I want to host several sites. What should I do?

If you want to put several web sites online, you can either take separate hosting packages for each or host all of them under the umbrella of one hosting package. With so much competition in this sector, many companies now offer packages for people wanting to host several web sites. In some cases, companies might also let you host unlimited web sites on a single hosting package. In this article we shall look at how you can put numerous web sites under a single hosting package.

Several web sites - Your own or web sites of clients

You might want to host several web sites of your own or you might be a web developer looking for a place to host web sites of your clients. Though the two might seem the same, there is a slight difference and now we shall look at how to get the best hosting if you have several sites to put on the web.

You want to host several web sites of your own

Hosting several web sites of your own is slightly cheaper than hosting numerous web sites for customers. Why? Because in this case you will not need individual control panels for each web site. You would be able to manage all web sites using a single control panel protected by a single username-password pair. You would be able to create email accounts, databases, software installation, perform bandwidth checks and log stats checks with only one control panel the login details of which only you would know.

Hosting several web sites for different clients

If you are a web developer who wants to host web sites for different clients or you want to resell web hosting what you need is a hosting package that provides a control panel for each of the hosted web site. To suit such requirements, most web hosting companies offer what is called a Reseller pack. Since the reseller hosting package has control panels for each of the web sites, it costs a little more than one in which you get only a single control panel.

Also, in most cases, you would be able to set limits to different features (such as number of email accounts, bandwidth, harddisk space) for different web sites using the reseller hosting package control panel. This, you will appreciate, is a neat way to create your own hosting packages and, thus, price them differently.

An unlimited web site hosting package is also a good idea if you have purchased several domain names and plan to develop these web sites over a course of time. With such a hosting package, you can put a placeholder homepage on all your domains till the time you create a proper web site for them.

For example, I have a unlimited web site hosting package from Hostgator. The features on their different unlimited hosting plans are sufficient for smaller web sites like those of my clients and even some of mine!
I like the unlimited web site hosting and reseller package from Hostgator - I haven't faced any problems till now, the uptime guarantee has been maintained and they have a nice technical support team.

The main disadvantage of putting all your web sites in one basket is that if your ever have a problem, you would have to shift all web sites to another host and that can be quite a time-consuming process if you have tens of web sites.

On the whole, the Hostgator unlimited web site hosting package, is good value for your money.