Multiple Domain Hosting Explained!
If you are just starting out online to create your first website, you will probably
find a shared web hosting provider to host your website. Shared hosting is the
straightforward and economical hosting choice if you have only few websites. But
as your online business grows, you will probably own many more websites now and
need multiple separate web hosting accounts for each unique websites. You will
soon realize that hosting each of these different websites of unique domain name
on a separate hosting account could be very costly.
Suppose you own ten websites and each shared hosting account costs US$7.95 per month,
your monthly hosting cost will be US$79.50. It is quite substantial if you are a small
business owner. Is there a better way to save more money? Indeed, multiple domain
hosting is the answer.
What is multiple domain hosting?
Typically, web hosting companies only allow one domain per hosting account. However,
with the emergence of 'mini websites' trend where webmasters have possession of multiple
websites, numerous web hosting providers are now offering multiple domain hosting where
you can host multiple domains in a single web hosting account. In web hosting industry,
hosting plan that sell multiple domains also commonly refer as "reseller hosting". But,
keep in mind that multiple domain hosting is not the same as domain pointers or redirections.
With true multiple domain hosting, you simply add your multiple domains into one user
account with each domain being independent from each other. Each domain has it's own
control panel, FTP access, email accounts, CGI/Perl, SSI, PHP, website statistics and
etc. It is just as if you had multiple separate hosting accounts.
In multiple domain hosting, you are allotted a specific amount of disk space and
bandwidth. This web resource can then be divided among the individual domains accordingly.
For example, if you are allowed to host up to five domains in a multiple domain hosting
account with 10 GB disk space and 100 GB bandwidth, you can choose to allocate
2 GB
and 20 GB evenly among all the five domains. Alternatively, you can adjust the web
resources according to the requirements of each website. The choice is entirely up to you!
As a matter of fact, they are many web hosting providers that offer
unlimited diskspace and bandwidth, so you don't really have to bother
the resource allocation anymore for multiple domain websites.
The advantages of multiple domain hosting
Majority of web hosting providers offer discounts on the multiple domain hosting packages.
Typically, the discount can vary from 10 to 15 percent. Therefore, it is far cheaper way
of hosting multiple websites on a multiple domain hosting than purchasing a hosting account
for each website. Moreover, you can manage all your domains with only single login and
password. Besides, you can resell the extra domains to others to make a profit if you can't
fully utilize all the resources in your multiple domain hosting account.
The disadvantages of multiple domain hosting
While you can save quite substantially by hosting multiple websites in a multiple domain
hosting package, but hosting all websites on a single web server can proved to be very
risky. As everyone will know, "Never put all your eggs in one basket". Even though web
server rarely goes down, but all of your websites will be inaccessible if the web server
experiences unforeseen downtimes. Therefore, it is very critical to find a highly reliable
web hosting provider if you plan to sign up multiple domain hosting.
In summary, anyone owns multiple websites should consider multiple domain hosting as it
is a more economical hosting option. Apart from that, as is the case for choosing any web
hosting providers, you should pay close attention to the reliability and performance issues when
choosing a web hosting service. Below is a short list of reputable and trustworthy multiple
domain hosting providers that you can consider:
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