Overselling in web hosting industry simple means a hosting provider is selling more resources to it’s customers than it actually has. Stretching the resources beyond the limits represents better profit margin for the hosting company (thus allow users to host with a lower cost) but in the same time, a great risk for customer.

When planned carefully, overselling allows web hosting companies to operate more efficiently, where this in fact can be benefiting for the customers – lower hosting costs, better hosting features, more free promotional vouchers, etc.

However, overselling can be the pain in the butt when irresponsible hosting companies play it bad. Heavy downtime, extremely slow server response time, lost of data – these are all the terrible consequences of overselling.

There’s a good place that I used to learn a lot about web hosting overselling – No OverSelling Hosts (www.noshosts.com). At www.noshosts.com, you can learn everything about overselling, from how to catch an oversold web hosts to shop for no-oversell-certified hosting companies.