Overselling

[LandonCowling]

I think it would be nice to allow clients to oversell, as we have alot of unused web space which cannot be resold due to this. It is just a suggestion, though I understand your current form of usage as well

[Stef]

Overselling is not and will not be allowed on the HostGator servers.

Stef.

[LandonCowling]

Yes, I know that as I said previously. I dont see why it would not be though.

[YaBeCuz]

An age old debate... I'm still conflicted about the whole concept... but HostGator isn't.

Your only real option (besides reselling elsewhere) is to make the packages of smaller space/bandwidth to allow greater quantities of customers in your reseller account.

The HostGator strategy always ensures that they can always provide the space and bandwidth you and your clients have paid for... overselling presents an opportunity to produce negative results.

[JZ]

By not allowing overselling, hostgator is protecting your business interests as well as their own. Overselling, while it can be done successfully by one person, can produce disasterous results when allowing many different businesses with differing opinions on the correct way to oversell. Let's say that you have 50 resellers on a server that is now "closed" because HG decided that it is now full.

All 50 of those people purchased the minimum package because they can sell the world until people actually use the amount of space allowed by their package. If only 3 of those people have 25 clients each, that would be 75 clients on one server not counting how many clients the other 47 resellers have. If one client from each of these 3 resellers uses more space than was anticipated, each reseller will have to upgrade their package. Since this server is already considered "full", HostGator would have to:

A) Not allow the upgrade and force you to explain to your client.
B) Allow the upgrade and risk instability or performance degredation.
C) Require that these 75 clients move to another server. (which would entail chaning dns entries for all of the affected domains and possibly incur downtime if the resellers don't handle it properly)

Either way, overselling is a risky business and can get to a bad situation very quickly. If you grow to have a dedicated server, there are no restrictions on overselling. I totally agree with HG position on overselling.

-Justin

[LandonCowling]

I undetstand

[esl]

Tip For Resellers:

If you run out of space because of the no over selling rule, try giving the account 100mb when they sign up for a 300mb package. Then when you notice they are at about 75mb, make their account have 200mb. That way you are not waisting unused space, and they still get what they paid for.

What do you other resellers think of this?

Justin,
I know what you mean, I agree too.

[jlgreer1]

The fact that HostGator does not oversell or allow its resellers to oversell was a major decision factor for me. I was on an oversold system previously. It didn't work after six months or so.

Jeff

[hotdog]

Hats off to Hostgator to sticking to their guns.
Overselling can only make problems.

Imagine you resell 100 accounts of 100mb each (these numbers are fictional), all these people you have sold to have little or no webpage experience but are at school, you have an 1000mb account but sell 100 more 100mb accounts ... a new craze hits the streets, lets say gator dung, a new anti-aging product ... these 100 students crank up the old frontpage (eek) and each makes a new site and sell the dung, it's a world wide hit, next thing you know these 100 students are using 80-100% of the 100mb you sold them, but arrrgggghhhh thats your limit, the other 100 accounts are banging on your door (email door) complaining about slow sites, sites going down, over bandwidth warnings ... what do you do? the server only holds 1000mb (made up remember) but you need at least half that again. The only thing you can do is kick 100 accounts off the server. You could run the server at 99% but wont hold up for long, it's like a harddrive with less than 200mb left, things stop working.
Oh and if anyone finds out gator dung is an anti-aging miracle drug, remember me when you make your millions

[Surf-Hut]

Originally Posted by esl

Tip For Resellers:

If you run out of space because of the no over selling rule, try giving the account 100mb when they sign up for a 300mb package. Then when you notice they are at about 75mb, make their account have 200mb. That way you are not waisting unused space, and they still get what they paid for.

What do you other resellers think of this?

Justin,
I know what you mean, I agree too.

The only way this would work, is if you managed the account yourself, which I do for a couple clients. As for the others, they would probably start asking questions if their quota in cpanel is not what they were paying for. I know I would. That's not the impression I'd want to give my customers, "your paying me for 300mb, but I'm not going to give it all to you until you need it". I think this would lead to alot of uneccessary management of your accounts as well, when if your that short on space, you can pay $10 for another package and get at least a couple more gig. If you can't afford another $10 bucks and your short on space, your business plan is probably to blame.

I think the risk is EXTREMELY exaggerated and the whole idea of paying for "potential" use is just a way for hosting companies to force us to pay for resources we are not using. What is it we pay for each month? Resources. Disk space and bandwidth. It doesn't matter what you are buying in any other industry, you pay for what you receive. I have 36 light bulbs in my house but the power company does not charge me every month based on how much electricity i "could possibly" use, they charge me for what I actually consumed. What's so hard about that? Do our clients not have the option to upgrade their accounts? What if my account is "full" based on potential but in reality I am only using 10% of the resources I pay for and then one of my accounts wants to upgrade to a new plan? I have to upgrade my account, buy more resources even though I still have 90% of my resources completely unused. This is WRONG no matter how you look at it.

I signed up here a few days ago but am already about to leave because of this. I know my accounts and know that almost every one of them are using a little fraction of their plan as am I (currently with another outfit as well). I think I will just open a new account with my current provider and eliminate the stinking hassle and potential to dump a lot of money into HG for services not rendered.

JMHO

[kdlovett]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I signed up here a few days ago but am already about to leave because of this. I know my accounts and know that almost every one of them are using a little fraction of their plan as am I
JMHO

If your clients do not need such large packages, then create new packages with less space per package.

KL

Hi :

I´m according with JMHO about overselling.

The honest way could be if HG offer for example in the Aluminum package a limited amount of domains to host (like httpme, bluewho, or resellernexus).

This way you are offering "unlimited domains" but is not true.. because you are not thinking in the REAL market.
In the Aluminum Reseller Package you are offering 5000MB of webspace and 50000MB of monthly transfer. I see the problem in the monthly transfer.
We can sell a lot of sites without exceed the allowed space but the monthly transfer without overselling is ridiculous.

If I want to host at least 100 sites in the Aluminum Package, and HG allow me to create packages for a total of 50000MB, so, I must to offer to my hosting clients an average of 500MB of monthly transfer per site!
I can´t sell ANY single plan in the market with 500MB of monthly transfer!
Really in the Aluminum package I can host ONLY 25 sites in the REAL world.
The funny is that I have some reseller packages in other companies (overselling allowed) with 90 or 100 sites hosted, and I´m NOT using more of 25/30 GB of monthly transfer

we, as many resellers need to offer at least 2 Gb of monthly transfer per package, even if NOBODY use that.
I think the correct way is that you charge us the resources that we use and not the resources that "potentially" we can use...

Maybe you must to offer your reseller packages limiting the amount of domains hosted

For example :
ALUMINUM : 5GB of space / 50GB of monthly transfer / 30 domains hosted
COPPER : 7GB of space / 75GB of monthly transfer / 50 domains hosted
SILVER : 10GB of space / 100GB of monthly transfer / 70 domains hosted

etc,etc...
maybe more honest offer ?

just my 2cents

(sorry for my english, my native language is spanish)
Regards and good luck
Fabian

[Pulp]

Originally Posted by hotdog

a new craze hits the streets, lets say gator dung, a new anti-aging product ...

lol....

i think if you people are that upset about hostgator not allowing overselling then imho...later..

as for myself and some others, i know, i'm happy with the no overselling policy. i'd rather have 2000 clients for 5 years than 4000 for 2.

Well I think that is what my hosting company did and guess what I am looking for a new hosting provider now! I was given 5gigs storage and 75 gig transfer and I use about 1.5gig storage and almost 1gig a day if not 2gigs a day! So know my server is running very slow and there is now all kinds of problems well I was given alot more then I use so why is this happening! Well because they probably oversold to get more signups! And I bought this plan because I knew I would need all that I got because I host a funny video site were I have to many funny videos and some are big some aren't and I only get from 60-100 hits a day but I get that much used so that shows that each person veiws several videos! So know I have to find a new host! I used to have just mainly a site that was kind of personal and not many hits at all and I had some of these video on there but not featured on the homepage so most never saw the videos because the site was designed poorly so the left! And no I use that same account to host a funny site and that funny site is featured on all kinds of sites because people like it and then my site explodes and is rank in the tops in msn and the some other search engines and I start using more resources and there dam server starts to screw up I wonder why lol! But anyway thats why you should over sell! Because sites change and some sites grow very fast and get very busy and some dont!

Forgot this Oh I also forgot something I ran a test on a site that tells me how many people are on that server and guess how many people are on my same server almost 6,000 and guess what I have a free host and guess how many are on it only about 600 and I pay money for this host that has almost 6,000 on it dam them!

I can certianly understand both sides of this argument, however it's one that will always exist and always be brought up.

Regardless of how other companies utilize their overselling policies, HostGator is very sincere about it's policies in this regard. The light bulb example provided above is appreciated, however out of place.

The electrical company can always afford to provide you more electricity if you turn on the lights, so that's easily said and done (Minus CA .) However, when you're on servers with limited resources, the game is turned entirely against the host. It's called selling what isn't actually there, false advertising, and should all of those resources be utilized by clients we would literally have a system crashing to a standstill.

Not everyone appreciates the no overselling policy, however that is not for us to decide it's for those who wish to be on a very strictly monitored and enforced system.

Here is are page on it also, http://www.hostgator.com/overselling.shtml