This comes up all the time in other threads, so I thought I'd bring it up in its own thread. Hopefully instead of "Anybody used ****host?" threads turning into dissertations on the economics of hosting and reselling, maybe we can get it off our chests here, and build a guide for people who need to find a host to meet their needs.

• My web site is about 50 MB ... obviously I can't live without 200 GB of storage on the server. A modern box probably has several TB of disc space, but it still doesn't add up. Unless I'm in the vast majority, under-using what's on offer, it seems like the odd guy who tries to use all the space they give him/her will probably have it available? Bandwidth being a different story...
• I would hope any decent host has several DS3 trunk lines?
• It seems like different SQL Server hosts have different ways to implement this; 1&1 seems to give each user their own SQL instance, complete with SA rights ... which is terribly inefficient. I don't know the details about MySql well enough to see how this is implemented.
• I don't know if this is true, but I've read the average blog has one reader. A good friend of mine has a site to point to on her business card, and is excited to get multiple visitors in the same day.
• If you actually take advantage of every aspect of your hosting plan - and actually get the resources promised - you're getting an amazing, maybe too good to be true deal.

All of the airlines oversell, knowing enough customers will miss or cancel a particular flight to need to overbook to fill enough seats. When too many people show up, they give out free tickets to people willing to be "bumped." It looks like web hosts are taking the same approach ... so how well does it work in the real world?

I'm against overselling. I know I could oversell and probably making a bigger profit, but it actually equates to lying - you are promising things to people that you don't actually have. Hosts overselling also makes the rest of us look expensive - people say " ......host.com is offering 100GB of space and 700GB of bandwidth for $1.99, what can you offer me?" Things like this are ridiculous.

I can't say i know many hosts that don't oversell.... If they don't they'll probably end up underusing the server and it's capacity.
But now there are levels of overselling, and some really got out of hand (unlimited *all* life time accounts and **** like that), but it's all marketing. It 's about how you can handle the overselling.

If you can let that client use what you had given him then that is how it should be.... if not then you are just lying....

Obviously, those who don't oversell should have relatively expensive web hosting plans.
Can you tell me who isn't overselling?

Even those who sell expensive small plans mostly oversell... Overselling is when you sell more that you have on that server if anyone would use all their alloted space and bandwidth.

I don't oversell. I don't know which other hosts don't, but I'm proud that you get what you pay for with me

Originally Posted by whym

I don't oversell. I don't know which other hosts don't, but I'm proud that you get what you pay for with me

Maybe you never had the chance to oversell...

How many clients do you have? And how many servers?

I don't oversell.

You don't, but is the bandwidth that you're selling oversold by your provider? I bet it is. So in the end, if all the end users would try to use what their providers (using that same datacenter) are selling them, there won't be enough to go around.

The advantage of a likely lighter loaded server remains though.

The thing is everybody oversells. The phone company oversells... the transportation system oversells...heck even women oversell (think of more boyfriends...).

It's just to cut costs and utilize the resources to the max.... also applies to the "women example"

I think if you say my provider oversells and therefore I do, think of what other hosting sellers are doing! They're overselling twice! That's got to be worse

A little overselling is ok, as long as it improves the utilisation of resources and brings down the cost of hosting.

But if you overdo it, and it gets out of hand, it brings down the response time for all sites. The webhost has to monitor the resources carefully to prevent it getting out of hand.