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Choosing a Web Host: Part 1 (The Oversell)

Thread title: Choosing a Web Host: Part 1 (The Oversell)
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04-22-2008, 04:23 PM
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To be completely fair, if Dreamhost's overselling method didn't work, they wouldn't keep on using it. How many YEARS have they been offering high storage?

It's a method that works for them (and many others) and they do see profit from it.

It's kind of a moot point to try to argue a point against Dreamhost, when they're extremely successful.


It'll also be nigh impossible to show an account using all 600GB that actually uses legitimate content. You can't use the accounts as a backup account (eg: just uploading your personal crap to it.) You've got to obide by their AUP and their ToS. Once you do that, it really limits the amount you can actually upload to the account. Which is usually what helps out in preventing from an individual using the full amount 'allotted' to him.

04-22-2008, 04:35 PM
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With all due respect, that's a completely ignorant attitude to have, and you just further reinforce the fact that most people assume this is the "norm" and that this is how things are. Just because it "works", doesn't mean it works well, or that it's a good service. A quick google search shows the following:


Results 1 - 10 of about 137,000 for dreamhost sucks. (0.28 seconds)
Moot point? I think not. The word of others speaks volumes. OK, that result doesn't necessarily point out that overselling alone is what makes Dreamhost "suck", but I guarantee you that overselling will be the primary cause of poor service and performance for all of their customers, because it's the primary cause for every host on the planet.

EDIT: If you really wanna see how bad Dreamhost is, and how badly they oversell, I urge you to read the following site which actually gives you the facts and figures:
http://elliottback.com/wp/archives/2...ks-at-hosting/

Overselling works because it exploits the ignorance of the client. They don't know what overselling is and why it causes problems, so the host can get away with it. Hopefully my guides will educate others so they can make their own decision as to whether or not it matters to them.

04-22-2008, 05:04 PM
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I don't need to read anything; I was with Dreamhost for over a year, and never experienced anything outside of standard maintainance and/or complete power loss (aka when they lost power.) Hell, I'd have stayed with them, but I couldn't justify spending money on their services, when I had my own servers.

With all due respect? Give me a break. You're insulting me--there is no respect in that at all.

Wow, so you googled "Dreamhost sucks" and you got a lot of results. Okay, well, how about "Mediatemple sucks," "layered tech sucks," I'm sure you'll get a lot of results there as well--what does it prove? That clients are fickle, and will blog about any negative aspect of a company. Let's also do Best Buy, Dell, and Circuit City while we're at it. Let's use the Google Results to prove a point!

Googling dreamhost sucks is another moot point. That has nothing to do with their business method, and how they obtain their clients. Nowhere did I say that this is the norm. I simply stated that their model works for them, and they make money off of it. If the overselling model didn't work--they wouldn't keep doing it! It's as simple as that.

04-22-2008, 05:21 PM
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Originally Posted by jordanriane View Post
I don't need to read anything; I was with Dreamhost for over a year, and never experienced anything outside of standard maintainance and/or complete power loss (aka when they lost power.) Hell, I'd have stayed with them, but I couldn't justify spending money on their services, when I had my own servers.
And what does this prove? Nothing except that you didn't have a negative experience with Dreamhost. We're talking about overselling here, and there's a mass of information online about it. Given how Dreamhost probably have in excess of hundreds of servers, just because you individually didn't experience a problem is irrelevant.

They oversell, it's a fact. Who really wants to play the server lotto to get the hosting they pay for?


With all due respect? Give me a break. You're insulting me--there is no respect in that at all.
Sorry if you felt I was insulting , but that wasn't my intention at all. It's hard to use the term "ignorance/ignorant" correctly without sounding insulting. I assure you, though, I meant it in accordance with your lack of knowledge about the subject matter.


Wow, so you googled "Dreamhost sucks" and you got a lot of results. Okay, well, how about "Mediatemple sucks," "layered tech sucks," I'm sure you'll get a lot of results there as well--what does it prove? That clients are fickle, and will blog about any negative aspect of a company. Let's also do Best Buy, Dell, and Circuit City while we're at it. Let's use the Google Results to prove a point!
Now you're changing the subject point completely. I'm not talking about bad customer service, or the individual bad experiences people have, I'm talking about overselling. Keep on track here, please.

If you observe most of the posts whilst searching for "dreamhost sucks" you will, and quite clearly I might add, see that most of the experiences stem from being stored on an oversold server. Most of them even have the facts to prove it. But you don't want to read them, do you?


Googling dreamhost sucks is another moot point. That has nothing to do with their business method, and how they obtain their clients. Nowhere did I say that this is the norm. I simply stated that their model works for them, and they make money off of it. If the overselling model didn't work--they wouldn't keep doing it! It's as simple as that.
It's not a moot point at all.

The "model" only works if they obtain clients that barely utilise their hosting, and that is the entire theory behind overselling - as I outlined in my original post. Imagine a blog with perhaps 10 unique visitors a day - these customers are their bread and butter, and the ideal source of revenue. As soon as you attempt to operate any significantly busy site with them, you'll see just how far and negative overselling can be.

Just because they make money, doesn't mean it "works".

04-22-2008, 07:01 PM
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04-22-2008, 07:17 PM
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Jules is smarter then all you... gg life, rtfm

04-22-2008, 07:25 PM
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You appear to be completely missing the purpose of my guide. Citing specific examples is a waste of time, simply because I didn't state that the hosts in question cannot ever deliver what they offer, only that more often than not they can't. The mathematics can't lie - particularly the bandwidth one.

You can show me forum threads where someone has managed to use a fair portion of disk space and bandwidth. I can also show you threads where people have been disconnected for using far less. It proves and disproves nothing at all other than every situation is unique.

04-22-2008, 08:55 PM
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You base your entire argument around an idea that the web hosting sphere is somehow fixed, solid and unchangeable (or so it reads). So, a host offers 1000 clients space on a server assuming that they'll all happily co-exist and use far less resources than advertised. Most of them will. Some of the clients will strike it lucky and have popular websites that use up more resources than their "fair share" but less than they were advertised.

Now the host can take two paths; boot off the resource hogger (with a made up excuse about breaking the AUP) and still have 999 happy customers, or make allotment for the customer and give them what they paid for (or at least what they need) by perhaps migrating them to another server.

Some hosts will take the easy, first option. These are the oversellers that you want to avoid. Some hosts will take the also fairly easy second option, and these are the oversellers that there's no reason to avoid. It strikes me that overselling in and of itself isn't a bad thing. It's what the individual hosting provider does with regards to people using more than the "average" resources that really matters. Hold on a minute, lets back track. Overselling in and of itself isn't a bad thing.

From what I can see (which isn't a lot, stupid myopia) the entire argument boils down to don't go with a bad host, in it's simplest form. I fail to see your intended point that all overselling is bad.

Interestingly, but completely off topic, I get only 75,000 results for "dreamhost sucks" in Google [cf, Jules' 137,000]. I also get 894,000 results for "google sucks". D'oh guess it's time to stop using the latter's services.

04-22-2008, 09:14 PM
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Originally Posted by Salathe View Post
You base your entire argument around an idea that the web hosting sphere is somehow fixed, solid and unchangeable (or so it reads). So, a host offers 1000 clients space on a server assuming that they'll all happily co-exist and use far less resources than advertised. Most of them will. Some of the clients will strike it lucky and have popular websites that use up more resources than their "fair share" but less than they were advertised.
I don't have an "argument" here at all, and I fail to see where people are getting this from. I wrote an article explaining what overselling is, why it is generally speaking a very bad thing, and how it can affect people. The responses from others appear to be "overselling is fine, it's what everyone does, it's not a bad thing" - completely neglecting to take into consideration most of the points I raise.

Yes, hosts can oversell happily providing (as you say) their clients use "far less resources than advertised". And that's exactly the point. If I pay for a package, I expect to be able to use it. If somebody purchases hosting expecting to be able to use massively high traffic and bandwidth, they deserve to know that in the vast majority of cases they can't. Just because they say you can, doesn't mean you actually can - and therein was the purpose of the article.


Now the host can take two paths; boot off the resource hogger (with a made up excuse about breaking the AUP) and still have 999 happy customers, or make allotment for the customer and give them what they paid for (or at least what they need) by perhaps migrating them to another server.

Some hosts will take the easy, first option. These are the oversellers that you want to avoid. Some hosts will take the also fairly easy second option, and these are the oversellers that there's no reason to avoid. It strikes me that overselling in and of itself isn't a bad thing. It's what the individual hosting provider does with regards to people using more than the "average" resources that really matters. Hold on a minute, lets back track. Overselling in and of itself isn't a bad thing.
Overselling *is* a bad thing, and you practically admit that and then contradict yourself by backtracking and saying that it's not a bad thing if the host choose the higher path and move you to another server. Make your mind up here, you can't have it both ways.

The fact remains if they didn't oversell in the first place, they wouldn't need to move your account to a different server. You can still generate a profit in the hosting industry without overselling, regardless of what anyone may say. I've seen it done many times.


From what I can see (which isn't a lot, stupid myopia) the entire argument boils down to don't go with a bad host, in it's simplest form. I fail to see your intended point that all overselling is bad.
Again, no argument here, merely education. If you couldn't see using basic mathematics how overselling is bad, then I cannot help you


Interestingly, but completely off topic, I get only 75,000 results for "dreamhost sucks" in Google [cf, Jules' 137,000]. I also get 894,000 results for "google sucks". D'oh guess it's time to stop using the latter's services.
Well that's no surprise considering Google retrieves different results depending on your country of origin. Don't expect them all to match

Even thinking you can make the comparison between "dreamhost sucks" and "google sucks" is completely illogical. They're vastly different.

04-22-2008, 09:17 PM
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Originally Posted by Salathe View Post
You base your entire argument around an idea that the web hosting sphere is somehow fixed, solid and unchangeable (or so it reads). So, a host offers 1000 clients space on a server assuming that they'll all happily co-exist and use far less resources than advertised. Most of them will. Some of the clients will strike it lucky and have popular websites that use up more resources than their "fair share" but less than they were advertised.

Now the host can take two paths; boot off the resource hogger (with a made up excuse about breaking the AUP) and still have 999 happy customers, or make allotment for the customer and give them what they paid for (or at least what they need) by perhaps migrating them to another server.

Some hosts will take the easy, first option. These are the oversellers that you want to avoid. Some hosts will take the also fairly easy second option, and these are the oversellers that there's no reason to avoid. It strikes me that overselling in and of itself isn't a bad thing. It's what the individual hosting provider does with regards to people using more than the "average" resources that really matters. Hold on a minute, lets back track. Overselling in and of itself isn't a bad thing.

From what I can see (which isn't a lot, stupid myopia) the entire argument boils down to don't go with a bad host, in it's simplest form. I fail to see your intended point that all overselling is bad.

Interestingly, but completely off topic, I get only 75,000 results for "dreamhost sucks" in Google [cf, Jules' 137,000]. I also get 894,000 results for "google sucks". D'oh guess it's time to stop using the latter's services.
Overselling, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. However, advertising more than you can or will give the client is false advertising and reflects bad on the business. Would you buy a car that says it gets 1000 miles to the gallon, even though you know the engine on that SUV can only get 10? I doubt it.

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