Please help with Some details about unlimited reseller hosting and overselling

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Posted by rohitk, 09-12-2013, 07:06 AM
Firstly , I am very new to the forum and hosting business.So answer me as if i am a child , as much as possible I wanted to set up a business that sells hosting to clients.I was looking at various reseller accounts for the same. The whole forum is totally against unlimited reseller accounts, i understand why. but i have the following doubts, what is overselling? If i buy a reselling account with unlimited web space n bandwidth from a trusted(i think) host like ewebguru , and sell hosting to say thousands of clients , and they use very high web space and bandwidth , say 2000 gb and continuosly increacing , WILL I FACE ANY PROBLEM ? OR AS MY RESELLER PLAN IS UNLIMITED , THERE WILL BE NO PROBLEM FOR MY CLIENT AND THEY WILL BE ALLOWED TO USE WHATEVER AMOUNT OF BANDWIDTH AND WEB SPACE THEY WANT??? If i don't buy an account with unlimited web space and bandwith ,Dont you think that i will not be able to provide the same to my clients ,which will keep me out of competion from big players like godaddy , who do have unlimited hosting??(shared not reseller) THOSE FIGURES MAKE A HUGE DIFFERENCE PSYCHOLOGICALLY. Sorry for the HUGE questions Last edited by rohitk; 09-12-2013 at 07:19 AM. Reason: making the title clearer
Posted by SeriousB, 09-12-2013, 07:32 AM
I believe this thread will help you to understand some basics and also some catches about the "unlimited" hosting. http://www.thesitewizard.com/webhost...andwidth.shtml
Posted by trustedurl.com, 09-12-2013, 07:36 AM
You can oversell pretty much any resource, it means you are selling more of it than you have in the hope that not everyone will use their resource. Example, let's say you have 100MB of diskspace; if you were not able to oversell, then you could create ten 10MB accounts, even if all them only used 1MB of space. With overselling allowed, you could create 20 (or more) 10MB accounts, as long as the total usage is below 100MB. I.e. it's the difference of: do I track quotas or do I track actual usage. Read the terms and you will see there are limitations set in place; one common one is that 95% of your files need to be part of your website, no website is 2TB in size (and along the same thoughts, file archives or using the account as backup space is prohibited). Think about it for a moment, how much does a HD cost? Let's say $100 for 2TB; let's say you pay $20 / month. Let's say they let you create 10 accounts of 2TB used each, so 20TB space. So the space would cost at a minimum $2000 to the host. That would be 100 billing cycles. Do you think this sounds reasonable? How would they stay in business? Couple of things: you will not be competing with godaddy or a big corporation like that; at least not on price or diskspace or infrastructure. That's going to be a losing proposition from the start. You can however offer other things: personal service, design services, a stable platform, etc. I.e. don't compete on price and specs alone, you will not be able to sustain that. Hope that helps.
Posted by DWS2006, 09-12-2013, 07:47 AM
Regardless of which way you go (unlimited/limited). (In my opinion only) I would try to start with a smaller niche, trying to compete with Godaddy, 1and1, etc. will only lead to disappointment (especially for a startup). Those companies are some of the largest hosters in the world and they maintain that by advertising to non-techy buyers via large scale print and media advertising. A small business owner for example doesn't know much (if anything) about hosting (it's not their business after all), but when it's time to setup a site for their business they do remember Godaddy's Super Bowl spot as well as 1and1's targeted small business campaigns. If you want to compete mana a mano with them, be prepared to invest very large sums into mass media advertising.
Posted by rohitk, 09-12-2013, 07:51 AM
Sir that was quiet easy to understand Couple of things The 95% clause ,what if i have 2000 customers ,each having a site of 1 gb , also what if one of thems turns out lucky , and his site starts getting more and more hits and , he alone uses a bandwidth of 1000 gb and also a space of a TB or so , by adding high def images or videos................ In any of the the above cases , do they have the right to restrict me as the more dan 95% data will be part of the websites??? secondly , not competing with go daddy , but can i take the risk of providing an unlimited account with limited reseller account ??
Posted by DWS2006, 09-12-2013, 08:08 AM
Regarding unlimited packages on a reseller account, I suppose that's up to you. Personally, I wouldn't do that because while most users will use less than a gig, undoubtedly, a few will use more. There is always a bit of a glass box with unlimited offers (be it CPU/Memory/IO/or in house disk limits), but your glass box would need to be much smaller than is typical (because of the limited resources available to you). To me (and again this is just my own personal opinion), no reseller account (limited or unlimited) is a good fit for "unlimited" hosting packages. The one thing I wouldn't worry about is having 2,000 client accounts on a reseller account. For one, it would never happen (that's a full servers worth of clients by itself) and two by the time you reach that level you wouldn't need a reseller account (at that point you're generating enough revenue for your own machines). Last edited by DWS2006; 09-12-2013 at 08:13 AM.
Posted by trustedurl.com, 09-12-2013, 08:34 AM
The 95% was just a number used in the example, but, of course, the terms are written such that if you use too much resources, you will be asked to upgrade or move. Can you offer unlimited drives? No, then don't . Just my opinion.
Posted by stebaker, 09-12-2013, 08:41 AM
If I were you I would stay away from the word unlimited.
Posted by Fakher, 09-12-2013, 09:00 AM
Agreed, mostly unlimited = abuse of resources. So just stick to what you have
Posted by rohitk, 09-12-2013, 09:07 AM
Thank you for the help guys , jus dat dose unlimited plans are so mouthwatering..... Anyways , how do you rate hostdime and ewebguru
Posted by PremiumHost, 09-12-2013, 09:29 PM
If you plan to host 2000 customers with a reseller account, your business plan will not work out. 2000 customers would require a powerfull dedicated server.
Posted by Karl_CLOOK, 09-18-2013, 05:32 PM
I cannot stress this enough. Or the fact that she advertise "unlimited" disc space though limit the NUMBER of files allowed within an account, regardless of size! No thanks. Unlimited hard discs don't exist, neither should these plans.
Posted by JixHost, 10-24-2013, 10:41 AM
Every web host has terms and conditions, limited or unlimited. Unfortunately the hosts that say to stay away from unlimited hosts are bias in opinion because they do not offer it. There are many unlimited hosts that are excellent and have been around for years. One cant make a blanket statement or assumption.
Posted by SkyNetHosting, 10-24-2013, 11:10 PM
agreed! if a hosting owner does not understand this fact its more likely that his business will fail. If you have 2000 customers you should have your own dedicated servers and support staff and all you think about is reseller account you are heading for disaster