It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there and businesses – web hosting providers included – will do anything to not only keep turning a profit each year, but also edge the competition out.
They will offer you, the client or website owner, every kind of deal they can. They will throw in free stuff or slash prices just to see you part with your money – even if it means overselling their services.
By definition, overselling is a business practice where a service provider sells its goods or services in excess of the actual availability of supplies, with the hopes that not all customers or consumers will use or take delivery of said goods or services.
In terms of web hosting providers and their services, it is when you are told that you will be buying say, unlimited disk space or bandwidth, when in actuality it is hoped that you will not need more than an average or pre-calculated amount.
A quick search online will show you that the most popular or successful web hosting providers are the ones with “unlimited” or “unmonitored” disk space and bandwidth. Others offer ridiculously low hosting prices with some having cut prices to as low as just $0.01 – 1 cent – per month (Don’t believe it? Do a quick search, because neither did we… at first).
But anyone with common business sense will know that these kinds of offers are simply too good to be true. The true test comes when you have to upload a huge amount of data, create a large number of databases or experience an unprecedented amount of traffic to your site.
If you’re lucky, and everything is truly unlimited, you shouldn’t hear anything from your hosting provider. But, as is quite often the case, you are usually summoned to the principal’s office and told you should curb your enthusiasm – or pay for it.
By the time this happens you will have probably invested too much energy, time and money and just packing up and leaving the hosting provider isn’t an option.
So you stay… and you pay.
Therefore let us see how you can tell if a hosting provider is overselling its services. What are the warning signs you should look out for?
Hint#1: It’s Just Illogical
If you stop to think and take the fact into consideration there is no such thing as “unlimited disk space” because it is going to run out at some point. It simply isn’t meant to say that no matter how big your site grows the provider will keep plugging in a new hard disk drive for you.
It in fact means, “Here; use this hard disk drive and let’s just hope you don’t fill it up.”
Hint #2: It’s in the Fine Print
On the home page a hosting provider will boast that you have free run of disk space and bandwidth. Don’t take it at face value – make it a habit to search for the fine print. If you aren’t good at deciphering legalese, or aren’t tech-savvy enough to figure out what they are trying to say with all the jargons, find someone that can.
Take some time out to read the Terms and Conditions page. (You know, the one that you always scroll past to simply click on the “I Agree” button found at the bottom – Yes, that one). You will eventually come upon the part that discusses these unlimited services.
It will all be written under some title akin to “Terms of Service” or “Resource Usage Policies.” It will go on to describe, in boring detail you should be forewarned, about how you are “lucky” enough to have found a hosting provider that will offer you unlimited or, as some call it “unmonitored”, amounts of their server resources.
There are probably a few lines describing in details which resources are included as being “unlimited” and which are not.
Then comes the big “but”; But, you are told, there is a condition – you are free to use these unlimited resources as long as you adhere to certain preconditions. The most popular precondition is that you do not overuse this benefit you have been so generously offered.
This is the time to scratch your head and wonder, “It’s unlimited, but I have to watch limits.”
Go figure.
The conditions then go on to state that, should you abuse these generous offerings, your website and accounts could be suspended without delay or notification – temporarily or till Kingdom come.
The only way you can get out of this rut, or as some would call it a “hostage situation”, is to cough up some money and upgrade to a larger package, which is almost always a little more expensive.
So, In Conclusion…
What it all means is that you shouldn’t really go for hosting providers that seem to throw everything at you and expect nothing in return.
This is business, and no business will sell you their services for peanuts – unless they have a huge farm of clients whose collective peanuts allows them to harvest bumper crops every year.
