Who to trust?

hostgator

Hello,

We don't keep track of bandwidth on our shared servers which means we wouldn't suspend you for using below what's allocated. I don't know who you spoke with but the information they gave you is incorrect.


If you crash the server or cause high load then you will be suspended. I wrote a blog post that you can read about overselling on http://blog.hostgator.com/2007/10/06/selling-out/

Thanks!

-brent
 
I agree wholeheartedly Dan. I just stated what the sales rep told me.

Brent-
Thanks for jumping in. I thought that sounded a little strange that a 300 MB file download might possibly get me suspended. The sales rep may have just been trying to sell me on a dedicated server instead of giving me the information I needed.
I do have the sales reps name (first name only) if you're interested but I won't post it publicly, unless you request I do so. I think a PM might serve better.
I would like to discuss my situation with someone that can give me the facts though.

Edit 1: I just read your blog and as some others stated I do appreciate your honesty. You have given me room for reconsideration of your services, but I still have a few questions, which I don't think this is the proper place to discuss them. :o
 
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It's true that 'overselling' is becoming the normal model. A couple of years from now the term 'overselling' won't mean anything.

I'm on the fence about it. We have one server that is probably oversold, but so marginally that it doesn't matter. I do know, though, that hundreds and hundreds of domains are using much less than 200GB of bandwidth per month altogether which is only a fraction of what they are all allocated.

If you look outside of the web hosting biz, there are a ton of businesses that oversell their services. The phone company is a good example. I think by now we all know that if everyone picked up their phone at the same time, a large percentage of those people would not be able to make a call. The system is rigged to handle 'normal' usage and everyone all at once isn't 'normal'.

Consider even mundane examples like any store in your local mall. There are what...1 or 2 clerks working? That's enough to handle normal sales volumes, but if everyone in the mall went to that store at the same time, they'd be swamped.

Any business is based on managing the demand with reasonable resources. No business can give you a one-for-one relationship (which is what not overselling amounts to) and stay competitive. Every business is based on the fact that every customer isn't going to demand the resources at the same time. Hosting is no different.

The good side about this is that these services can be offered at a lower price. At my local coffee shop, I may wait anywhere from 1 to 10 minutes for my coffee and donut in the morning depending on how many people are there. My coffee and donut costs me $2. In order for the business to be configured so that I would never have to wait for more than 1 minute for my coffee, I would pretty much have to have my own coffee server standing by for several hours in the morning to ensure that they would be there when I wandered in. Would this one person stand by waiting for me for $2 a day? Nope, but by managing the resources in a reasonable fashion, a compromise can be reached where I get what I consider to be reasonable service at a reasonable price.

Food for thought...
 
They are true. Almost are offering 1000geb unlimited etc.. but i think 90 % are using only around 1 GB and less.
 
yea they should but maybe you would just upload warez on them.
for clean sites 500 gb of traffic is too much I suppose...
or they make flexible bandwith allocation ?
less users less allocation.
 
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