Do You REALLY Need 1000GB Disk Space/200TB Bandwidth

I've been in the hosting industry a very long time now and I have noticed that overselling has got more and more crazy over time.

7 years ago, 2GB of disk and 10GB bandwidth was considered overselling.

Today, its common to see offers at 1000GB/1000TB.

So my question, to all you looking for web hosting, do you really think you will need all that space and bandwidth?

I'm going to let you in on a little secret. (Some might hate me for this!) Out of all my customers, 99% use less than 1GB disk and 5GB transfer.

Every hosting provider out there knows this, and will tack on a bunch of 0s to their offer to make it look more enticing . The thing is, if you aren't using the space, you aren't getting any extra value. If you come even close to the amount they offer, I am willing to bet you will be suspended faster than you can blink. This advertising tactic is very misleading and a lot of newcomers base their decision off the meaningless numbers they see. Here is an article that covers web host overselling a little more.

Bloggers - Think again if you believe you need anything more than 1GB of space. You could type blog posts until you are blue in the face before you come close to using 1GB(unless you incorporate a lot of videos and images)

Forum owners - Considering most forums are text based, forums use hardly any bandwidth.

If you run a highly active forum, eventually you will start consuming decent amounts of disk space. However, there is no way that a shared host would allow such a forum to exist on the servers. You will be shut down before you use even a fraction of that 100gb/1000tb.

What should you consider than? If you see a host offering such impossible amounts of resources for an even more impossible price, look elsewhere. If you want a decent service, look to spend $5-10/m for a reasonable amount of disk space and bandwidth.