How To Host Several Websites Under One Account
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.
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