/mo! This host does enable the "overselling" feature on the reseller's account. Therefore, the reseller could keep selling 1GB/10GB accounts all day long until the customers actual usage reached those quota's. Figuring the average website account uses less than 300MB of storage (and this is a general average, many are less, some are more) in real practice reseller's are able to sell many more accounts, and give their customers more freedom. Only small reseller's who are extremely pro-active with management (and completely wasteful of their time) will fine tune all of their customers to have these "perfect" packages to get by without the overselling feature. Companies like HostGator (who are just fine BTW, I'm not knocking them) get away with huge reseller quota's because they do not have the overselling feature enabled. Their reseller's are limited by the amount their accounts packages and not the actual usage. So therefore the reseller's are wasting a lot of resources as no one uses, or should be kept close to their actual quota's as things could end up breaking. Ie: lots of Email volume, increased file storage, backups, etc.
Posted by Yujin, 08-18-2010, 11:52 AM
Question guys, I checked the IP address of my previous host using http://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/we...on-web-server/ and from the result I found 500+ domains provisioned on the same IP. Can this be considered overselling? What is the basis? is it the number of provisioned domain on a particular server or the actual resource consumption?
Posted by ldcdc, 08-18-2010, 11:52 AM
Unless their provider does the overselling for them, in which case they get "artificially" increased space and bandwidth allocations from the get go. You can't have both. Some resellers may be better served by doing the overselling themselves, and the other way around. That's up to each customer to decide. You can't judge overselling conclusively by looking at the number of domains hosted on an IP. Server hardware varies, hosting technology varies. For example, if the databases are put on separate servers, this will skew the domains/server ratio significantly. Then if you have 2 customers parking 100 domains each, it will seem like the server's hosting a lot of domains, but in reality those are not real sites, they don't load the server in any significant way. Last edited by ldcdc; 08-18-2010 at 11:56 AM.

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