Plumbers Knowledge

Does overselling affect web hosting?

Hi there.

I guess you’ve arrived here because you have some concerns about your hosting company.

Firstly, what is overselling?

This happens when one server is loaded up with too many websites, taking too much bandwidth, and cpu power than the server actually has.

What happens?

The server will slow. It’s responses will slow because it is saturated with too many requests than it’s CPU and infrastructure can cope with. Your website will not respond very quickly and updates will appear to be slow. Images will tend to show up slowly. The server does it’s best to cope but it’s underpowered for the number of websites and the amount of traffic raining in.

Why do some hosts do this?

Simply put: more profits. It costs almost nothing to put a website on a server, because the server and bandwidth has already been bought. So by overloading or ‘overselling’ they can load it up, profit more, and hope that you put up with a slower website.

How can you spot this?

Well the tell tale signs are a slow response from your website. If it’s slow to respond, load, update then you need to contact your host to find out what’s going on.
What can you do if your host is overselling?
Ring them to find what’s the problem, first. Just to be sure. If they dodge the question then it might be overselling. Ask them to move to a new server.

It is bad for your business, stress levels, and your website as a whole. If you spot it either get your host to sort it out or find a new host.

Find a host that underloads their servers, or runs them at optimum loading.