What is overselling?
Overselling, put simply, is a term used in the hosting industry where a company advertises plans that are unsustainable if every one of their clients was to use the full resources of the package.
For example, a host may have a server with 300GB of storage space and offer plans with 50GB of space each at £5 per month. As soon as 6 clients sign up for an account, all space on that server has been allocated, however the company can see that those clients are only using around 10GB in total.
Here’s where the overselling comes in.
It is pretty much a certainty that not every client will use the full resources allocated to their account. With only 6 clients using 10GB of storage space, the hosting company can carry on selling accounts until the server starts to show signs of becoming full.
Of course, there are other factors that need to be taken into account here and not just disk space. Each client will use other resources too, bandwidth and processor usage for example. It’s down to the hosting company to monitor their servers to make sure they can provide the level of service that was stated in the agreement.


So why would they do this?
Basically, it’s a marketing strategy, and a very good one. Everyone wants as much disk space and bandwidth as possible, while paying the lowest price – even if they have no intention of using hundreds of gigs of storage. Greed gets the better of people and seeing a plan with 100GB of disk space looks allot more appealing than one with 1GB.


Can I use all of this space?
Each hosting company has different terms and conditions that limit what you can do with your account. I have seen one company setting a limit of 1% processor usage per account, some companies disallow you from uploading certain file types, i.e no video, archive or video files are allowed. Therefore they are limiting you to just images and html – it’d take allot of images to fill the 500GB that some companies advertise, and even if you did get close they would probably hit you with the processor usage clause and terminate the account.


So overselling is a con?
If you are looking for somewhere to setup the next Facebook or YouTube, you’re out of luck. There’s virtually no chance of you being able to use your full quota and will be suspended before you get anywhere near your limit.
Overselling isn’t just used in the web hosting industry and is probably more common than you realise. For example, your telecommunications company probably has millions of customers, but if all of them were to make a call at the same time you would certainly have trouble getting through – something often seen at New Years Eve.
Having the resources to allow this would cost them a fortune, which they would have to pass onto their clients. Overselling not only keeps costs down for the end user, but also allows the hosting company to attract many more clients.
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A big thank you to Daniel Butcher, MD EZPZ Hosting for writing this article for UK WW.
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