170 Responses to “The Truth About Overselling!”

1. Ivan V. Says:
   May 18th, 2006 at 4:36 pm

   I can attest to this guys’ good intentions, superb support, and unbelievable deals.

   I had one of my accounts go over the limit for CPU minutes (stupid magpie) a while ago, and instead of disabling that account, they advised me and gave me information (and time) to handle the issue, which I did.

   You guys rock!

   PS: I only wish you offered VPS too!

2. Steven Fisher Says:
   May 18th, 2006 at 5:05 pm

   Dreamhost has a reputation for disabling sites based on MySQL queries, without explanation or warning. There’s a Last Comment plugin for Wordpress that has caused a lot of trouble.

3. S Jain Says:
   May 18th, 2006 at 5:11 pm

   Is overselling the reason, Dreamhost gets a F rating from Better Business Bureau ?

   http://www.labbb.org/BBBWeb/Forms/Business/CompanyReportPage_Expository.aspx?CompanyID=13131294

4. Nathan Friedly Says:
   May 18th, 2006 at 6:32 pm

   I just emailed the LA BBB that their grade seems about 3 letters short. (no, their grade shouldn’t be an “I”)

   I keep hearing that having a dedicated server gets me better support, but honestly it seemed pretty good back when I was on a chepassed plan and I havnt seen much of a change.

   DH has been rock solid ever since I started with them.

   on an unrelated but funny note, if you go to file a complaint and put in http://www.labbb.org for the website, it turns up 3 hits for a coffey shop and none for the labbb ;)

5. Unofficial DreamHost Blog Says:
   May 18th, 2006 at 9:52 pm

   Great post Josh!

   Entertaining and informative at the same time – isn’t that overselling?

6. not important Says:
   May 19th, 2006 at 3:34 am

   I okay with your reflexions. You maybe forgot to mention the technical progression which makes the harddisks cost less an lesser.

7. Discourse.net Says:
   May 19th, 2006 at 5:09 am

   Hosting Review Payola…

   This is funny. Dreamhost, the cheap but imperfect hosts of this blog, have a blog of their own. And in a recent entry, DreamHost Blog | Web Hosting’s Dirty Laundry, they describe their correspondence with a supposedly neutral and objective service tha…

8. DanGarion Says:
   May 19th, 2006 at 8:17 am

   I’ve had no problems in the year I’ve had Dreamhost. They have fixed all issues in a timely manner. It’s unfortunate to see a good webhost have a poor BBB rating though…

9. Kenny Says:
   May 19th, 2006 at 8:44 am

   Talking of over-selling, are you planning on giving us some feedback on the downtime with rails sites all day today? Coming after the botched upgrade to 1.1, having ruby lib installed at

   /usr/local/lib/ruby/ruby/

   on all your machines isn’t great. I keep checking dreamhoststatus.com for answers (or even a statement of the problem) but none are forthcoming.

   Yes BBB is a joke (I think you should be proud of the F : ), but a bit more transparency and feedback in the day to day operations of dreamhost would go a long way, particularly when things go wrong.

10. David Says:
    May 19th, 2006 at 9:57 am

    Give me a break. I looked at the rating explation for what an F means, and it says that an F means “We strongly question the company’s reliability for reasons such as that they have failed to respond to complaints, their advertising is grossly misleading, they are not in compliance with the law’s licensing or registration requirements, their complaints contain especially serious allegations, or the company’s industry is known for its fraudulent business practices.” (Emphasis mine.)

    How can you give an individual business an F based on its industry? That’s absurd.

    The only bad mark that Dreamhost has in their evaluation is that they’ve failed to respond to the BBB about some complaints raised. They state that Dreamhost gave proper consideration to the complaints they did hear back about. They state that there are no concerns about the truth of their advertising, nor have there been any government actions taken against them.

    In short, the justification for their F grade seems to be that Dreamhost didn’t call them up and tell them what they did to resolve some of the complaints made and that Dreamhost happens to be in an industry that suffers from fraud.

    What a joke.

11. Sara Says:
    May 19th, 2006 at 10:35 am

    Thanks for clearing some stuff about CPU limits and overselling. I am on WHT but I am always supporting Dreamhost!

    The thing I don’t understand is, if a hosting company like Dreamhost gives you vast amounts of space and bandwidth for a low price, shouldn’t the reason be because Dreamhost can offer tons of servers and thus give customers more space?

    Of course, the companies with only 3 servers cannot compete with Dreamhosts’s 700 servers. Those are the companies who keep saying that you are overselling!

    If Dreamhost were really overselling, they should’ve been out of business now but look! they are still here and people like them and SO DO I.

    :)

12. Kallahar Says:
    May 19th, 2006 at 12:49 pm

    CPU sharing: I’d really like to see dreamhost set up a pooled round-robin shared server set up. All the files are *already* stored on a shared file server, and the machines are all configured by script anyway, so why not have a pool of, say, 10 machines for a group of sites? The hard part (the filer backend) is already done and it would help sites scale much better, and eliminate the problem of any one site monopolizing a shared server’s CPU.

13. Jeff C. Says:
    May 19th, 2006 at 2:32 pm

    > In short, the justification for their F grade seems to be that Dreamhost didn’t
    > call them up and tell them what they did to resolve some of the complaints
    > made and that Dreamhost happens to be in an industry that suffers from
    > fraud.

    This is exactly what the deal is.

    While in the past we bought into their program, since then we’ve pretty much not bothered to officially respond to BBB complaints (even if we did resolve the matter directly with the customer). In our view the matter is between us, our customer, and the 10,000 or so people who read that customer’s weblog. :>

    The fact is, in the nearly 9 years we’ve been in business we’ve somehow amassed a total of 11 complaints that – according to the BBB web site – haven’t been resolved (which is probably untrue). Eleven. That’s a rather small number of complaints for a company as old as ours. Sadly, I can probably name more than that many disgruntled ex-customers by name.

    Basically, if someone is using the BBB site to help choose a web host, they’re not getting even close to an accurate picture. The BBB doesn’t know anything about web hosting, and there’s no way that you can get an accurate view of a company based on what they have to say – it’s just too small of a sample size, and you never the words of those people who’ve hosted with us for over half a decade and are happy as clams.

    We’re not really interested in propping up the image of the BBB as some sort of consumer crusader. They’re a business like anyone else, and not one that seems all that useful for their stated purpose (in our opinion).

    Anyhow… If someone has a concern about our services, they should come to us and resolve it. Usually, that works great, and they end up happy. If you try this and still think we’re lame and would like us to go bankrupt, post about it on your weblog, tell the hosting review sites (who already hate us after the last weblog post), tell your friends, etc. It’s word of mouth from actual customers that will make or break a company, and to that end I think we’ve done remarkably well.

14. Jeff C. Says:
    May 19th, 2006 at 3:00 pm

    This sure is a popular comment section! A few responses…

    (Sara)
    > The thing I don’t understand is, if a hosting company like Dreamhost gives
    > you vast amounts of space and bandwidth for a low price, shouldn’t the
    > reason be because Dreamhost can offer tons of servers and thus give
    > customers more space?

    In the end, we still provide our customers with what they pay for. If a customer wants to fill up their disk space and utilize their bandwidth, they can. The end result, to the customer, is that they can use it if they need it and we won’t give them grief over it. Ultimately, this is what matters – that no customer is turned away.

    The most pertinent thing he said, I think, is this:

    “We keep our file servers 90% full at all times, and our peak traffic times at 85% of our capacity”

    This means that on the whole we always have more disk space than we need, and that even during high usage periods we still have bandwidth to spare.

    > Of course, the companies with only 3 servers cannot compete with
    > Dreamhosts’s 700 servers. Those are the companies who keep saying
    > that you are overselling!

    None of these companies, as far as I know, have any sort of inside knowledge about how our business is structured – but I can see their motivation in talking up “overselling” (I sort of disagree with Josh on the definition of that term, by the way – as long as we can provide what people are paying for, I don’t think we’ve oversold anything, just managed our resources well).

    What it comes down to, really, are economies of scale. We’ve gotten larger over the years, so our ability to provide stuff more cheaply has increased (buying in bulk helps a lot). The littler guys – which we used to be one of – don’t have that advantage. It also helps that certain costs (bandwidth and disk space) have dropped precipitously and we are able to pass those savings along to our customers.

    Just as an all-you-can-eat buffet realistically need to keep enough macaroni on hand to cover just in case _everyone_ ate as much as they humanly could, we don’t need to have that much disk space or bandwidth on hand. It’s even better when you consider that we’ll never actually run out of macaroni, and – in the case of bandwidth consumption – we can add more with nary even a phone call.

    …

    (Steven Fisher)
    > Dreamhost has a reputation for disabling sites based on MySQL queries,
    > without explanation or warning. There’s a Last Comment plugin for
    > Wordpress that has caused a lot of trouble.

    This would probably fall under the blanket of ‘CPU usage’, as certain MySQL queries are extremely inefficient and can – all by themselves – kill a database server.

    Ultimately, our job isn’t just to provide stuff at a low cost – it’s also to keep sites up and running. If any customers’ site disproportionately impacts other customers in a negative way, we reserve the right to disable it immediately (usually just until the problem is fixed, ie. by changing the MySQL query to use indexes, etc). While as a matter of necessity we may not be able to give you any warning, we _should_ let you know shortly after this is done so that you have a chance to deal with it. If not, that’s not right on our part.

    I think this compares favorably to many other hosts, who will just disable the account. The whole “limbo” system, while imperfect, allows for customers to get things fixed up without greatly impacting our customer basis while still keeping their sites up.

    …

    (Kallahar)
    > CPU sharing: I’d really like to see dreamhost set up a pooled round-robin
    > shared server set up.

    That’s an excellent idea, and something we’ve already done with some of our other services (mail being the most obvious one to customers). There are a fair number of technical roadblocks that make this non-trivial, but our admins are always looking into this sort of thing.

15. DreamHost 的 CPU 限制 at Gea-Suan Lin’s BLOG Says:
    May 19th, 2006 at 3:37 pm

    [...] 剛剛看到 DreamHost Blog 的 The Truth About Overselling! 這篇，突然想起有些積了很久的東西要寫 :p [...]

16. Nathan Says:
    May 19th, 2006 at 5:56 pm

    Its hillarious listening to you hardcore emo nerds talk about obscure DH ‘failings’ for CPU minute limits, which I’d image 0.5% of customers actually are concerned with.

    Simple solution: if you want extra-ordinary features and service which goes beyond the ‘reasonable’ needs of a customer, get your own dedicated server. Stop pathetically whining on a blog comment system for a low cost shared virtual hosting service.

17. Shish Says:
    May 19th, 2006 at 7:49 pm

    “Its hillarious listening to you hardcore emo nerds talk about obscure DH ‘failings’”

    It’s also hilarious to read trolls replying to posts that haven’t actually been made :P

18. Kimi Says:
    May 21st, 2006 at 3:50 am

    Dreamhost seems OK as long as technical issues are concerned but I’m not going to spend a penny to a company which hosts such sites as redwatch.info …

19. Shorty Says:
    May 21st, 2006 at 7:41 am

    Kimi – dude, that is the silliest reason I have ever heard for not hosting with a hosting company. So you want a host to look at every customers site and remove all that offend you, even though they aren’t against the law? I can guarantee that every website on the internet has at least ONE person it offends, so therefore time to close the internets!

20. Jolt Says:
    May 21st, 2006 at 10:32 am

    What is the technical feasibility of somehow networking the machines’ resources in a way that allows them to all act as more of a super computer?

    I mean, CPU (and possible RAM) is clearly the achilles heel in Dreamhost’s ability to host popular forums and such, so finding a way to lessen the effect would be excellent. It’d also provide a massive advantage (apart from the bandwidth and disk space) over shared hosting providers.

    It’d make it a lot easier for me to recommend what is a very good host in every other way to people if I didn’t know in the back of my mind that hosting a successful forum would basically cripple them. Of course, once again, I have no idea of what the technical implications of this are.

21. Jeff “zemote” O’Hara » Blog Archive » Dreamhost Says:
    May 22nd, 2006 at 8:00 am

    [...] 1. The Truth About Overselling 2. Webhosting’s Dirty Laundry tags: dreamhost, linux, overselling, hosting Bookmark on del.icio.us [...]

22. Lucrando na Rede » Blog Archive » Hospedagem Web e Overselling Says:
    May 22nd, 2006 at 10:20 am

    [...] Recentemente a DreamHost publicou em seu blog um artigo muito interessante (The Truth About Overselling, abordando um assunto que eu próprio gostaria de abordar há mais tempo. [...]

23. Blah Says:
    May 22nd, 2006 at 3:32 pm

    This business model has put 100’s of hosting companies bigger then dreamhost out of business because they complete only on price or volume alone. It is sad that the company can not come up with a better marketing plan then overselling.

24. Pete Says:
    May 22nd, 2006 at 3:46 pm

    We appreciate and respect Kimi’s right to choose her host based on the issues she feels are important to her.

    DreamHost strongly believes in the first amendment of the Constitution of the United States, which guarantees its citizens freedom of speech and freedom of the press, among other things (both of which can apply to websites.) We made a business decision long ago to value freedom of speech above any potential offense someone might take over the content of a site hosted by us.

    To slightly modify a motto I once saw, the difficulty of liberty is not “I must be free”, but “That other jerk must be free as well.” (David Gerisch, I believe.)

25. Jeff C. Says:
    May 22nd, 2006 at 4:57 pm

    > This business model has put 100’s of hosting companies bigger
    > then dreamhost out of business because they complete only on
    > price or volume alone. It is sad that the company can not come
    > up with a better marketing plan then overselling.

26. Jeff C. Says:
    May 22nd, 2006 at 5:05 pm

    > This business model has put 100’s of hosting companies bigger
    > then dreamhost out of business because they complete only on
    > price or volume alone. It is sad that the company can not come
    > up with a better marketing plan then overselling.

    Were we only competing on price and/or volume alone, you’d have a point – but that’s not the case at all. We have long implemented features that our competition hadn’t even heard of at the time, and have a rather loyal following. While I can’t give out numbers, I can say that our financials don’t fit the mold of a company losing money hand over fist in an effort to grow fast and outmuscle the competition.

    That sort of thinking is sooo 1999, it’s not even funny. We’re not doing that.

    I think if you look at the complaints regarding CPU minute usage, for example, one thing becomes very clear: A company that works as you describe wouldn’t even care – it’d be much easier to allow scripts to run amok and impact other customers. We’ve spent many man-hours developing a system that prevents that from happening, even if it makes a few heavy-usage account owners unhappy and loses us some business.

    We’ve been around for coming up on a decade now – practically forever in web hosting industry years. We’re privately held, profitable, and are growing organically (albeit pretty fast). I can’t speak those other guys’ business plans, but you can rest assured that we’re not going anywhere.

27. Blah Says:
    May 22nd, 2006 at 6:34 pm

    Another clear flaw of overselling is that it attracts sites that use more space and bandwidth. Instead of having those small sites that do not use the space and bandwidth that you claim you do. You are and will continue to attract customers who use up a lot of space, bandwidth, CPU and RAM.

    Your system for watching the servers sounds impressive but I will not even begin the conversation of support overselling as that would open a new can of worms.

28. Larry Gilbert Says:
    May 23rd, 2006 at 3:12 pm

    For what it’s worth… if the BBB gave DreamHost an F, I’d hate to see their rating for the last hosting company I was with. There just aren’t enough letters in the alphabet for that.

29. Kilojoule Says:
    May 23rd, 2006 at 7:02 pm

    The one thing I find odd about CPU minutes is that every plan has the same amount, as I understand, would it not make sense to have more CPU minutes for the “bigger” plans?

30. Ian Clifton Says:
    May 23rd, 2006 at 10:44 pm

    It appears that a lot of people still don’t understand why you MUST oversell to remain in the webhosting business. Looking at hard drive space ALONE, a $1000 computer might come with 160GB of space, which would host less than 8 people (since you obviously need space for the OS and other software), would require a $12 a month bill to break even after a YEAR. Now, realize that servers are much more expensive than a desktop PC and that the host has to provide connections, technical support, customized programs and interfaces, backups, and even power. Without overselling, a host would probably have to only offer 500MB per person at the current price.

    I think people don’t realize that overselling is everywhere and has been for some time. If you buy a bus pass, you are able to ride the bus all day, every day. That doesn’t mean a city only sells 40 passes, since that is all that can fit on a bus at one time. No, not everyone uses the bus at the same time, so the city might sell 300+ passes. The infrequent riders make the system that much better for those who really take advantage of it.

    Ever call a business and have to wait on hold? Do you think they should employ thousands of extra people to answer the phones even though during off-peak hours they would be paying them to sit around doing nothing? No, they have to strike a balance between service and expense. Of course, some companies do this better than others.

31. Michael Says:
    May 23rd, 2006 at 10:58 pm

    The reason that plans don’t come with a specific amount of CPU is that it is not a hard limit. To give you an idea: only 3% of DreamHost users use over 60 cpu minutes. The highest for yesterday was 750 cpu minutes but I have seen as high as 1250, which is the equivalent of your own very powerful dedicated server. (say a 2.8Ghz Xeon)

    Of the 3% ‘heavy’ users, 5% have been moved to servers with fewer customers to help with stability. So, one tenth of one percent of DreamHost users are on special servers due to their heavy usage, but that only means that they are moved to a machine with fewer customers while they try to optimize their site.

    One issue when it comes to cpu minutes is balancing. Whether that be via a distributed “super” computer or a simpler moving of customers between individual machines is just a matter of time and technology cost.

    Another issue is that of waste. Any popular website immediately faces the prospect of optimization. First you get your idea out there as quickly as possible. Then once you have traffic: you begin profiling the busier parts of your website, you turn on caching, and implement security features to prevent abuse. You do these even (or perhaps especially) if you have a dedicated server, since you see the direct cost of the wasted cpu cycles if it means having to upgrade or add additional servers.

    When you purchase hosting from DreamHost there is no catch. Everything provided by your plan is there when you go to use it. We continue to grow the support team as we grow. The support tech to customer ratio has actually increased within the last year.

    Providing an industry leading amount of resources at great prices, while implementing customer suggestions and minimizing growing pains (as the size of the system grows at an exceptional pace) is of course an enormous task. Yet our success to date only drives us to do better. I am somewhat amused by the naysayers, and will enjoy continuing to prove them wrong.

32. Jojo Says:
    May 24th, 2006 at 8:13 am

    The Server is Dual Opteron well Dunno if the server is same for all.

    Processors 2
    Model Dual Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 175
    CPU Speed 2.19 GHz
    Cache Size 1024 KB
    System Bogomips 8755.6
    PCI Devices
    - (2x) Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5704 Gigabit Ethernet
    - (4x) Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
    - Host bridge: ServerWorks: Unknown device 0205
    - IDE interface: ServerWorks: Unknown device 0214
    - ISA bridge: ServerWorks: Unknown device 0234
    - PCI bridge: ServerWorks: Unknown device 0036
    - PCI bridge: ServerWorks: Unknown device 0104
    - RAID bus controller: ServerWorks: Unknown device 024a
    - (3x) USB Controller: ServerWorks: Unknown device 0223
    - VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Rage XL
    IDE Devices
    - hdb: MATSHITADVD-ROM SR-8178
    SCSI Devices
    - ATA ST3808110AS (Direct-Access)

    For now I’m happy w/ the service.
    I’m planning upgrade my site for next year.

    >> Of course, we do actually do have people who use their full 20GB.
    like me :p

33. Donald Andrew Agarrat Says:
    May 24th, 2006 at 11:09 am

    I develop and manage keithboykin.com for its namesake. I’ve been with Dreamhost for about 4 years and has recommended it to lots of people, Keith being one of the first. Personally, I’ve never had any significant technical support issues with Dreamhost. However, just after I upgraded Keith’s site to Movable Type 3.2 about a month ago, Dreamhost started pulling the plug based on this ‘CPU usage’ issue.

    Trying to get adequate technical support from Dreamhost when you need it is like pulling teeth. And that fake-ass “Thanks!” at the end of every insincere, insignificant, unhelpful message only throws gasoline on an already raging fire. Not once has anyone from Dreamhost’s support staff explained exactly how CPU usage relates to our problem. We’ve had reps recommend hosting files on another server – which makes no sense when you’re not even using 1% of the disk space already allotted. We’ve had reps refer us to the Dreamhost Wiki and it’s outdated info on Movable Type. No one has been able to pinpoint the problem because the real problem (comment spammers attempting to access scripts) exists regardless of the actual scripts. With technical support this inadequate, I don’t know how they expect an upsale to a dedicated server to go over well. If you can’t provide adequate customer support at a lower tier of service, you haven’t given much of a reason to believe you can deliver anything indicative of a higher tier of service.

    The last time Dreamhost disabled mt-comments.cgi, I check the resource logs. Many times the culprit happened to be php5.cgi, which most of the time uses more CPU minutes than mt-comments.cgi. I used Dreamhost’s web panel to the domain to the latest versions of MySQL and PHP, but of course that hasn’t been cited as a potential problem.

    All and all, a REALLY disappointing experience …

34. Colin Stein Says:
    May 24th, 2006 at 1:16 pm

    There’s no rule of webhosting that says “you have to oversell” in order to stay in business. There is no sell-what-you-gots-police won’t show up and shut you down for dishonestly honest practices.

    The only time overselling is a requirement s when a company plans to offer 1TB of bandwidth and 20GB of storage for $10/month and doesn’t plan to do so losing money. There’s no reason a hosting company can’t offer smaller packages (say 75 MB of storage and 3GB/month of traffic for $2/month) or offer the same huge packages at significantly higher prices ($200/month) — in fact many do.

    If a customer doesn’t like the idea of overselling—and many don’t for any number of reasons—there are plenty of places willing to take their money. Customers just have to chose between fewer guaranteed resources at the same price, or the same resources at much higher prices if they really dislike overselling.

    PS: where’s the preview comment?

35. Kimi Says:
    May 24th, 2006 at 2:39 pm

    Returning to redwatch issue – it’s nothing to do with the first amendment or agreeing or disagreeing witch site’s owner. This site publishes names, addresses and pictures of people hunted down by Nazi paramilitary organization. So far one person has been severely wounded and another stabbed with knife is fighting for his life in hospital. It’s perfectly OK for me to host sites which contain information I don’t agree with, but that’s ENTIRELY different matter.

36. Cary Says:
    May 24th, 2006 at 2:44 pm

    Hey, it’s great to see you guys offering such detailed information to your clients… makes me feel good to know there are humans behind the machines ;)

    I’m one of those few people who has had my account taken offline due to CPU overages, and while I WAS able to get it under control, I have no real idea of what it was that fixed the problem.

    My question: is there a way for me to monitor my account’s CPU usage? If so I could make changes to my web sites that would make be a better consumer, and I could actually tell when the changes make a real difference to the CPU usage.

    Without it (and I’m sure others feel this way) I’m kinda’ shooting in the dark.

37. Anonymous Says:
    May 24th, 2006 at 4:58 pm

    I liked the explanation of why dreamhosts oversells but the example about selling too many airplane tickets is awful. I HATE when they do that and I don’t care what they offer me, I need to be somewhere. Maybe people who have no life and no work aren’t bothered by missing a flight but than again, thats not me.

    Anyway I hope you guys sort out that business with the BBB, even if its as simple as giving them a call and explaining your side.

38. Gabe Says:
    May 24th, 2006 at 7:05 pm

    I am a longstanding Dreamhost customer as well as a customer of Textdrive, Site5, Hostopia, and Rackspace. I can say right off the bat that CPU limits are essential to quality shared hosting. I understand the frustration of not understanding why your site is taking so much CPU or how to fix it, but honestly, in a shared hosting environment, that is YOUR problem. If you don’t like that then you should move to a host that doesn’t enforce CPU limits. I can tell you from experience that such a host is likely to have intractable performance problems (if not downright outtages) that are never resolved day after day, month after month.

    I have been looking for the ideal solution to high-available web hosting and my conclusion is that to ensure quality you need not only top-tier redundant data centers, but you also need the talent to profile and optimize all the code running on your server. There’s simply no magic bullet, and for $8 a month you can’t expect Dreamhost to fix your code problems for you. It’s just an economic impossibility.

    My impression having used many shared web hosts is that Dreamhost has both the chops and the experience to provide increasingly reliable shared hosting. The changes they’ve made over the past 2-3 years have bolstered performance and reliability, and if there’s a performance problem I believe they have the tools to track it down. A lot of hosts have great staff who know what they’re doing (textdrive and site5 for example), but they don’t yet have the experience Dreamhost has, neither have they put the hours into their systems Dreamhost has. CPU limits, separate MySQL servers (now dedicated to specific accounts!), and the ability to easily move accounts around are critical features that are surprisingly missing from many shared hosts.

    That’s not to say there isn’t room for improvement. There always is. Support response times aren’t what they used to be, for instance. But overall with all the myriad pros and cons to juggle between different hosts, Dreamhost continues to be my best value proposition in most cases.

39. Matt Says:
    May 24th, 2006 at 11:42 pm

    Cary,

    There’s some great informaiton in the wiki about how to monitor your CPU usage. http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/Special:Search?search=cpu&go=Go

    Great post guys! Just keeping throwing more Hard drives into the pool!

    –Matttail

40. Small Paul Says:
    May 25th, 2006 at 1:31 am

    See, I don’t have peace of mind because I’m convinced that horse is right about to bite that kid’s face off.

    By the way, what is “Snakes On A Plane”?

41. Eric Says:
    May 26th, 2006 at 3:46 pm

    What Allen Iverson got to do with overselling?

42. ThisDomainWasFree Weblog » Blog Archive » An Honest Dreamhost Review Says:
    May 26th, 2006 at 6:14 pm

    [...] Update: How novel, I’m only chatting a little shit! You should read this and this. You can read my post if you like, but those two are a lot better. [...]

43. Pete Says:
    May 26th, 2006 at 9:49 pm

    The alt tag on the Allen Iverson image says “I’m THE TRUTH like AI.” Our pictures never make sense, go read our back issues and you’ll figure that out pretty quickly.

44. Dana Says:
    May 31st, 2006 at 2:34 pm

    I have two gallery sites and a music site hosted w/ DH, and I’ve been very happy since moving my music site over here about two years ago. My old host freaked out about bandwidth or CPU usage, and instead of helping me figure out the problem, they just shut my site down. I’ve had very few problems with DH, they’ve always been helpful, and I definitely recommend them to friends.

    So thanks for always keeping customers informed and responding so quickly to tickets, etc. You’re also sometimes funny. ;-)

45. blacktulip.cn » Blog Archive » Dreamhost虚拟主机取消CPU限制 Says:
    May 31st, 2006 at 2:52 pm

    [...] http://blog.dreamhost.com/2006/05/18/the-truth-about-overselling/ [...]

46. Lori Says:
    May 31st, 2006 at 3:30 pm

    I have been using dreamhost for just over 6 months, and it has been the best and worst hosting experience I have had all at once. I believe that overselling allows for deals that are ‘too good to be true’. The amount of people using the servers and the resources jump suddenly, and the company is not able to handle it.

    I have experienced more downtime, and especially email downtime, with dreamhost than any other company. I have lost clients due to these downtimes. I have sinced moved all of my paying clients off of dreamhost and will not be transferring any new ones over.

    I will keep my dreamhost account anyway, and use it for personal projects and accounts that I host for free and that do not depend on high uptime. I appreciate the up to date features dreamhost offers and the cutting edge technology that they are quick to implement. I have also had good experiences with tech support even though some serverwide problems were very slow to be fixed.

    It would be nice if someday dreamhost could prove reliable enough so that I could actually use it for business. I would happily pay the same money for less disk space and bandwidth in exchange for reliable service.

47. Dave Reid Says:
    May 31st, 2006 at 3:58 pm

    I’ve been a customer for almost 2 years and will be renewing cause I’m happy with the service. I’m glad that the CPU minutes thing is being dropped although that is not a concern for me because I make sure I don’t use much. I’m also glad that the Dreamhost operators are making sure another customer doesn’t kill my sites because they don’t know what they are doing and peg the cpu’s.

48. Greg Says:
    May 31st, 2006 at 4:22 pm

    What Josh neglects to mention is the impact of Dreamhost Rewards on their model. If you refer a customer to them who buys a $7.95 a month plan for 1 year, they pay you $97 commission. You can keep the whole thing, or port some (or all) of it into a discount code. And if someone you referred refers someone (getting a $97 commission themselves), you get $5.

    But then you also have the cost of the free domain registration and credit card processing fees which could add up to around another $5.

    While this obviously doesn’t happen on every account, on some the numbers for a YEAR of web hosting could look like this.

    $119.40 billed
    -$102.00 paid in commissions
    -$005.00 domain registration and merchant fees
    ============
    $12.40 to pay for servers, bandwidth, support for a year

    Now how do they make money on that?

49. stephen barncard Says:
    May 31st, 2006 at 4:41 pm

    Outside of the email problems of the last week, my experience with Dreamhost in general has been EXCELLENT. I’m quite happy with the bandwidth and features. I’ve hosted over 10 sites with Dreamhost. Great uptime, too.

    It’s like you’re talking about somebody else.

    Anyway, I love the idea of an ISP that is driven by personalites that seem to be incredibly enthusiastic about their business – and not stockholder driven.

    As they write their own PERL code for all control panel (and I assume bookeeping) duties, they are able to integrate all the functions in such a way to meet a wide range of client situations.

    Also I feel like although it may be risky sometimes, the Dreamhost guys are out there looking for leading edge features and installs to offer..and stay up on safe and proven upgrades to hardware and software. I like that!

    So hats off to Dreamhost! you guys rock
    stephen barncard
    http://crosbycpr.com, http://crosbystillsnash.com, http://crosbynash.com

50. Andy Huang Says:
    May 31st, 2006 at 4:41 pm

    I must stand by DreamHost on this.
    I am one of those people that uses the full 20Gb and the full TB (and then some), and guess what? I paid them for it too! http://misc.chiisana.net/dh_bill.png

51. Andy Huang Says:
    May 31st, 2006 at 4:48 pm

    Good job, DH, as much as I hate to admit it, I am one of those that are hitting the 20GB limit, and I am definetly one of those that are hitting the illusive 1TB (”impossible, how could you have done this without hitting the CPU limit”) limit. But guess what? I AM paying them for it; http://misc.chiisana.net/dh_bill.png

52. Vlad Says:
    May 31st, 2006 at 5:05 pm

    Greg,

    You assume that every customer is a referred customer (hardly so). In your simple formula you also assume that this is the company’s 1st year of operation and they have no start-up capital to swallow the losses and break even the following year.

    2nd year customers (those who renewed their service and no one receives commission) make up that difference between $12.40 and whatever is the actual cost of maintaining the service. Mind you, they don’t give you $97 right away but after a couple of months. Chances are, if you’re happy with the service after a those months of being hosted with the company, you’ll most likely renew your subscription.

    It all works out in the end.

53. Tranix Says:
    May 31st, 2006 at 5:10 pm

    *LMAO* Your newsletter was so hilarious DH lol I guess no shared host company beside DreamHost that can handle over 4K unique visitors/day woodoo.

    Insane Hosting and Insane Support

    Hosted by DH: http://www.tranix.net

54. something about matt … Says:
    May 31st, 2006 at 5:45 pm

    [...] 就在前不久，許多大神紛紛爆料對於 DreamHost 的限制 CPU 使用率表示不滿而紛紛跳槽而去，而今，DreamHost 跳出來澄清說絕無此事，而事實的真相則是：The Truth About Overselling! [...]

55. Adam Leinss Says:
    May 31st, 2006 at 6:47 pm

    Hey Tranix, neat site. I kept watching the elevator clip and almost had to change my shorts!

56. Arnold Wender Says:
    May 31st, 2006 at 8:38 pm

    Dreamhost Rules!

    It is the best hosting service around the globe!

    Thanks Dreamhost”

57. Shannon Says:
    May 31st, 2006 at 10:30 pm

    I think it is hilarious that anyone would be bent out of shape over one of the cheap $10 or less accounts. You could spend that on three cups of coffee in a month, and instead you are getting reliable hosting at a great price. Quit your bitching.

58. Haliluya means Hallelujah » Dreamhost取消CPU Minute Restriction? Says:
    May 31st, 2006 at 11:00 pm

    [...] http://blog.dreamhost.com/2006/05/18/the-truth-about-overselling/ [...]

59. Michael Berg Says:
    May 31st, 2006 at 11:04 pm

    I’ve been using dreamhost to host a few random personal blogs and projects, and its been great as far as not having to worry about bandwidth and space.

    I have, however, been deeply concerned about CPU time/conueries. I have a very MySQL intensive project (a web game) lined up, and will host it on dreamhost until it causes a problem. I remember e-mailing dreamhost asking for a ballpark, and getting back that they didn’t have any hardset limits. Its not so much that I plan on having a large user-base as it is that I’ll have many random, unpredictable spikes in CPU time.

    It was somewhat frustrating, but it seems that dreamhost isn’t the place to go for that wishy-washy area between cheap(I mean inexpensive =P) shared hosting and a dedicated server.

60. bodsham Says:
    May 31st, 2006 at 11:23 pm

    Before coming to dreamhost I was with siteground with a blog getting on average 100 visits a day. One day they told me I was overusing their CPUs, breaking the terms of their conditions, but they would move me to a new server. The site then went offline. They never produced any evidence to back up their claim (Wordpress +100 visits a day = chaos). They managed to delete the entire site, including server backups, trying to move it to another server. And they never repaid the balance of my subscription even though they said they would.
    The same site is now on dreamhost (managed to get it up and running with them less than a day after siteground deleted it). It gets 3 times the traffic. It has run sweely throughout. Very glad I am here and not with that dreadful bunch of oversellers.

61. 桑林志 » Dreamhost 现在没有硬的 CPU Time 限制了 Says:
    May 31st, 2006 at 11:37 pm

    [...] 车东在msn上告诉我，Dreamhost 现在没有硬的 CPU Time 限制了。看他们的 CPU Resources FAQ，以及相关的 blog 帖子。顺便提一句，他们的 blog 的风格很逗的。 [...]

62. Jeff Werner Says:
    May 31st, 2006 at 11:40 pm

    I’ve been a satisfied Dreamhost customer for a while now, but these last two posts on hosting review sites and overselling are leaving a bad taste in my mouth for Dreamhost. It all seems a little pre-emptive and over-defensive, like a used car salesman or a tourist tout, and doesn’t instill confidence in the product. You get what you pay for, I suppose.

    Appreciate the “honesty” in these posts but I actually trust Dreamhost less now.

63. Peter Says:
    June 1st, 2006 at 12:32 am

    OK, a few thoughts (easier here than posting to support via the control panel):

    CPU usage – never had that problem!
    MySQL – there seems to be either congestion on the DB server or on the internal network. Queries that transfer a small amount of data take ages, as do other queries at random. I’m using Drupal (don’t groan!) and have optimised out 30% of the queries, but it’s still insanely slow at times.

    Tracking CPU usage: if Dreamhost could make the stats show the actual PHP script executed rather than just the PHP binary, it’d be a lot more useful. I’m wondering if the setting ‘cgi.fix_pathinfo=1′ might do the trick? If not – can your script be hacked to log the first command-line parameter?

64. Lone Says:
    June 1st, 2006 at 1:15 am

    wow i just love how people respond to this..
    overselling is everywhere and you just have to deal with it.. i for one have ventured into the world of webhosting my self and seen the good and bad of runing with and with out overselling..
    its not cut and dry easy as many might think.. and its not the crime people make it out to be eather..
    if you pay for hosting and you maby use a whole 4MB of diskspace and a whole 100MB of bandwidth transfer…
    you might feel that your paying other peoples bandwidth costs.. but in the same token if your site suddenly got bigger and your almost maxing out your limitations.. then suddenly someone else is going to feel the same as you did..
    but think of it this way..
    if suddenly everyone of DH clients used almost all of there allowed diskspace and bandwidth in a given month.. they are the only ones that bite the bullet and then thats when you see problems but because thats not the case it dont realy matter and unless everyone suddenly desided that they are changing there sites to Porn Dumps this is vary highly UNlikely to EVER happen..

    i have talked to many many webhosting companys head (owners/founders/ceo’s) honestly EVERY single one of them oversell in one way or another.. its just wether or not they come public about it is the thing that drive peoples arguemnts. i knew from the start when i joined DH (almost 7 months ago) that they were overselling as i knew how the market works for this kind of industury.. and frankly look forward to trying to be maby oneday the best compition for DH (wether or not im able to accomplish that is my own bissness) i know many fact about how to do things like DH the problem that people dont relise.. is the downfall of companys that try to copy DH they dont have the client base to do it.. you have to have a large client base to pull something of this scale off and have a profit out of it.. but above all you have to have ISPs willing to take the risk on you and have the confidence that you will pay your bills and thats all its about.. is paying the bills.. if the bills are payed and service is provided then everyone is *usly* happy.. people are happyer when they make a profit after those bills are payed but thats just what drives people is the profits..

    yea im rather pissed my self about the email problems recently.. who wouldnt be.. but frankly.. i just look at that as the ride to work.. some times theres traffic some times theres not.. some times theres road work some times theres not..(that what i get for living near LA, Cali) i pay my tax’s esentuly same as paying my hosting fees.. just because i pay dont mean im going to get 100% everytime but for the most part in the end i get my moneys worth and thensome..

    CPU cycles.. this is a problem anywhere.. but one of the best things i have heard from DH when i asked about this area.. i was messing with abunch of scripts working on my own as well.. and i asked them what would happen if i were to surpass my limits they said they would disable my script.. my script.. last 5 hosts i used.. they out of nowhere would disable my whole site.. leaving only FTP access up so i could *Delete* the scripts and then wait another few days for my site to come back online..

    DreamHost, you guys got things figured i think.. and i plan to stick it out thick and thin with you and thats how i plan to be..

    anyone that thinks DH is doing a poor job ill be more then willing to point you to hosts that are doing a POOR job.. i know one thats been doing a VARY poor job and some how have manged to be around still after nearly 6 years or so.. how i have noidea.. but your free to go with them if you like.. they are cheep as well..

    Im glad that DH is so open about there plans and how they run things.. im one of those people that dont trust “Big Brother” (US Goverment) to tell me everything.. its nice that i dont have to classify my host with Big Brother.

    - Lone ‘-.-’

65. amp Says:
    June 1st, 2006 at 1:56 am

    sadly, I stumbled upon this article long after it was written, and my comment will likely not be heard. No matter.

    I’m pretty sure if you’re a dreamhost employee you know who I am. This may just be my ego talking, but I have a hard time imagining ANY dreamhost customer taking advantage of these ludicrously oversold plans like I do. I’m aware of how the reseller model operates, and I’ve known you’d lose money on me since the day I decided to sign up for your hosting. Yet I persist.

    what can I say? I don’t like websites bastardized by excessive advertisements. I’d prefer not to run one; I’d prefer not to turn my site into an ad, and for as long as I’m given the option, I won’t. As such, I really don’t bring in the kinda income that’d warrant paying for the kinda dedicated server I’d realistically need. But none of this even matters, because I’m within the bounds of my dreamhost agreement, and have done no wrong.

    regardless, my account — excuse me, my MULTIPLE accounts — could easily be terminated overnight, saving dreamhost assloads of money, and creating a virtually indistinguishable ripple amidst the vast ocean that is potential dreamhost customers. Nobody would ever know! It’d do dreamhost a world of good. Yet I am instead provided unwaiveringly excellent service and have absolutely no complaints.

    you’re right. I do love you guys and tell everyone I know, and none of them will ever come close to using the supreme asshole volume of bandwidth I use. Rock on.

    :)

66. amp Says:
    June 1st, 2006 at 2:21 am

    maaaaan, I just typed out some long, heartfelt post kissing dreamhost’s ass, like I were trapped in outer space and that bitch was an oxygen mask, but now, it seems by some sick twist of fate it has VANISHED.

    however, I still love you guys, and I’m pretty sure if you’re a dreamhost employee you already know exactly why. Rock on.

67. amp Says:
    June 1st, 2006 at 2:23 am

    BALLS! IT DIDN’T DISAPPEAR AFTER ALL!

    SOMEBODY’S OUT TO GET ME HOLYFUCK

68. Smoke gets in the coDes » DreamHost取消了CPU时间限制 Says:
    June 1st, 2006 at 3:23 am

    [...] http://blog.dreamhost.com/2006/05/18/the-truth-about-overselling/ [...]

69. Geoffrey Huntley Says:
    June 1st, 2006 at 3:41 am

    Exactly two days after paying upfront hosting for a full year for the most expensive shared hosting package I was greeted by the follow email where support had attempted to disable my account (and failing) without informing me (taking the initative to proactively contact (phone or email) me when there was an issue.

    When pointed this out – all I got in reply was customer support laughing me, poor spelling and basicaly being told to piss off and “go else where”.

    This entire thing still leaves a bad taste in my mouth even to this day.

    ###################################
    ##### Original Support Ticket #####
    ###################################

    Hello,

    Hello I am writing to let you know that I had to disable your site or
    service on your account. I did this by renaming it with a _1 at the end,
    you have been using more then your fare shar of cpu minutes and that is
    impacting other customers sites. you are cuurently using

    98.78cp

    when only 60cp perday are allowed, please look over your site or service
    to try to lower your cpu usage before renaming it back.

    If this continues to be an issue we may have to eith move you to an
    evolution server were you can work on lowering your usage or disable your
    account.

    Another option may be to upgrade to a dedicated server, let us know if
    you are intrested in this option. Thanks for taking care of thos for us.

    Here is some help to reduce your cpu usage: please enable your resource
    usage report by editing your shell user at You can use the following wiki
    article to help analyzing your
    reports:https://panel.dreamhost.com/index.cgi?tree=users.users&

    http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/User_resource_reporting

    Thanks!

    Javier

    ####################################################
    ##### Support Ticket Reply to my followup email#####
    ####################################################

    Hello,

    > I’d like to congratulate Javier,
    > First not only for his poor spelling but also managing to turn a otherwise
    > happy customer into an unhappy one.
    > I understand the need to provision bandwidth, disk and CPU time but going
    > out and disabling accounts (or in his case attempting to) without
    > consulting the customer is uncalled for.
    > You have my email address and my phone number – why didn’t you take the
    > initiative to give me a call or email first before taking action?
    > This is my first dealing with the DreamHost customer service team and if
    > disabling websites/accounts without warning is the “norm” then I will most
    > certainly be taking advantage of your “97 day risk free” period.

    Thanks for pointing that out for me, you see I was in a slight rush to
    bring your server back to a proper load level that I didn’t notice the
    misspellings. Thanks again. As for your usage we allow 60cp minutes per
    user, you are using 98.78cp which is more then your fare share. Please
    have this lowered within the next couple of days our we will have to move
    your to an evaluation server or disable your account… oh and not by
    renaming your website directory, that was just a nice way of turn your
    site off without you having to contact us to have it turned back on.
    If you feel that you are unable to meet our shared hosting cp usage
    limits you have a couple of choices, you can read the wiki article that
    we have made that can help explain how to lower your usage, but you most
    enable your resource usage report by editing your shell user so you can
    use the following wiki article to help analyzing your reports:

    https://panel.dreamhost.com/index.cgi?tree=users.users&

    http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/User_resource_reporting

    You can also move to a dedicated server or you can take advantage of our
    97 day money back guarantee. Thanks again for taking care of this. Have a
    nice day

    ###################################
    ##### My relpy back to support ####
    ###################################

    Once again.

    - I’m not questioning the allocation of CPU time and actions which need to take place to resolve the the “problem” merely the actions taken by yourself on behalf of DreamHost without first notifying myself – How about being a little proactive and leaving the threats of disabling accounts off until the very end?

    - You did not disable any of my websites, if you had paid attention to the configuration you would of noticed that all of the websites are located under ~/web – You renamed an empty directory inside my home directory.

    - According to VMSTAT over the last ten minutes CPU is at a constant state of 80% idle and I’m seeing similar results from IOSTAT – whilst that does not mean “it’s mine to use” – please do not give me crap about being in a rush to bring my usage under control because it’s affecting over websites when quite obviously it’s not. I will look through and and see what optimizations can be performed.

    #################################################
    ##### Supports reply back – laughing at me? #####
    #################################################

    Hello,

    > – I’m not questioning the allocation of CPU time and actions which

    - Show quoted text -
    Hahaha, thank Geoffrey for letting me know the details, now let me
    explain the details from our end, there were 4 users that were using more
    then 60cp that I wrote to and had turned their sites off, we turn sites
    off when they are causing load because the majority of users do not reply
    to our emails for a couple of hours and we cant have the load of a server
    be high for that long.
    One of these users has already brought their usage down under 60cp the
    other 3 users (your one of them) are still using more then their allowed
    60cp (today you are using 106.46cp) All in all I need you to bring your
    usage down or move to a dedicated server. You are also within the 97 day
    money back guarantee if you would like to close your account.
    I will be monitoring your usage to see if you have lowered it.

70. Unofficial DreamHost Blog » Blog Archive » CPU minute restrictions removed Says:
    June 1st, 2006 at 3:58 am

    [...] “Crazy overselling!” What’s that all about? Well, if you like to read, http://blog.dreamhost.com/2006/05/18/the-truth-about-overselling/ will explain it all! And see that little “post-script” at the “bottom”? [...]

71. 海豚微笑的背后 » Blog Archive » DreamHost取消了CPU minute限制? Says:
    June 1st, 2006 at 3:58 am

    [...] http://blog.dreamhost.com/2006/05/18/the-truth-about-overselling/ [...]

72. blogHelper » Dreamhost: No More CPU Limits. Good or Bad? Says:
    June 1st, 2006 at 4:10 am

    [...] The bad news? Overselling and CPU limits. In the past, Dreamhost used to institute a 60 CPU minute limit on all shared hosting accounts. This means that you’re unlikely to ever finish your bandwidth since you’ll tend hit your CPU limit first, especially for PHP-heavy sites like Wordpress blogs. [...]

73. Scott Says:
    June 1st, 2006 at 5:14 am

    Geoffrey,

    I’ve been with Dreamhost for several years and have run into the “using too much cpu” problem once, and it was a plugin for Wordpress that was causing the trouble. The email I received was a bit curt, but I fixed the problem and all was well.

    Your attempt to contact customer service for actual help were derailed as soon as you started your email picking on the spelling of the email you received. I know that when I worked customer service people who gave me attitude without any cause received attention, but I certainly didn’t go out of my way to help or care about them. Think about responding to a customer service email without a hint of venom in your response and you might get better service. Did I say service enough?

74. Kevin Says:
    June 1st, 2006 at 5:42 am

    When I first got involved as a shared hosting customer, I could immediately see by the plan parameters that they had to be overselling. I’m one of those folks who usese 1% of the disk and 2% of the bandwidth.

    I appreciate overselling because it give me cheap web space. And on those times when I need to move a really big file around, I don’t have to worry about what I need to delete. And if I decide to say something about some political candidate running for some office that gets quoted in the blog sphere, I don’t want to have to worry about getting my account taken offline for a month (like happened to a friend with another host).

    Having been with several hosting companies over the years, and having been disgruntled more than once, and having read complaint forums I see the kinds of disputes that arise.

    What I have not seen in other hosting companies, is the willingness to allow users to vent, uncensored, on a forum like this. Other companies will let a couple of users vent, particularly when there is a good response from the host, but silently delete the really bad stuff.

75. emigrando.org » Dreamhost elimina la restriccion de CPU Says:
    June 1st, 2006 at 5:43 am

    [...] Despues de interminables luchas con WP, con los minutos de CPU y con el mismo Dreamhost de muchos bloggers, en el newsletter de Mayo, Dreamhost ha comunicado que por fin elimina las restricciones de CPU para sus clientes. El texto en concreto es este: [...]

76. Leandro Says:
    June 1st, 2006 at 5:47 am

    I could never accuse this post of being short. Hell!

    But I understand, kind of figured. Not bothered by it.

77. Sean Mountcastle Says:
    June 1st, 2006 at 5:59 am

    You guys might want to start looking at the Sun Coolthreads machines, when you have a bunch of customers running completely separate processes, multi-cores come in really handy: http://www.sun.com/servers/coolthreads/t2000/ plus they’ll let you try them free for 60 days …

78. Geoffrey Huntley Says:
    June 1st, 2006 at 6:48 am

    Scott,

    I really was not after help as I’m more than capable at hunting down, analyizing and resolving performance issues when they come up.

    It was not a matter of run-away scripts of death but purely true actual load of four small websites 1k uniques/day and one large which serves 8-9k uniques a day.

    I’d admit emails I sent were snarky but I was really pissed off as I had just forked over a large sum of money for webhosting and my first interaction (thus impression of the company0 was set by an reactive tech support email saying he had [attempted] to disabled my websites.

    A couple times dreamhost disabled the websites or sections of the websites without even sending an email!

    Hopefully the days of “index.php.DISABLED.BY.DREAMHOST” will now be over.

79. MN8 Says:
    June 1st, 2006 at 7:11 am

    Hi. I have been with dreamhost over 2 years now, not a single problem. I am on the $20 per month plan and can add extra domains with no setup fees, that has been a lifesaver. Before, I was with Concentric, who changed to XO Communications and raised my monthly fee to $59 per month….I was getting raped over there.

    I am very glad I found dreamhost, ….I was recommended by a friend, and I have recommended several friends to Dreamhost.

    Keep up the good work.

    Now I just hope its not too hard to set up ecommerce, as I am a noob with that, but will need it soon.

    cheers,
    http://www.mn8.net
    http://www.10thlegion.net

80. Haydur Says:
    June 1st, 2006 at 7:23 am

    Dear Mr. Geoffrey Huntley,

    Here are a few spelling and grammatical mistakes you made in your post (as well as your responses to customer support):

    basicaly
    initative
    else where (one word)
    a otherwise (an)
    you would of noticed (have)
    affecting over websites (other)

    P.S. I have a couple of accounts on Dreamhost. They’re good.

81. Ariel Says:
    June 1st, 2006 at 8:28 am

    Josh,

    I have no idea how much CPU I’m using. WHat I know is that:
    1) I’m probably middle-of-the road
    2) About 99.9% of my CPU usage is spam-filtering (procmail).

    Since my domain gets about 6000 spams/day (including bogus bounces) this amounts to an email every 86400/6000 = 14.4 seconds. That’s right about 4 CPU spikes every minute.

    I’d be thrilled if I could avoid this CPU usage altogether. I have absolutely no need for it. I’m not enjoying this spam-filtering. I do need a wildcard accept rule because managing lists is a pain because honeypots (spam-baits) are useful and because I get a lot of wanted email from “no-previous correspondence” people. This can be accomplished easily by:

    1) Greylisting on your SMTP servers
    2) Temporarily not accepting emails from known spews

    known spews? I can give you a minute by minute list of them which are sending email to non-existent accounts at a high rate. In fact, I have the list of these IPs on dreamhost ~/Maildir/spam.ips (I keep the past 1 week or so there)

    Any great news on this matter would be absolutely great and you may get a lot of your CPU back.

    -
    Cheers, Ariel

82. Montoya Says:
    June 1st, 2006 at 9:57 am

    So if my site cripples after less than an hour on Digg, and I’m using Wordpress but I’m not using the last-comments plugin, then what am I to do? Move to a more expensive plan? Find other optomization techniques? Assume it was not my fault and ignore it?

    And what would it matter if DH only offered 10 GB and 500 GB of bandwidth? Say you cut things in half… I would still get more than my money’s worth, and I’d probably get less outages from other hungry users… I think I would prefer that.

83. Ryan Williams Says:
    June 1st, 2006 at 10:14 am

    Did you see this month’s newsletter. Montoya? If not, give it a read.

84. Matt Says:
    June 1st, 2006 at 11:07 am

    I wanted to pipe in here for a moment too. One of my sites a while back was using too many CPU cycles and I got an alert email about it. Similar to one of the earliest posts on this blog, Dreamhost gave me the time to figure out what was happening instead of simply shutting me down and they gave me the tools to track down what was happening.

    After using the tools that Dreamhost provided for me, I found out it was the d*mn googlebot killing my mySQL based dynamic website while it was trying to index the thing.

    Key thing though was that Dreamhost didn’t disable my site, gave me tools to track down what was eating CPU cycles, and gave me great support along the way.

    I’ve been a customer here for 7 years and you just can’t beat the quality and service they offer. I’ve tried other hosting companies and they’ve paled in comparison. Plus other companies don’t have Josh and the great (always late) Dreamhost Newslettery.

    As always, thanks Dreamhost for your continued great service.

85. dclayton Says:
    June 1st, 2006 at 1:17 pm

    My biggest complaint about DreamHost is the ridiculous webmail support. 3 out of 10 times I encounter extremely slow webmail access, or email downtime. I always email DreamHost about it (just to give them a hard time) and I always get the same response back (”Oh it’s slow? Huh. It seems fine now.”) And my God, the way they have Courier IMAP configured makes webmail take 10 minutes to load if you’ve got lots of folders.

    Beyond that, one of my customer’s site loads VERY slowly. Like, 20k images take 2 seconds to load. That is stupid slow. Again, when I contact DreamHost about the problem, they tell me “Looks fast on our network.”

    My final irritation is the crazy number of accounts required for any hosting at DreamHost. Creating separate email accounts and then hooking up email aliases to them, separate entirely from WebIDs, is crazy confusing. I’ve gotten it down now, but my family relatives who host their own personal websites bang their head into a wall. My experience with reseller environments at others hosts have been MUCH easier, and I would stay with them, but the hosts are real shady.

    Other than those three gripes, and aside from the fact that my support requests are usually always followed by more (non-pertinent) questions from tech support, DreamHost is a great deal for bandwidth and storage purposes, but less ideal for script processing and quick email.

86. Ryan Williams Says:
    June 1st, 2006 at 2:48 pm

    I can relate to the slowness with processing, although I’m convinced it’s down to some kind of MySQL issue. For months now, I’ve always noticed that when WordPress generates a page, it takes a good few seconds to do so (up to around five). However, once WP-Cache has gotten that initial version cached, it loads pretty much instantaneously.

    Okay, sure, I appreciate that the very point of WP-Cache is to achieve exactly that, but the uncached version seems to take a *little* excessively long to process. It seems like it should be at the very most half of what it currently takes.

    Fortunately, I don’t update my current site a great deal so the MySQL slowness isn’t much of an issue, but I can see it being a serious pain in the face for sites where caching simply doesn’t exist, or where updates are constant.

87. Like Howlym Does » DreamHost取消CPU时间限制 Says:
    June 1st, 2006 at 5:56 pm

    [...]   http://blog.dreamhost.com/2006/05/18/the-truth-about-overselling/ [...]

88. Unofficial DreamHost Blog » Blog Archive » CPU minute restrictions removed Says:
    June 1st, 2006 at 10:41 pm

    [...] Michael writes: The reason that plans don’t come with a specific amount of CPU is that it is not a hard limit. To give you an idea: only 3% of DreamHost users use over 60 cpu minutes. The highest for yesterday was 750 cpu minutes but I have seen as high as 1250, which is the equivalent of your own very powerful dedicated server. (say a 2.8Ghz Xeon) [...]

89. Lone Says:
    June 2nd, 2006 at 3:19 am

    i must concure..
    i have NEVER had slow loading from DH servers for anything webrelated. every time i did i attempted to file a complante about it and befor hand with a simple check it was always something at my ISP or my local system or network.. never anything i was able to blame DH for..

    slow script proccesing? i never experenced that.. and i wrote the entire front and back end for my site my self its 90% dynamic and loaded from SQL and as far as i seen puts little to no load on the server.. even with my random spikes of anywhere from 50-1000+ hits a day.. was never slowed on loading and never from my knowlage effected the server my site resides on.

90. checkers Says:
    June 2nd, 2006 at 4:25 am

    I’m a dreamhost member and I have been extremely pleased with their service – this entry answered the last few niggles I had and then some, great entry! :D

91. kev Says:
    June 2nd, 2006 at 5:41 am

    Ryan:

    regarding the slowness of WordPress… i’ve brought up similar inquiries about Gallery. i postulated that it was possibly an I/O bound issue with the file-server (relatively low CPU load on the server at the time: 2.xx on a 4-cpu), and DH support agreed. latency is the key here, and since Gallery’s (similarly WP?) code is split into many small files, it suffers tremendously. (4+sec initial load times). i do wonder how the web machines are connected to the file-servers. i notice that my host is connected to at least 10 distinct (based on free-space remaining) mounts. i shudder to think if that were all piped through a single gigabit ethernet interface. though, perhaps it’s a pure hw limitation on the part of server. having 10 independent sets of disks and around 500 unique accounts on the machine no doubt leads to a considerable I/O load.

    as further evidence, DH moved my home to a fresh file-server some months ago; when it was mostly empty during the first week, my dynamic webpages popped up with incredible snappyness. too bad for me. :(

    i guess this serves as a good argument for making custom front/back-ends (which are likely targetted to the application and hence not scattered into bazillions of files).

92. Fengshurui » Dreamhost - No more CPU minute restrictions Says:
    June 2nd, 2006 at 6:50 am

    [...]    http://blog.dreamhost.com/2006/05/18/the-truth-about-overselling/ [...]

93. Denken Über » Cambios en el hosting de Dreamhost Says:
    June 2nd, 2006 at 9:15 am

    [...] La gente de Dreamhost parece haber dado de baja el “consumo de CPU” que tantos problemas generó en muchos blogs; a La maté por un yogur a Minid, a Manuel Almeida o mi mismo que me encargué de reportarlo en Wordpress [...]

94. Ryan Williams Says:
    June 2nd, 2006 at 12:52 pm

    It’s a good argument Kev, but a little unrealistic for many people. :~

95. Sam Says:
    June 2nd, 2006 at 3:26 pm

    I’d say the load on paramount is pretty high:

    paramount>:~/logs/resources$ w
    16:16:40 up 57 days, 1:08, 3 users, load average: 6.03, 4.97, 4.59

96. Bitperbit - Actualidad y Tecnologia hoy » Dreamhost elimina el límite de minutos de uso de CPU en los servidores Says:
    June 4th, 2006 at 5:31 pm

    [...]   http://blog.dreamhost.com/2006/05/18/the-truth-about-overselling/ [...]

97. Dreamhost cambia su política de consumo de CPU » La mate por un yogur Says:
    June 5th, 2006 at 2:32 am

    [...] Hasta ahora si un cliente acaparaba más de “60 minutos de CPU” al día tenía un problema, o lo disminuía o acabarían echándole. En el último Newsletter se anuncia que no habrá más restricciones en este campo, para ello se adquirirán nuevos y potentes servidores a la vez que se trabaja directamente con aquellos usuarios para ayudarles a mejorar el rendimiento de sus páginas. En la verdad sobre el overselling (vender más de lo que uno dispone) se analiza el problema de las empresas de hosting. Ahora toca esperar y ver si surgen nuevos afectados… [...]

98. riki Says:
    June 6th, 2006 at 12:34 am

    So can we attribute the recent black listing by AOL and co to overselling? Meaning the more users you bring onbaord with bargain basement deals, facilitated by the overly generous “rewards program” the more scum you’re likely to attract??

99. Peter Says:
    June 6th, 2006 at 8:02 am

    Ryan: if that’s the case, a PHP accelerator could solve the problem.

100. Ryan Williams Says:
     June 6th, 2006 at 4:09 pm

     Peter, could you elaborate on that slightly? I’ve always assumed that those type of things require special coding. Are you implying that I could get something going with WordPress that might help, but not affect the server adversely?

101. Quick Online Tips » Dreamhost Webhosting Removes CPU Minutes Usage Limits Says:
     June 7th, 2006 at 7:09 am

     [...] Remember this is shared webhosting and other websites are hosted on the same server as yours. If your site hogs lots of CPU resources, then the entire server goes down with all the sites hosted on it. So they had set up this limit to keep CPU resources under control. Recently they posted on their blog about the truth about CPU minutes (read the postscript) “People who are getting disabled for “cpu resource abuse” are people who are crashing their server. It’s completely unrelated to the disk/bw limits, except for the fact that those higher limits got us a lot more customers, so we are a lot bigger now, so a lot more people (not percentage-wise, just overall) are causing problems, possibly getting disabled, and then possibly complaining about it. [...]

102. corsaria Says:
     June 11th, 2006 at 9:46 am

     Enlazando 2 y medio…

     Continuamos con esos enlaces que me han llamado la atención. ;-) » Si tienes un site propio estadísticas que puedes……

103. Isulong Seoph Says:
     June 13th, 2006 at 11:18 am

     whelp, but at least some fellas looks for cheap host, then the oversellers comes in

104. No Name Says:
     June 19th, 2006 at 9:06 am

     Funny, funny stuff. I am really sorry but those who actually believe the BS you are being fed by DreamHost are just FOOLS! From a business stand point it does give DreamHost a lot of profitbility.

     Think about this…what if one day all of your users decided to use 50% of their space? Then your done for. And yes you can always add more HD or connection but that takes time and those things can’t be done on the fly.

     Just because Dreamhost is successful it doesn’t mean that they aren’t ripping everyone off.

     Few people will believe me that read this but I had to say it. Do some indepedant research and see how dreamhost is all bs.

     Oh and this comment will probably get removed before anybody actually reads it. Oh well…

105. Google Calendar data APIPosted by Kyle Marvin, Software Engineer Last -- Centplus Tech Says:
     June 23rd, 2006 at 10:01 pm

     [...] The Truth About Overselling!(You see, our business plan from the start has been to build up a successful hosting company as an audience for our eventual blog, which we then sell to Rupert Murdoch for $503.22241490 MILLION). On to the goods. … [...]

106. Steven Says:
     July 3rd, 2006 at 7:12 pm

     Or imagine this… you go to the airport and find that they’ve overbooked their flight… oh wait a second. That happens already and it SUCKS.

107. No Relation» Blog Archive » DreamHost.com are Overselling! Says:
     July 7th, 2006 at 1:31 pm

     [...] Yes! DreamHost are Overselling and they acknowledge it! “yes, we are overselling” they say! you don’t believe me? here’s the link to the official DreamHost Blog post where they admit it and claim that it is is the right and smart thing to do in the webhosting business! Overselling occurs when a host offers a plan to clients with huge features of disk space and Bandwidth for a low price but is, in reality, unable to provide all that amount of ressources hoping that the client (or most of them at least) won’t use all those features! This often come with CPU usage restrictions!! Dreamhost are offering for just $7.95/month: -1 FREE domain registration http://www.yourname.com – UNLIMITED domains hosted – UNLIMITED subdomains – 20 GB Disk, 1 TB Transfer – 3000 Mailboxes, 75 Shell/FTP Users [...]

108. TBT Diarrhea » Blog Archive » My Journey into the Technological World Says:
     July 9th, 2006 at 1:28 pm

     [...] In early 2005, my girlfriend, Erika and her sisters were in need of a website for their music store, RIME Music. As they were discussing it, I was curious as how web servers worked. I was pretty ignorant with the matter and I didn’t really know where to begin (as I wanted to help with the matter). I couldn’t code anything else except karaoke scripts, small irc scripts and my html skills were quite limited. All I wanted to do was somehow help. I came across the sweet deal at Dreamhost. Before I came across Dreamhost, I read in a variety of forums and blogs in the dangers of buying cheap webhost; that webhosting follows the “you-get-what-you-buy” adage. People would always caution buying from webhosts that oversell. Nevertheless, Dreamhost came across pretty good in almost every review I read. For $10 a month, I was pretty sure it could safely run RIME music. I bought the basic package and I do not regret it to this day. [...]

109. thewaya.org » Cheap(er) Hosting Says:
     July 11th, 2006 at 6:58 pm

     [...] No more CPU minute restrictions [...]

110. Anonymous Says:
     July 20th, 2006 at 5:16 pm

     Somepeople said they have got an F on BBB but that may relate to fantastic!

111. wujimon » Migrating Webhosts Says:
     July 22nd, 2006 at 6:59 am

     [...] I decided to try out A Small Orange webhosting after much searching and reading on the WebHosting Talk forums.  Already, I feel the site a bit “snappier” in terms of performance, which I corrrelate to server load. For more information on server load, take a look at the write up at UltraCheapHosts and Dreamhost on The Truth About Overselling. [...]

112. XConv : Free Online File Conversion Service » Blog Archive » Dreamhost promo code: the best dreamhost coupon Says:
     July 24th, 2006 at 8:18 pm

     [...] No more CPU minute restrictions [...]

113. DreamHost Review: Part II | MONFX Says:
     August 2nd, 2006 at 12:01 am

     [...] Simply put – it’s all true. DreamHost does oversell, and they even admit to it in their blog! Overselling is just a technique many hosts use to attract customers and build the revenue/income needed to sustain themselves. This means that they offer a LOT for a minimal amount of money and hope that customers use the bare minimum resources. As long as customers do not use the full amount of what they’re being offered, the company can continue to profit with limited services. The problem hosts run into is when customers DO use the resources they are told they have. [...]

114. DreamHost Blog » Anatomy of a(n ongoing) Disaster.. Says:
     August 3rd, 2006 at 5:08 pm

     [...] Ironically, some of the network problems seem to have stemmed from us trying to better protect ourselves from power failures. I also want to say for the record that none of these problems in my opinion stemmed from “overselling”. Rather, I’d say it’s the result of bad luck. And incompetence on our (and the building’s) part. [...]

115. That Not So Fresh Feeling » The Pain of Shared Web Hosting Says:
     August 10th, 2006 at 6:36 pm

     [...] Sometimes, however, it’s the customer’s fault. Let me explain … DreamHost is a shared web hosting provider, and a low cost one at that. They spread a bunch of sites out across servers, to better utilize the resources of the server, and they make money off of the folks who barely use their sites. The 5% of users who completely pillage the servers are money losers, but they’re the price you pay for bringing in all of the less active users. It’s all about economics and economies of scale. [...]

116. GoDaddy Doubles Hosting Space and Bandwidth Says:
     August 14th, 2006 at 2:37 am

     [...] In real life, only a fraction of 1 percent of hosting accounts will ever use all the resources, so overselling actually is a valid business model for hosting. Otherwise, disk arrays would sit 98% empty and network pipes 1% full. [...]

117. Wordpress, Dreamhost, Diariomotor, Wp-Cache, PHP5, Php-CGI, Gallir, Borja, SIGT, un tipo inglés, yo mismo y la madre que nos parió a todos - el agujero de gusano Says:
     August 28th, 2006 at 12:42 pm

     [...] Solución: Ya no lo tiene limitado, dicen que antes que crear ese buzz por internet se olvidan de la CPU y asunto arreglado. (info en castellano). [...]

118. 详解DreamHost的营销模式 « Oasis Feng Says:
     September 13th, 2006 at 7:54 am

     [...] 事实确实如此，但DreamHost真的就亏了么？这个问题说起来就略为复杂一些了。首先，从DreamHost官方Blog的《The Truth about overselling》一文中我们可以清楚的看出虚拟主机运营成本与价格方案之间的微妙关系。假定你已经读完了这篇风趣的文章，回到我们面对的这个问题上来，DreamHost真的亏了么？相信聪明的你已经意识到这一点了：如果你只是用虚拟主机承载简单的个人Blog，那么确实非常容易迁移到新的主机上，而从DreamHost的角度来看，其实它并没有为你的帐号支出多高的成本；相反，如果你使用了利用虚拟主机提供数个复杂的业务，拥有庞大的数据库，那么迁移主机对你来说或许就是一件非常痛苦的事情了，可能带来的风险和不利面甚至超过了你继续原有帐号的成本。 [...]

119. TBT Blog » Blog Archive » Dreamhost Goes Insane… Again? Says:
     October 3rd, 2006 at 1:37 pm

     [...] I don’t want to be too critical of Dreamhost. They are in fact my choice for webhosting and this site is hosted through them. But I am quite cautious about becoming excited for this deal. More space and more bandwidth is always great, so long as there is no impact on overal bandwidth speeds and site loading times. Though Dreamhost has already defended overselling, I’m not quite sure if they’re quite capable of it just yet (the network problems speak for itself). Of course, I could be wrong about everything. Perhaps this upgrade along with the new feature of “Files Forever” where you can upload a file and keep it “forever” will all work out for the best for both Dreamhost and Dreamhost customers. We can only hope for the best. [...]

120. BLOGoree.ro blog » Blog Archive » 200GB de spatiu si 2TB (2000GB) de trafic lunar (Dreamhost, adica) Says:
     October 4th, 2006 at 4:28 am

     [...] De ce sunt atat de ieftini, totusi? dreamhost.com ofera ceea ce se numeste “budget hosting”. Adica, hosting la preturi mici, obtinute prin overselling. Privit ca un lucru negativ, in mod normal, overselling-ul este ceva destul de des intalnit in afacerile cu hosting. Pentru ca tot suntem pe un site dedicat blogurilor, blog-ul oficial al celor de la Dreamhost explica extraordinar de bine ce inseamna overselling si cat e de bun sau de rau (apropo, blog-ul Dreamhost mi se pare unul din cele mai bune bloguri corporate citite de mine pe internet). [...]

121. karnavalos Says:
     October 6th, 2006 at 5:44 am

     dreamhost.com has terrible uptime…. also these arguments are kind of silly. The fact that they decided to compete with some liars does not make them honest too…

122. John Eberly’s Geek Blog :: Cheap, reliable, secure off-site storage for digital life backup… Where are you? Says:
     October 9th, 2006 at 9:09 am

     [...] Summary: Well they obviously oversell, they even admit it. But that didn’t bother me, if I could use the 10-50GB I would need. So I signed up and started to rsync some of my data, but then I started to worry a little. Anybody with $40 could sign up for an account with shell access. What would happen if someone gained access to my files? After a simple ls of the home directory, the first site I looked at that was hosted on my server was a blog from an ethical hacker, I decided to jump ship entirely. Not that I think Dreamhost doesn’t secure their servers, I am sure they do, but it just didn’t feel right to leave my somewhat sensitive data there. I would trust it for my photos and videos, but not my documents. So now what. [...]

123. s5j.net » Blog Archive » Why isn’t Dreamhost doing this? Says:
     October 14th, 2006 at 3:55 pm

     [...] It’s not like this should be a tough decision for DreamHost. One of the primary benefits of this technology is to eliminate problems with over- and under-selling. The host has a pool of resources that can be grown incrementally, as resource use grows, without worrying about the growth rates of individual sites. [...]

124. Kaedrin Weblog Says:
     October 15th, 2006 at 7:55 pm

     Link Dump…

     I’ve been quite busy lately so once again it’s time to unleash the chain-smoking monkey research squad and share the……

125. Reselling the Oversellers? • Maluke Co. Says:
     October 17th, 2006 at 11:48 am

     [...] Today Media Temple launched a new offer: 100GB storage, 1TB bandwidth for $20 a month, I can safely assume they are overselling, just like Dreamhost does and almost every other hosting company does too. The premise is that only a few clients use the advertised resources (and that costs the company much more then what is being paid) and everybody else uses so little that in the end it’s profitable. [...]

126. Caídas del servidor web - el agujero de gusano Says:
     October 17th, 2006 at 1:46 pm

     [...] Nos pasamos a Dreamhost, increíblemente barato para todo lo que da. Su precio bajo se basa en el overselling, es decir, ofrecerte recursos casi ilimitados sabiendo que no los vas a usar y puedes compartir servidor con otros muchos usuarios. ¿Es esto una práctica rastrera igual que el overbooking? No tanto, especialmente porque funciona aceptablemente bien. Al menos te permite tener un montón de recursos (transferencia, dominios alojados, espacio en disco, bases de datos) por un precio muy reducido, y no es tan molesto como compartir asiento en el avión. [...]

127. Dreamhost Unofficial Blog » Niente più limiti sull’uso della CPU Says:
     October 25th, 2006 at 8:20 am

     [...] Girando su internet si è sempre incontrata gente che diceva di lasciar perdere Dreamhost perchè bastava un niente per superare il limite giornaliero di utilizzo della CPU, con conseguente sospensione del proprio account. Su questo si sono create vere e proprie leggende metropolitane, che hanno costretto quelli di Dreamhost a chiarire una volta per tutte come stanno realmente le cose; potete farvi un’idea leggendo questo post all’interno del blog di Dreamhost. Il problema è che i server condivisi, si chiamano appunto così perchè più persone contemporaneamente li utilizzano, condividendo tutte le risorse al loro interno, se qualcuno incomincia ad abusare della CPU rischia di compromettere le prestazioni della macchina, portandola anche al crash. Inizialmente Dreamhost all’interno delle CPU Resources FAQ riportava il limite di 50/60 minuti al giorno per l’utilizzo della CPU, adesso invece non c’è più una soglia di pericolo, basta non influire sulle prestazioni del server. Fate presente che attualmente circa un 3% dei webmaster supera il limite dei 60 minuti giornalieri, quindi se qualcuno dovesse davvero compromettere la funzionalità di una macchina, si potrebbe venire spostati su un altro server dove le richieste di CPU sono minori. [...]

128. from the gut » SRLNet Has Separation Issues Says:
     November 3rd, 2006 at 6:59 am

     [...] The reply was that dreamhost offers terrible support, oversells their servers, and their sites frequently go down. I already knew all this. You know why, because dreamhost told me. He told me that I might be saving money but that I would be losing support and performance. [...]

129. Lunarpages Web Hosting - Amy’s Blog » Blog Archive » Hosting Hazards Says:
     November 23rd, 2006 at 9:38 am

     [...] Due to limitations of how many words this article can have, I’ll link you to the entire entry – http://blog.dreamhost.com/2006/05/18/the-truth-about-overselling  I would hate to be accused of quoting specific text that takes what Josh is trying to say out of context: [...]

130. Any non-overselling web hosting out there? | HostingFu Says:
     December 12th, 2006 at 9:16 pm

     [...] Overselling is indeed a very touching subject in web hosting. I previously wrote against it earlier this year when I first discovered this terminology. Then I read DreamHost and Site5’s take on this issue, and was convinced that overselling is a “business strategy”, rather than a fraud or trickery. [...]

131. bananaskin » Blog Archive » 谈谈主机的过量销售和负载 Says:
     December 14th, 2006 at 1:32 am

     [...] （本文部分从hostingfu上翻译过来，如果有翻译不恰当，还请指正） 对于服务器过量销售或说是过载，很多买卖虚拟主机的用户都是十分关心的。看到在国外的论坛上，这种情况在英文中称为“overselling”，直译过来就是“过量销售”，我们也可以称为过载。用户当然不喜欢主机商过量销售他们的产品了，因为做为sharehosting，“过量的销售”都很有可能将影响到同一主机上的每个人的使用。然而，做为商家，他们却对这种“过量销售”爱不释手。    也许我们每个人都会讨厌这种“过量销售”的行为，但是做为主机商，他们却有着他们自己的考虑，当你读完DreamHost and Site5上关于“overselling”的说法文章时，也许你就会明白，这在他们来看来只是做为一种商业策略。    面对着现在主机市场上的这种动态需求，“过量销售”不能简单地看成是会使你分配到的空间和带宽变多或是变少了。    例如，现在我们以下面两种情况来看：    1.如果虽然一个主机商承诺提供无限空间和流量，但是真正给予的已经满足了客户的需求，这样你会说他“overselling”？    2.如果主机商按照他们的广告销售空间，而且并没有“过量销售”他们的产品，然而用户所利用到的资源却已负载了。这你会说成是“overselling”？    大多虚拟主机用户会乐意第一种情况。他们选择只要提供满足我需要的，其它的并不关心。这样的方式，也正能更好地利用资源。正在从资源管理学上来说，却实是一种商业的策略。    那是否有“non-overselling”（没有过量销售）的虚拟主机，如果你是从空间容量，流量的使用上来说，回答是有的。那些主机商声称不会“overselling”他们的产品，但是其它资源方面（如CPU占用率、内存使用率、硬盘的IO带宽、数据库连接数等）却超载了。    那么我们怎么样去具体确认这种情况呢？如何查看服务器上一共有多少个帐号，一共运行了多少个网站？如何知道自己用了多少带宽，用了多少CPU、IO和其它的资源呢？其实，这些问题都很难去具体地做确认的，所以不好判断是不是“overselling”了。    如果要寻找真正的“non-overselling”主机，我们是否可以从另一方面考虑，就是“只为你使用的资源付费”，如Amazon S3和NearlyFreeSpeech.net，它会根据精确地统计你的空间、流量等，以此收取费用。然而最大的问题依然存在，就是究竟用了多少那些隐藏的没有布告出来的资源，因为主机商不会只承诺给你应有的空间和流量，而不关心你所使用的CPU占用率、MYSQL连接数等问题。    回头来看看自己国内的虚拟主机市场，你会在各大论坛上寻找虚拟主机销售信息时，发现有好多卖得很便宜的空间，有的还打出不限制CPU，不限制IIS，不限制流量的广告以此吸引顾客。难道真的那么好，那么便宜的虚拟主机吗？答案是否定的。    就比如近期在各大虚拟主机论坛上抄得火暴的“火山互联”，他们销售的虚拟主机可让人大跌眼镜，1GB容量的全能空间，只卖100元。其实大家自己算算都知道，现在配置一台服务器算5000吧，假如使用5年，一年算1000，托管一年要3000以上，平均一年就要4000，再加硬件和软件的维护费，还有请人做客服和技术管理等，一年起码也要上万吧。如果一块硬盘是80G（还要装系统和软件），就当全部卖完，也才不到8000块吧。怎么回本呢？这就必当导致服务器过载、服务质量差、服务效率低等一系列问题。所以选购虚拟主机时，还是不要贪图便宜而受那份着急的罪吧。 Tag: 主机 Posted in 主机选购经验 | var blogurl=”http://www.bananaskin.cn”; var needemail=”"; 作者 [...]

132. DreamHost Blog » A Christmas Present for You! Says:
     December 28th, 2006 at 1:28 pm

     [...] Businesses make these CRAZY promotions with the understanding that 99% of their customers aren’t going to take FULL advantage. YOU just want to be in the 1% that does! [...]

133. DreamHost Blog » New Dream Resolutions Says:
     January 3rd, 2007 at 6:57 pm

     [...] Well, I’ve already covered “overselling” plenty, and ALL the quota increases really did was increase the number of new customers we got! [...]

134. DreamHost逐减其空间大小和流量 | BananaSkin Says:
     January 4th, 2007 at 2:36 am

     [...] 看到今天DreamHost上的hosting plans的描述中，多了两排红字“On Jan 4th starting Disk drops to:”、“On Jan 4th, starting BW drops to:”。可以看到，DH上的任何一款主机方案中的空间大小和流量大小都在以每天0.25%的速度在减少。为什么DH要这样做呢？在DH的这篇Blog上，其解释道，是因为DH发现越来越多的人对DH所提供的大空间大流量表示了不满，称其是严重的“Overselling”，而DH的Blog上以前就有对“Overselling”做过解释，但好像并没有作用。依然有很多人到处宣扬，致使DH的名望严重受损。所以DH为了恢复其声誉，特意采取了这个措施，把初始的空间和流量变小了。但DH称，这并不会影响到以前注册的用户，而且新注册购买的用户，其空间和流量每周的增长率依然不变。 Tag: dreamhost [...]

135. Jim Whimpey » Dreamhost on Overselling Says:
     January 5th, 2007 at 10:31 pm

     [...] Dreamhost on overselling. A great article from Dreamhost in response to their overselling accusations. I love anaolgies for explaining things and this one is brilliant. [...]

136. John Says:
     January 5th, 2007 at 11:20 pm

     Is it just me, or does Dreamhost remove any negative comments? I prefer GoDaddy hosting.

137. wwwys的blog » Blog Archive » About Overselling Web Host Says:
     January 8th, 2007 at 12:53 am

     [...] 简单介绍下:作者去年早些时候写过文章来反对这种行为, The Dark Side of DreamHost (and Shared Hosting) | SYP, 后来读了其他的文章后, DreamHost Blog » The Truth About Overselling!, Site5 Web Hosting Blog, 改变了看法,认为这其实是一种business strategy. [...]

138. Martin Geisler Online » DreamHost Fun (Madness)! Says:
     January 14th, 2007 at 8:22 am

     [...] Today they announced on their company blog that they would begin lowering the amount of available disk space and bandwidth for new customers!? This is absurd and never heard of before… they claim to be doing this to regain the reputation they lost during 2006 where people started saying that they were overselling their services. [...]

139. Out with Dream Host, in with Rails Playground Says:
     January 16th, 2007 at 1:30 am

     [...] Well, well, well, almost a year after signing up with Dream Host, after going through many turbulent times, trying to fix things up myself, and again, surviving an unannounced, and not so welcome upgrade, after hoping for mongrel support, it really came down to a severe case of overselling. Performance had become abysmal, database connections hard to come by, site was down for longer and longer periods of time. Sometimes several hours without much I could do to revive it. [...]

140. benetleong.com » Looking for webhosting? Try Dreamhost.com. Says:
     January 17th, 2007 at 1:51 am

     [...] Overselling? 200GB is too good to be true isn’t it? The truth is – Dreamhost oversells. Now before you guys all run off… they’re actually truthful about it… just read this blog post. [...]

141. DreamHost Blog » No Run-Of-The-Mill Week, This! Says:
     January 19th, 2007 at 3:33 pm

     [...] [...]

142. The Tech Night Owl Newsletter » Newsletter Issue #373 Says:
     January 30th, 2007 at 6:33 pm

     [...] while looking for a new company to host my four sites, I ran across a fascinating blog entry from Josh Jones, a Co-Founder of DreamHost, one of the larger players in that business. In his own inimitable [...]

143. DreamHost吸引顾客的不仅仅是优惠的价格，其诱人的“推荐”模式也是一个重要因素。 at 肚破惊天 追不上时代，就把它丢下。 Says:
     March 4th, 2007 at 9:37 pm

     [...] 或许有些更精明的朋友就会开始盘算了，如果我第二年换一张信用卡再重新注册一个DreamHost的帐号，然后迁移到新的虚拟主机上来，这样我岂不 是既通过Promo Code享受了折扣，又作为上线获得了奖励，只需要$20.16即可再“续约”一年；而到了第三年更是只需$19.04了～ 事实确实如此，但DreamHost真的就亏了么？这个问题说起来就略为复杂一些了。首先，从DreamHost官方Blog的《The Truth about overselling》一 文中我们可以清楚的看出虚拟主机运营成本与价格方案之间的微妙关系。假定你已经读完了这篇风趣的文章，回到我们面对的这个问题上来，DreamHost真 的亏了么？相信聪明的你已经意识到这一点了：如果你只是用虚拟主机承载简单的个人Blog，那么确实非常容易迁移到新的主机上，而从DreamHost的 角度来看，因为批量运维的缘故，其实它并没有为你的帐号支出多少成本，并不会因为你继续每年$20的支付而产生亏损；相反的情形，如果你使用了利用虚拟主 机提供数个复杂的业务，拥有庞大的数据库，那么迁移主机对你来说或许就是一件非常痛苦的事情了，可能带来的风险和不利面甚至超过了你继续原有帐号的成本。 通常大部分用户都会在一年后选择续费（即使你很不情愿）。因此，绝大多数情况下，DreamHost都不会让你轻松占到额外的便宜。 [...]

144. 1dollar a time » Blog Archive Says:
     March 16th, 2007 at 12:55 am

     [...] No more CPU minute restrictions [...]

145. 1dollar a time » Blog Archive » Cheap Hosting with Terrabytes of Bandwidth Says:
     March 16th, 2007 at 12:56 am

     [...] No more CPU minute restrictions [...]

146. Mywing’s Sky » Blog Archive » [转]详解DreamHost的营销模式 Says:
     April 13th, 2007 at 8:01 pm

     [...] 或许有些更精明的朋友就会开始盘算了，如果我第二年换一张信用卡再重新注册一个DreamHost的帐号，然后迁移到新的虚拟主机上来，这样我岂不 是既通过Promo Code享受了折扣，又作为上线获得了奖励，只需要$20.16即可再“续约”一年；而到了第三年更是只需$19.04了～ 事实确实如此，但DreamHost真的就亏了么？这个问题说起来就略为复杂一些了。首先，从DreamHost官方Blog的《The Truth about overselling》一 文中我们可以清楚的看出虚拟主机运营成本与价格方案之间的微妙关系。假定你已经读完了这篇风趣的文章，回到我们面对的这个问题上来，DreamHost真 的亏了么？相信聪明的你已经意识到这一点了：如果你只是用虚拟主机承载简单的个人Blog，那么确实非常容易迁移到新的主机上，而从DreamHost的 角度来看，因为批量运维的缘故，其实它并没有为你的帐号支出多少成本，并不会因为你继续每年$20的支付而产生亏损；相反的情形，如果你使用了利用虚拟主 机提供数个复杂的业务，拥有庞大的数据库，那么迁移主机对你来说或许就是一件非常痛苦的事情了，可能带来的风险和不利面甚至超过了你继续原有帐号的成本。 通常大部分用户都会在一年后选择续费（即使你很不情愿）。因此，绝大多数情况下，DreamHost都不会让你轻松占到额外的便宜。 [...]

147. [转]详解DreamHost的营销模式 at 肚破惊天|真理和美女都是赤裸裸的。 Says:
     April 24th, 2007 at 2:47 am

     [...] 或许有些更精明的朋友就会开始盘算了，如果我第二年换一张信用卡再重新注册一个DreamHost的帐号，然后迁移到新的虚拟主机上来，这样我岂不 是既通过Promo Code享受了折扣，又作为上线获得了奖励，只需要$20.16即可再“续约”一年；而到了第三年更是只需$19.04了～ 事实确实如此，但DreamHost真的就亏了么？这个问题说起来就略为复杂一些了。首先，从DreamHost官方Blog的《The Truth about overselling》一 文中我们可以清楚的看出虚拟主机运营成本与价格方案之间的微妙关系。假定你已经读完了这篇风趣的文章，回到我们面对的这个问题上来，DreamHost真 的亏了么？相信聪明的你已经意识到这一点了：如果你只是用虚拟主机承载简单的个人Blog，那么确实非常容易迁移到新的主机上，而从DreamHost的 角度来看，因为批量运维的缘故，其实它并没有为你的帐号支出多少成本，并不会因为你继续每年$20的支付而产生亏损；相反的情形，如果你使用了利用虚拟主 机提供数个复杂的业务，拥有庞大的数据库，那么迁移主机对你来说或许就是一件非常痛苦的事情了，可能带来的风险和不利面甚至超过了你继续原有帐号的成本。 通常大部分用户都会在一年后选择续费（即使你很不情愿）。因此，绝大多数情况下，DreamHost都不会让你轻松占到额外的便宜。 [...]

148. Tim Says:
     June 4th, 2008 at 10:33 am

     I think I know the guy in that healthy photo. I’m looking at a brochure for his health supplement store – different photo but I’m 99% sure it’s him. Small world.

149. Royal Pingdom » Web hosting now vs 10 years ago Says:
     June 11th, 2008 at 8:58 am

     [...] be fair, they have gone on the record in their blog explaining the practice and their reasoning behind it (similar to mobile carriers not having [...]

150. Sense Of Doubt » Blog Archive » Buying a hosting plan Says:
     June 25th, 2008 at 8:41 am

     [...] on their shared servers, with the assumption that most people don’t use their full capacity. They explain it here. The policy makes sense. Again, the caveat applies that if your site simply cannot deal with any [...]

151. optimiced | bg » Съществува ли (почти) неограничен хостинг? Says:
     September 15th, 2008 at 10:48 pm

     [...] Overselling, или свръх-продаване, се използва като термин за предлагане на продукт/услуга, които нямаш/не можеш да осигуриш. Някои от хостинг компаниите страдат от такъв проблем, и тук въпросът е да се намери баланс. [...]

152. LYpehiftveith Says:
     October 6th, 2008 at 11:09 pm

     Good Day! Maybe someone know I trying to find an information about news in Iraq! Can somebody help me ti find it? I will be grateful
     _________________
     | vpxl cheap |

153. arcanceve Says:
     October 7th, 2008 at 5:23 am

     Hello! Tell me please where i can find some information about dictionaries. I need spain dictionary. if you have some information about this, I will be glad to read it :) Thanks for attention!
     _________________
     | cilais buying |

154. BrienryFees Says:
     October 7th, 2008 at 11:21 pm

     Hello peoples! :) Maybe someone know I looking for an information about 50 cent, I like their songs) I need immediately! Thanks for attention!
     _________________
     | viagara buy online usa |

155. juicecobcop Says:
     October 9th, 2008 at 3:58 am

     Hello peoples! :) Maybe someone know where i can find an information about tasty food. What can I cook on my birthday? Tell me please, who knows! Hope you will help me
     _________________
     | viagara order online cheap |

156. impesRekRenny Says:
     October 15th, 2008 at 4:53 am

     Hi to everyone! Maybe someone know where i can find an information about all states of America If someone knows, tell me please!
     cialias tablet I will be grateful

157. operoirrard Says:
     October 16th, 2008 at 6:38 am

     Hello peoples! :) Maybe someone know I trying to find an information about news in Iraq! Tell me please, who knows!
     vigra soft Thanks for attention!

158. Absonyassebra Says:
     October 17th, 2008 at 4:21 am

     Hello peoples! :) I Need help! where i can find an information about dictionaries. I need spain dictionary. if you knows something about this, tell me.
     viagara buying online Thanks for attention!

159. foolfelmheare Says:
     October 17th, 2008 at 6:16 am

     Sounds intersting.. Are you interested in my reassuring voting A joke for you! Why are cowboy hats turned up at the sides? So three cowboys can ride in a pickup truck. cialas prescriptions What do you want me to tell you?

160. DreamHost Blog » How To Make Money Says:
     October 22nd, 2008 at 3:06 pm

     [...] I may have mentioned before, we offer a lot more disk and bandwidth than we actually have on hand. We’re sort of like a [...]

161. SexMarket Says:
     November 3rd, 2008 at 7:20 am

     Добрый день.
     Многие семейные пары приходят к тому что их интимная жизнь им надоедает, скорее не надоедает, а хочется чего-то новенького. Интернет-магазин “SexMarket” по адресу http://www.sexmarket.kiev.ua, пожет предложить широкий асортимент. Тут вы можете найти игрушки как для себя так и для Вашего партнера, дополнительные стимуляторы, для дополнительных ощущений. Впрочем не буду все рассказывать заходите, смотрите, покупайте. За дополнительной информацией обращайтесь по адресу info@sexmarket.kiev.ua.

162. The costs of self-hosting your blog » A Division by Zer0 Says:
     November 24th, 2008 at 11:13 am

     [...] know why so many people have this impression that hosting costs are high. With the profileration of shared hosting, costs have dropped to almost nothing. Web hosts practically fall over each other to be cheaper [...]

163. Web hosting now vs 10 years ago | Dedicated Server Offers Says:
     December 29th, 2008 at 2:37 am

     [...] be fair, they have gone on the record in their blog explaining the practice and their reasoning behind it (similar to mobile carriers not having [...]

164. Inpurntug Says:
     January 4th, 2009 at 6:27 am

     Техобслуживание – ремонт двигателя, кап ремонт двигателя, двигатель kia sportage, качественно, быстро, дешево!

165. Inpurntug Says:
     January 4th, 2009 at 3:17 pm

     Производство: коммутационный шкаф, стойка 19. Доступные цены!

166. Никита Says:
     January 5th, 2009 at 4:17 am

     А вот мне в таком случае кажется, не стоит заморачиваться по этому поводу. :)

167. Inpurntug Says:
     January 5th, 2009 at 9:48 am

     частная клиника: медицинская справка, фото, нарколог и психиатр. медсправки для разрешения на работу, санкнижка, консультации врачей – скрытые инфекции, гинеколог уролог, дерматолог венеролог.

168. Inpurntug Says:
     January 6th, 2009 at 10:39 pm

     Реклама в интернет – реклама в Москве, стоимость интернет-рекламы, интернет-реклама и продвижение.

169. Inpurntug Says:
     January 7th, 2009 at 5:23 am

     Реклама в интернет – регистрация сайта в yandex, эффективная интернет-реклама, заказать интернет-рекламу, поисковая оптимизация.

170. Run Away & Hide! When A Hosting Company Offer You Unlimited Bandwidth And Disk Space. | ixibo Says:
     January 24th, 2009 at 11:26 am

     [...] are some more cold hard facts about overselling in Hosting for Dreamhost blog Technorati Tags: hosting,overselling,web hosting,scams Try Our New Search [...]