Facing low speed on your shared hosting? Is shared hosting oversold? Is it time to switch to a different host or a VPS?
Let’s find out how you can see if your shared hosting is oversold.
No matter which hosting you use, most of the shared hosting is oversold. The correct question is who is honest about it?
The main difference is whether there are 10 huge accounts into the 2 GB RAM or they’re just stuffing in 4 or 5 of them. That’s the major difference between low-quality web hosts and high-quality ones.
So, instead of asking “Whether shared hosting is oversold or not?”, your question should be how much oversold is your hosting?
If your website starts facing errors, your hosting is probably oversold.
To know if the hosting is oversold you need to conduct an audit of your website.
Let’s get into that.
How do I know if my host is overselling?
If your shared hosting is oversold, your resources will be exhausted in no time. The allocated resources are much lower than the actual resources that you were promised.
Here’s how you can identify the same.
Unlimited Resources
The “Unlimited” term in the hosting industry is a myth. You will find the clarity about unlimited in many of our posts at WebHostingAdvices.
Especially in shared hosting, they just promise you unlimited but there are always hidden terms. If the hosting services have clearly defined the terms on the pricing page, it’s safe.
However, if the terms are hidden, they are likely overselling.
Dreamhost is one of the few hosts that offers “Unlimited” storage, other resources are still limited.
Resource Monitoring
You will see the “Resource usage” option in cPanel. Keep monitoring the resources regularly. If the resource usage exceeds too often, and you don’t even have much traffic at that point, your hosting provider is most probably overselling the services.
Check Server Status
The next option which is very similar to the resource usage is to check the server stats. When you log in to your cPanel, you will see the server statistics on the right-side panel.
If one of these resources goes up suddenly, your shared hosting is oversold.
Please note that if you have traffic who are using the resources, it’s quite normal.
Performance Issues
In the majority of cases, a small amount of traffic shouldn’t affect the performance issues. If your website has more downtime, low loading times, etc., it could be other accounts using the resources.
Performance issues are one of the biggest red flags you need to see. It indicates that your service is oversold.
Sometimes, the site goes “temporarily unavailable”.
Reverse IP lookup
There are many Reverse IP lookup tools. One such is called MXToolBox, which allows you to check all the domains hosted on the same IP.
So, you can enter your server’s IP address and it will give you a list of all the domain names hosted on the same server.
It’s more of a manual guess as most shared hosting providers don’t share how big their server is. However, if you find the list of domains to be a long list, it’s potentially a red flag.
Downtime
Frequent downtime is a visible sign that your hosting is oversold. Rarely, your website goes down without any reason. It’s mostly because either you or other people on the server are using too many resources.
You can use UptimeRobot to check it.
Neighboring Websites
A great way to find out the same is to also check other domains hosted on the server. If all the domains are frequently down, your hosting is oversold.
You can check other websites from the list that you found above (in the reverse IP lookup).
The next way to find out is to check the reviews on Trustpilot or simply search for one of the similar posts on WebHostingAdvices.
Trustpilot has an option of Filter which allows you to search and find the right reviews for you. Here, you can type in keywords related to you such as downtime, uptime, performance, etc.
Support Response Time
If the customer response time has recently gone down only when you are facing issues, it’s probably because they are experiencing a high volume of support due to overselling.
Therefore, go with the hosting services that have multiple support options.
Upgrade Pressure
Do you think your hosting provider is constantly marketing their new plans to you? It’s because their shared hosting plan is overcrowded. It’s yet another shady technique used by the hosting provider to lure into upgrades.
For instance, Bluehost has a lot of extra add-ons.
It’s quite common for shared hosting to oversell their servers. It helps them reduce costs and get more customers. It not only increases their revenue but also helps them get popular in the eyes of customers.
Shared as well as reseller hosting are mostly based on overselling. It’s completely fine for hosting providers to oversell their servers to an extent.
However, some of the hosts oversell the services too much that it affects your performance at a phenomenal level. Better to get a VPS rather than getting shared hosting. You can get a VPS at the same price.
Here’s a quick sneak peek at the pricing of a VPS. We will reveal the name in the next section.
Basically, if your hosts oversell the shared services without overloading your servers, it’s completely fine.
When practicing overselling, a host hopes that even fractions of their users don’t use the maximum disk space or bandwidth allocated to them. If they start using them. the host won’t have any resources to provide them. So, the server starts facing issues.
Further, there is no commitment from the host regarding overselling in terms of finances, intellectual property, or even human assets. So, most hosts freely engage in overselling.
What can you do?
The answer to “Is shared hosting oversold” is that most of the shared hosting is oversold. So, what you can do is find the best reliable shared hosting that doesn’t oversell.
So, the key is to avoid shared hosting and find some cheap VPS. Finding reliable and cheap VPS is an important task you need to do. Rest assured, you won’t have major problems like overselling even in a cheap VPS.
Final recommendations:
- Shared hosting: inMotion hosting
- Unmanaged VPS: Vultr
- Managed VPS: Cloudways
Conclusion
Most shared servers are more likely oversold. From a host owner’s perspective, they work on the probability that most users won’t utilize their maximum or even half of the allocated resources.
I think it’s still unfair that customers don’t get what they were promised.
Transparency is important. You should find a host that is honest and doesn’t try to upsell you their services.
Remember, you only get what you pay for.
FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
Shared hosting has a lot of performance issues. One of the major reasons is the overselling of shared hosting services.
As there are too many websites stuffed in the same server, your website will likely face performance issues.
It depends on the hosting provider you have and the type of plan you have chosen. On average, shared hosting can handle 300 to 800 visitors per day.
