How To Host Several Websites Under One Account
by: Mario Sanchez
If you operate several websites, each with its own domain name,
signing up of separate ...hosting accounts can be an expensive
proposition. Even if your hosting company offers the add-on
domain feature (which will allow you to add different domains to
the same hosting account) you will be charged a monthly fee for
each domain you add, sometimes costing almost the same as your
full hosting fee.
The solution is to open a reseller account. Reseller accounts
were created to allow web designers to offer hosting services to
their customers, to create a one-stop-shop for all their web
design and hosting needs. However, you don't need to be a
reseller to buy a reseller hosting plan.
Reseller accounts are usually slightly more expensive than
regular hosting accounts, but they will allow you to host
different domain names without incurring in the add-on domain
fees, making more efficient use of your space and bandwidth.
You want to choose a reseller account that offers:
no limit to the number of domains you can add.
the possibility of hosting your main website free, without
using any of the space and bandwidth in your hosting plan. If
you are a reseller, your main website will be your business
website, and the space and bandwidth will be reserved for your
customers. If you are not a reseller and just want to manage
different websites, you can designate one of your domains as
your main website (usually the largest and/or most popular,
since you won't accrue any space or bandwidth for it).
the possibility of upgrading to another plan without any
penalties or fees.
To find out how much space and bandwidth you will need, first
determine how many sites you are likely to host, how many pages
each site may have, and how many visits will those sites most
likely have. If you plan to host 10 sites with 20 pages each, at
an average of 50KB per page and 100 page views per site per day,
you will need 10MB of space (10 x 20 x 50KB) and 1.5GB of
bandwidth per month (10 x 100 x 50KB x 30).
As far as pricing is concerned, there are reseller accounts
costing as little as $10 / month up to several hundreds (or even
thousands). It all depends on your requirements and the hosting
company you choose, so shop around to get the best possible deal
in terms of cost and reliability.
Mario Sanchez publishes The Internet Digest (
http://www.theinternetdigest.net ), an online collection of web
design and Internet marketing articles and resources.
HostingChecker.com - help for all your web hosting needs.
http://www.hostingchecker.com
Article may be republished if this portion is not removed.
About the author:
None
