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Okay lets start with some basics. What is an offshore host? Well its a host whose servers are in a foreign country where the laws can’t reach you. You would obviously choose an offshore host if you were planning on doing something (lame and) evil. Copyright infrigement? Ring a bell?

Well here’s the part most people never thought of. What if the host scams you? What if the host just kicks you out? What if the host steals your files and databases? What if? And you know what sucks more? You can’t do anything about it! Remember, there are no laws for those stuff in that country?

Don’t forget the server specs and price. Here’s two things that could happen:

1. Hosted on a good server, but you get ripped off.
2. Hosted on a shitty, oversold server for cheap.

And what if the support people don’t speak English or can’t speak properly? Google Translate? Have fun!

Offshore hosting is just a little hype made up by noobs who make warez forums. I personally would suggest that you stay away from it. BTW, here’s a shared hosting checklist and 5 great shared hosting plans. Just trying to make it easier for you to find the perfect host!

I’ve been noticing something for some time now. People rush to get a VPS or dedi once they get a bit of traffic. Now that’s not very smart. I’ll tell you why by listing the advantages of a shared host.

Advantages of shared hosting

• Everything comes installed. You’re good to go.
• There is tech support at no extra cost.
• Your life is a lot easier since it comes with something like cPanel.
• Everything is point-and-click. No SSH.
• You’re hosted on a (very) good server.
• Can handle traffic spikes well (most of the time).
• Noob-friendly (and sometimes even idiot-proof).
• A lot cheaper!

Disadvantages of a VPS/dedi

• Most of the time you need to install whatever you’ll need
• Tech support is optional. You’ll need to pay a few hundred dollars just for that.
• No cPanel, Plesk, etc. You’ll need to pay extra for that.
• You need to know how to use SSH (which is like the CMD for Linux).
• You get what you paid for. So, you need to pay a lot if you want a good server.
• Can it handle traffic spikes? Depends on the server specs.
• Not noob-friendly!
• Its expensive!

Okay there it is. You can now see how shared hosting makes your life easier. You should seriously stick to a shared host if you’re new to all this. VPS and dedis have their advantages, but they can be hard to handle.

But hey, you can’t even stay with a shared host forever. You need to upgrade once you get some pretty decent traffic. I would say around 2K-5K unique visitors per month. It depends actually. Depends on how much resources (ex: CPU, RAM, bandwidth, etc) you’re taking up. So, its not exact science.

Another tip, if you stick with a shared host then get a dedicated IP. And I made a list of 5 great shared hosting plans and a shared hosting checklist. Be sure to check them out and avoid oversellers!

Oh man my small VPS is getting raped by these traffic spikes. I need to upgrade or use caching plugins. Well I’ll figure something out. Okay so I was wondering the other day, how overselling started. Like how overselling grew and finally stopped at the unlimited space/bandwidth plans. I did some research and got the answers.

It looks like overselling started back in 2005. I couldn’t find out which company started it though. But, it did look like BlueHost started it all (damn you BlueHost!). Again this is might not be right. We’ll never know who came up with this “brilliant idea”.

2005

A few hosts (ex: BlueHost, PowWeb) are overselling the bandwidth, only. They’re overselling upto 100GB of bandwidth. Still not bad. Just trying to beat the competition (by lying a bit).

2006 (early)

Hosts aren’t happy. They want to oversell the bandwidth a bit more. On average its around 100GB to 300GB bandwidth. A few hosts (ex: BlueHost) are offering upto 15GB space though.

2006 (mid-late)

This is where it gets better. I mean for those greedy hosts. Bad for us, of course. Hosts such as PowWeb are offering upto 20GB of space and 400GB of bandwidth. PowWeb’s probably saying in your face, BlueHost! Oh wait. BlueHost is offering 50GB of space and 999GB of bandwidth.

Woah. Holy shit! DreamHost is offering 1TB of bandwidth. There we go. We’ve found our leader in bandwidth overselling.

2007

Okay here’s where we get our 100% oversold plans (aka the “modern overselling”). DreamHost is offering 200GB of space and 2TB of bandwidth (and so is HostGator). What are they thinking? We’re not complete idiots. Enough overselling!

Oh no. Its not enough. BlueHost wants to kick the competition’s ass by offering 300GB space and 3TB of bandwidth.

2008 (early)

Yay 2008! Everything’s pretty much the same as 2007 right now. Everyone is offering 300GB space and 3TB bandwidth. Now lets fast forward a few months. Hosts are offering 1500GB space and 15TB bandwidth. Which greedy bastard came up with this? I think it was PowWeb. There are no archives of 2008 on the Wayback Machine yet. But, I remember PowWeb offering it first.

A few hosts are offering unlimited space and bandwidth too (oh crap!).

2008 (mid)

This is where things get totally screwed. Now most of the oversellers (PowWeb, BlueHost, etc) are switching over to the unlimited plans. This is where we’re at, right now.

Who started it all?

Well to me it looks like BlueHost and PowWeb were the masterminds behind this. But, hey I didn’t go around checking every single host. I only checked the leading oversellers.

Over to you

I hope you guys learnt a bit on how overselling grew. This isn’t very accurate, but still, you get the idea. Well go ahead and drop a comment on what you think about overselling and if you have any idea where overselling really started from.

Don’t forget to subscribe via RSS or email, if you’ve enjoyed this. And lastly, I would like to say “thank you” to the hosts that completely destroyed changed the hosting industry with the idea of overselling.

Few weeks ago I wrote a shared hosting checklist. I thought why not make a list of few good hosting plans since its kinda impossible to find them. Well here it is. I’ve got 5 hosts that looks good to me and I would choose one of them if I needed shared hosting.

The 5 Hosts

These guys are not oversellers or resellers. They’re all big reputable hosts. I’ve called all the hosting companies for you guys and got all the info. Just making it easier for you. BTW, the list is in order of most affordable to the most expensive.

1. 1&1 Internet Inc - $3.99/month

2. GoDaddy - $4.29/month

3. Netfirms - $4.95/month

4. (mt) MediaTemple - $20/month

5. Mosso - $100/month

1. 1&1 Internet Inc

• Space: 10GB
• Bandwidth: 300GB
• MySQL databases: 10 (100MB)
• Domains allowed: 20
• Concurrent users on database: 250 (just awesome)
• Types of support: 24/7 Phone & Email support
• Price: $3.99/month (Limited time offer: $1.99 for first 3 months)

My friend survived the “digg effect” with this shared hosting from 1&1. So its pretty reliable. And I was going to go with them myself, but later I got a VPS from GoDaddy. Great price, great plan. Just love it.

2. GoDaddy

• Space: 10GB
• Bandwidth: 300GB
• MySQL databases: 10 (100MB)
• Domains allowed: Unlimited
• Concurrent users on database: 100
• Types of support: 24/7 Phone & Email support
• Price: $4.29/month

Some say that the support isn’t that great. I never used GoDaddy shared hosting so I can’t tell. I did find a lot of mixed reviews though. You might wanna someone who used GoDaddy before.

3. Nefirms

• Space: 10GB
• Bandwidth: 500GB
• MySQL databases: 1 (100MB)
• Domains allowed: Unlimited
• Concurrent users on database: 7 (not good)
• Types of support: 24/7 Phone & Email support
• Price: $4.95/month

I like these guys. I buy all my domains from them. The support was great. I’m thinking the hosting would be great too. This plan from Netfirms would be only good for a small blog or a static site since its only got 1 database and 7 concurrent users.

4. (mt) MediaTemple

• Space: 100GB
• Bandwidth: 1000GB
• MySQL databases: 1000 (400MB default)
• Domains allowed: 100
• Concurrent users on database: 40 (not bad)
• Types of support: 24/7 Phone, Email & Support ticket
• Price: $20/month

These guys are the pros. Most of the high-traffic sites use them. You’ll be hosted on a bunch of clustered servers. Meaning it can handle traffic spikes well. And about the big storage space and bandwidth. I’m not sure if they oversell. I don’t think they do because its $20/month, right?

5. Mosso

• Space: 50GB
• Bandwidth: 500GB
• MySQL databases: Unlimited (no size limit)
• Domains allowed: Unlimited
• Concurrent users on database: 3000 (fucking awesome!)
• Types of support: 24/7 Phone & Live chat
• Price: $100/month

A big competitor to (mt) MediaTemple. They allow you to resell. They have everything ready for you to resell. Keep in mind that this is not for mass reselling (or for opening your own hosting site). Its good if you would like to sell hosting to your clients or friends. Its just great for a web developer or anyone with a high-traffic forum. Oh and you’ll be on clustered servers just like on (mt).

Yeah there’s the list. Hope this was helpful. See which host will be good for you. And if you know any good shared hosts then please share it with us.

Don’t forget to let us know which host you would choose!

Man I wanted to make a list of oversellers. But, you know what? It’s just not worth the effort because all the hosts are overselling. Instead I should make a list of hosts who are NOT overselling. I just hate it. The hosting industry is just getting totally messed up.

Some hosts are proud of the fact that they oversell. They admit it on their company blog (like HostGator) or site. And they give us a bullshit reason on why they oversell. They say something like how can you expect us to give you 15,000GB dedicated space and bandwidth for just under $10/month, servers cost a lot and we know that no one is going to use all the space. Well that really pisses me off!

Well why the fuck do you need to oversell in the first place? I know its because of competition. But, do they really think that all of us are so dumb that we’ll fall for their “unlimited” space and bandwidth plans.

For example, when I order a pizza I expect to get the whole pizza (not just a few slices). I don’t care how much I payed for it. I don’t care if I only paid $15 for a large pizza. The company set the price and they better give me my whole pizza. I don’t want the pizza guy to come with a few slices and tell me that they knew I wouldn’t eat the whole pizza so they took off a few slices.

Like don’t lie to us. We don’t need 15,000GB of space. A dedicated 10GB is good enough. If you can’t really give us 15,000GB of dedicated space then don’t offer that. Hosts should be honest. Offer us what they can afford to. We’ll choose a transparent host over a lying overseller, any day of the week.

I don’t know who came up with the idea of overselling. Hosting isn’t buffet! At least in buffet they have all the food for us. In the hosting world, they don’t even have that.