I'm confused about my options when it comes to choosing a web hosting company and I need your advice. I'm new to all this, so please bear with me. I've registered a bunch of domain names with the intention of launching several sites simultaneously. Most of these would be small sites of just a few pages each, but two would be larger sites to which I'd regularly add content. I'd also like to create and launch new websites from time to time, and I'd prefer not to have to sign up for another web hosting plan each time I launch a new site (I know this sounds very ambitious, but just humor me when I say I have a lot of content and a fair amount of time to devote to this).
When I look at the web sites of hosting companies, I see that some of them appear to allow you to have multiple domains and sites under one package. How does this work? Are they talking about real, top-level domains, or subdomains? Are there restrictions as to what kind of sites are permitted within the package. (That is, could one have a blog, a couple of pitch pages for ClickBank books, and an e-commerce site, all with different top-level domain names, under one all-inclusive web hosting plan?) Ideally, I'd like to be able to just buy a year's worth of webspace, and then upload each site one by one as they were completed. Am I nuts?
Finally, could you recommend some specific companies? All the web hosting companies seem to say the same things (99%+ uptime, etc.), so I'd like to know what actual clients think. Mind you, I want reliability and ease of use (don't we all), but I also want a great deal.
Thanks in advance for any comments and advice. Sorry for the lengthy post!
I use www.hostpc.for exactly this sort of thing; lots of tiny sites, blogs, etc., each with their own domain, on a single hosting account. Your limit is the storage space and bandwidth of whatever plan you buy.
I like http://www.hostmonster.com I currently have over 30 domains/websites under a single hosting account. They are easy to add to your account and the customer service has been very proper. You might give them a check, they have great prices and great packages. Hope this helps . . .
You can actually add the domains as sub domains, but to access the site you still use www.yoursite.com not www.thissite.com/yoursite
They still function as top level domains. There is no limit to how many domains/websites you would like to add.
Ooh, one other thing I forgot to ask. If I have to add additional sites as "add on" domains, do they get crawled/indexed by search engines as though they were separate sites? Or do the search engines actually look at every page in a site equally? Would there be any *advantage* to having a separate hosting plan for every distinct site? Seems that would be awfully expensive when you know some of your sites would have only 3-4 pages. Thanks for your help, and keep the info coming! (please)
Possibly. You will see some advice that you should have your sites on separate class C IP subnets, but for the kind of sites you are talking about I think that isn't worth worrying about.
There are domains, or add-ons and subdomains. The majority of hosts allow unlimited subdomains, some -unlimited domains. The number of domains per account is a perfect way to talk people into buying several accounts. Say, you have an account with lots of disk space and bandwidth and are allowed to host only one site.
I should point out that you don't necessarily have to have a reseller account to host multiple domains from a single hosting account. I find I get a little better deal with an account where I can have multiple domains hosted, but all have a si ngle login. Since I have no plans to resell anything it works well for me.
Dreamhost are very good for this in my personal experience. They have responded to all my support tokens within a couple of hours max and are cheap especially when you use the $97 off code
