Perhaps a little known fact about web hosting services is that customers may not even be aware of, or appreciate: overselling services. The theory of overselling web hosting services doesn’t take a rocket scientist to calculate the stats; however, often in application things can become a little dicey when customer in fact do use all of their allocated resources with no excess services for the provider to “oversell”.
Chances are that if you’re not familiar with the concept of overselling web hosting services, then you probably wouldn’t know if your hosting provider is overselling unused resources or not. While on the surface, the concept of overselling web hosting services sounds a bit shady, however, the reputable hosting providers have had years of experience brooding over data and analyzing customer hosting usage to make a logical prediction of just exactly how much excess storage space and bandwidth is left to bargain with when attempting to attract new customers.
What Is “Overselling Servers”?
The fundamental thought of overselling is that the majority of a web hosting provider’s customer base will only use a fraction of the available resources allocated to each user, freeing up the excess services to “repackage” to another customer. While overselling, at times, can certainly reap benefits for the web host, even the smallest miscalculation can affect every shared hosting account on the server.
It’s bad news when a web host stretches their services to the limit. This extra strain on the server can result in more website outages, and even the slightest DDOS attack would cause the entire server to go offline.
A shrewd web hosting provider is usually successful with carrying out overselling because he or she carefully analysis past statistical data to determine how much, if any, excess storage space or bandwidth is left available to “oversell”. For those that determine if there are enough excess services to be oversold, then attractive plans are repackaged to be advertised, and hopefully sold.
The Give And Take Of Oversold Servers
The obvious advantage of overselling is that the web host provider earns more revenue from each server that hosts oversold plans. The benefit from the extra income is then passed on to the customer in the form of cheaper hosting packages with various more features. The problem with this scenario, however, is that not every individual customer will receive such perks. This is especially true if every customer utilizes the entire allotment of hosting services such as storage space and bandwidth to manage website ventures. Whenever a server is pushed to the maximum, the result is indefinite downtime. Another huge issue arises when a hosting provider becomes too greedy and tries to spread the hosting services out too thin; thus another cause for server downtime and disgruntled customers.
The simple truth is there’s really no way to determine whether or not your web hosting provider is overselling services or not. It’s a good idea, however, to remain vigilant and be cautious of deals sounding too good to be true. Always do your homework and read customer reviews to see how web hosts compare to each other. Remember unless a hosting provider doesn’t offer a money back guarantee, and then you’re stuck with the web host for a definite amount of time or be subject to termination penalties, so make an initial wise choice!
About the author: Stacy Miller is an avid photographer who loves to share her thoughts through blogging. She is currently studying cyber security and also blogs about DDoS protection.
