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Oversell or die

I have to agree with some of the responses in this thread about reliability, uptime, and the problems your server would continue to have.
However, in my personal opinion, with the years I've had in this business, I can say it boils down to one thing, that is, one thing after you have already established that you are truly going to offer a reliable platform for your customers, and that is credibility.
If you have a reputation for being a reliable provider, that will go along way. I do not believe in the overselling aspect, and I think thats the mistake many do when first getting into the business. There are two categories of web host

1- The ones bringing in reliable, real-life web hosting packages with no overselling. This will bring you the web host or customers, who know they want reliable service, who know the gimmicks from there years of experience in the web hosting industry, and know that the company there going with is offering a realistic package.

2- The ones bringing in "500GB for $10 amonth", which will bring in alot of customers who have not yet experienced what it is like to upload 50GB of that 500GB and get terminated the next day, or the companies website suddenly not loading and no where to be found.

I think alot of companies have ran away from the industry, and fell for the new-age of overselling. Theres no excuse for it. Overselling HD space is one thing, if you plan on slapping in another 250GB to your server when it reaches max capacity on your 4-HD slot woodcrest. Overselling with no intentions of meeting or exceeding the needs of the customer you just baited in is another. The industry has alot of reliable web host, I just think over the years, its become apparent, that overselling does not work, will never work, yet, will continue to be done, leaving many customers to sink or swim in an industry thats gotten over saturated by overselling web host. To all the new web host in the industry, dont go for the overselling route, keep your good image, start off good, run it great, and end it excellent. Dont expect $600 profits off of a resellers package. Start slow, and with time, work, and dedication, in the end of the road, you will see yourself swimming with the school. I've seen many new web host in the industry, this opinion of mine doesn't come from a book- It comes from whats been seen. How many web host have failed in the industry. How many are coming and going everyday. Then out of those that have came and gone, ask yourself how many were overselling. The facts are facts. These are real people, real lives, real data that people are putting in the hands of web host and trusting you with it. OVerselling, is not the route to go, unless you have intentions of meeting there needs when there reached.
Those are my two cents.
James V.P
 
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I think it is mostly just a marketing gimmick. If you read the terms of service for most of the companies that provide large space you will find that there is practically no way you could use the amount of space they offer and stay within the terms of service. This also works to keep little companies from ever getting started, which is what they want. A lot of this probably has to do with legal issues as well, they don't want to continually be sued for allowing copyright infringement, or have law enforcement showing up all the time either.
 
The line is very thin between overselling and not overselling. We personally manage to get whatever is needed to fulfill our customers desires and make the space and bandwidth they need available when they need it. Some people may think we do oversell because we do offer 3GB Storage and 50GB Bandwidth for $5.95 but it is not my version of overselling.

I think there are many reasons for overselling. The main one would be the fact that small hosts wants to compete with the big ones like globat, hostgator, 1and1, etc. And thats the major mistake they make. You do not want to compete with the big ones but use their weaknesses to sell yourself instead.

The 2nd reason I see is because people lack of creativity to get their customers. People are not only looking for storage space and bandwidth, in fact, most people looking for hosting dont even know what a GB is nor what the hosting word even mean. Thats the biggest leak in the market right now. Not enough people to target those poeple who don't know a thing about it. All they want is enough space to get their stuff stored and enough features to do what they want to do. No wonder why SAAS will become the next big thing in the hosting industry in the upcoming years.

We need to stop trying to mimmic the big ones and get our own niche market. There are still plenty out there that we do not even think about that does not even need to know how many storage or bandwidth they actually have.

What about giving everything they need in time ? As simple as that ? You need 10mb storage, you get it. You need 100mb you get it (at a fee per mb of course!) + We support and managed it !

Thats the way we want to go. Well I think so.
 
somehow, people nowadays prefer looking at unbelievably deceptive big numbers than reliable small but reasonable numbers. which is the cause of overselling...
 
Indeed. However I find a lot of those hosts who do offer ridiculous space/bandwidth to customers post and are active here.

Overselling isn't bad if it is done correctly when it's overdone it's simply and totally wrong!
 
Well, people do get bored and want customers quickly. Don't you believe that most people actually buy it?! Oh well, gets the companies a lot of money.
 
1- The ones bringing in reliable, real-life web hosting packages with no overselling. This will bring you the web host or customers, who know they want reliable service, who know the gimmicks from there years of experience in the web hosting industry, and know that the company there going with is offering a realistic package.

2- The ones bringing in "500GB for $10 amonth", which will bring in alot of customers who have not yet experienced what it is like to upload 50GB of that 500GB and get terminated the next day, or the companies website suddenly not loading and no where to be found.

I think alot of companies have ran away from the industry, and fell for the new-age of overselling. Theres no excuse for it. Overselling HD space is one thing, if you plan on slapping in another 250GB to your server when it reaches max capacity on your 4-HD slot woodcrest. Overselling with no intentions of meeting or exceeding the needs of the customer you just baited in is another. The industry has alot of reliable web host, I just think over the years, its become apparent, that overselling does not work, will never work, yet, will continue to be done, leaving many customers to sink or swim in an industry thats gotten over saturated by overselling web host. To all the new web host in the industry, dont go for the overselling route, keep your good image, start off good, run it great, and end it excellent. Dont expect $600 profits off of a resellers package. Start slow, and with time, work, and dedication, in the end of the road, you will see yourself swimming with the school. I've seen many new web host in the industry, this opinion of mine doesn't come from a book- It comes from whats been seen. How many web host have failed in the industry. How many are coming and going everyday. Then out of those that have came and gone, ask yourself how many were overselling. The facts are facts. These are real people, real lives, real data that people are putting in the hands of web host and trusting you with it. OVerselling, is not the route to go, unless you have intentions of meeting there needs when there reached.
Those are my two cents.
James V.P
Click to expand...

Hi,

The best thing I have read this week. Thumbs up - I'll stand with you :)

Best wishes

RavenServers
 
It's just hard in my opinion these days to not oversell and get customers.

All of these companies overselling make the ones that don't look bad to newbies. I used to offer hosting 200MB of space per person for free (I got out of the hosting business now though, I gave up.). It was a stable number that I could support, and I could've even made a paid package out of that, but you know what people have told me? "I can't believe you only offered 200MB... that's like nothing. I can get 5GB from here... I can get 10GB here... I can get 20GB from this one... check this out!" My signup count was always pretty slow. Had I oversold my plan, I would have gotten more clients.

The general public doesn't seem to get it for some reason. I'm thinking they must believe that their website space should have around the same space their home computer has, or more, when reality for most that just isn't true. This one person I know is running around looking for 5GB web hosting for a board, until I just told him that he didn't need 5GB of space for just a small forum. And I see people running around looking for hosts with ridiculous amounts of space and bandwidth that I know they don't have, and for what? They wind up uploading an index file, and some web pages, less than 5MB! I ask myself why, what do you need 5GB for?

I think far and few sites ever use a lot of space. And the big guys and small guys who know they can get away with just suspending the customers using fine prints, and suck in others with enticing oversold offers will continue to do so.

It's just, with this kind of mindset, it's really difficult in the beginning not to oversell.
 
Its important to understand that it's not as clear cut as overselling and not overselling, for instance, if you have a server that has say 100 accounts on and have room for another 100 ( numbers are low, but nevermind ), you selling another 500 accounts isn't overselling if you plan to fund those extra 300 accounts with another server and a half so that your new clients get what they paid for ..... overselling is trying to squash all 500 accounts on the one server that you allocated 200 accounts too.
 
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