How many sites on one hosting account?
-
How many sites is safe to house on one hosting provider? I use BlueHost and they advertise unlimited domains, but I'm not sure what the negative side effects might be from hosting too many on one hosting service. If it matter at all, I'm using WordPress to build my sites.
Pros and Cons?
-
I have about 25 sites on an unlimited HostGator account right now ($8 per month I think), most of them get minimal traffic (few thousand visitors per month), but a couple of them are pushing 30k-50k per month and I will most likely have to move them.
Using it as a starting point is fine for new sites until they begin to gain traffic, then move them to better hosting.
That's my humble opinion anyway
-
I moved to a hostgator reseller and have had great success but have heard of the situations where even they will kill your sites if they get too much traffic.
Not saying any names but just about any host that offers you Unlimited Bandwidth is going to have some type of tripwire that throttles your traffic. If I moved a site there that burns terrabytes per day I can guarantee that a lot of these host would either kick you off or you will leave because you lost a ton of money the first day.
Sites that claim to offer unlimited resources.... your success is not in their best interest. They are not going to give you $700 worth of bandwidth for $4.99/month.
So, if you have a site that is starting to be successful, move it to a host who will charge you for all that you use. That host wants you to succeed because when you succeed they make more money... and when you call them for help they will do it gladly because they are helping you make more money.
-
Pros
Shared hosting is cheap. Really cheap.
Shared hosting is manged - you don't need to be a trained systems admin.
Cons
You don't have much control over the server environment. Some applications won't run, others might not run to their best ability. Did you hear about how cool node.js is? Too bad, you probably can't sandbox it.
You have no control over fixing downtime. You put in a ticket and hope someone takes care of it soon.
The server will be slow when anyone on the server hits a peak in traffic.
Support is generally subpar for shared hosting providers.
If the host hasn't secured the server, there could be security issues where others on the server could get access to your root directory or database.
Scaling? Ha, more like, when you grow you have to find a new server to migrate to and hope the process is fast and smooth. (It probably won't be)
Inevitably, many cost effective hosts will not be in your time zone. Or those near yours.
Suggestion
Shared hosting at the major hosts isn't too bad. If you can't afford the money (remember, this is tax writeoff material) then stick with them.
If you actually need the performance and such, find a way to pay for the upgrade to a VPS or a dedicated. A good dedicated server will be $100/m. You'll need to know basic sys admin stuff, but just knowing Linux in general and being familiar with the services you run (apache, mysql, postfix, php) and how they are configured is suitable.
Also if you are using a panel like cPanel.. your goal should one day to admin your own server without it. You'll be intimidated at first, but quickly find that you are more quickly able to do anything you need over command line.
-
I was on a different hosting service and my sites slowed to a crawl when I began to grow my company. I moved to a hostgator reseller and have had great success but have heard of the situations where even they will kill your sites if they get too much traffic. Either way you go, always have a backup and a plan B. From my experience a really good hosting service runs anywhere from $20/month and up. A great Wordpress hosting service is WPEngine, but only if you have the budget and traffic to constitute the price. I love them, great group of people there.
-
Majority of the time, or heck...ALL THE TIME, these hosting solutions that state unlimited everything is not true. The resources are for start up sites because they have hundreds of sites on one server.
Now the question is how much traffic is going to those sites? If you expect a decent amount of traffic, I suggest you get a VPS, which is more flexible in bandwidth use.
None the less, the most important thing is how much traffic you are getting currently. If all your sites generate a lot of traffic the site will get "suspended" and they will either ask you to upgrade or just completely kick you off.
BlueHost, I believe only has shared hosting and don't have dedicated or VPS solutions(last time I checked). I would go with maybe HostGator(a little pricey for shared and other solutions but speed is good). Best chances are going to a host that offers Shared, VPS, Dedicated Servers, so you can grow easily and move around easier.
Usually the hosts will be glad to upgrade you and even help you transition and transfer the files to the new VPS/Dedicated server.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is managed wordpress hosting bad for seo?
hi, i would like to create my own website, but I am confused either to choose cpanel hosting or managed wordpress
Web Design | | alan-shultis0 -
Ecommerce site in Europe
A client is looking to expand their ecommerce business into Europe. They have already purchased a number of European brand domain names and want to start their expansion in Ireland. Is it better to have a single website with pages translated for each language or a seperate site for each domain/country? With Ireland the only obvious difference is the currency, language shouldn't be an issue. But if we choose seperate sites for each domain/country will having the same product content/descriptions especially in the case of Ireland be an issue? Thanks in advance
Web Design | | MartinJC0 -
Site with no ads hit by Page Layout update?
Hi there! Can a site that has no ads on it be hit by Google's latest Page Layout update? Can it be hit for just one or two keywords? My site (www.ink2paper.com) has a decline in Google organic traffic in early Feb so my suspicion is the Page Layout update. However I have no ads on the site. Digging into GWMT I find that it is only one or 2 keywords that seems to have taken a dive, mainly [photo paper]. I used to get around 80 imps a day for this term. Then on 6 Feb it was down to 50; 7 Feb = 34; 8 Feb just 4 impressions! I got a spike back at usual levels on 10 & 11 Feb, but since then it has been back down to only 5 or so impressions a day. [photographic paper] took a small hit at the start of February, but has nose dived since the start of April. The homepage performs well for Google organic traffic - low bounce (22%) and good ecom conversion rate (14%) - although this is likely to be largely branded traffic. I feel my site is a 'good' result for the search term [photo paper], although there is always room for improvement of course! Any suggestions as to why Google has stopped showing my site for these keywords? All help is greatly appreciated. Cheers,
Web Design | | SimonHogg
Simon0 -
How to setup a redirect from one subfolder to another to avoid duplicate content.
Hello All, I have a WordPress site that Moz says has duplicate content. http://deltaforcepi.com/latest-news/page/3
Web Design | | Michael_Rock
http://deltaforcepi.com/category/latest-news/page/3 So I set up an addition to the .htaccess file . . . redirect code to move from one folder to another RewriteRule ^category/latest-news/(.*)$ /latest-news/$1 [R=301,NC,L] What did I do wrong? I am not proficient in .htaccess files.0 -
Without Keyword Info From Google - How do we re-do a site not knowing what to keep?
Bit of a riddle I am trying to figure out here... I have a client that receives some visits via organic searches (around 700). Most of which are to the homepage. The client isn't actively targeting any keywords yet (on purpose) and the homepage doesn't have much on it. I've been hired to do keyword research and re-develop the site but this is the first site I've done since google really put the hurt on keyword information. My worry is that without knowing what keywords people are using currently to search and find the site, I will be potentially deleting information that is bringing in traffic. Looking at the traffic and other keywords I can view I think the keywords are branded which makes it a bit easier but again, it is a bit worrisome, not so much for this client but for future work. Anyone have any ideas other than looking at webmaster tools and landing pages?
Web Design | | JoshBowers20120 -
Having a second homepage for a site would affect my SEO?
Hello guys, One of our clients is planning to have a new landing page for any users hitting the site for the first time. (returning users will still see the current homepage based on cookies ... in other words, the site would technically have 2 home pages). According to this client, they are planning to do something like this: https://www.websitename.com/ (for returning visitors) https://www.websitename.com/newuser (for first time visitors) Our instinct is that is not great to have 2 home pages (that would affect the SEO campaign we are managing for this company) and we are not sure how to handle this. That's why we would appreciate your opinion regarding this topic: From an SEO perspective, do you think this is a good idea? If not, what would you guys do differentiate first-time visitors vs returning visitors without affecting SEO? Maybe just a pop-up? Thanks in advance for your help !
Web Design | | Robertnweil10 -
Why do site links appear under one keyword and not another? Any ideas?
Hi everyone, I have a client whose website is doing the strangest thing. When I search the branded keyword (the company name), Google doesn't show any site links under the result. However, when I search for the company name plus Inc., I do get site links. Now, the website is ranking first in both searches, so that's not the issue. And, as near as I can tell, the site only contains one or two uses of the company name plus the word "inc." Most of the text on the page and all of the meta data only uses the company name, and most of the links that connect to the site use only the company name as well. Even the Who Is for the site doesn't use the term "inc." And ideas what might be going on? I know Google says that the process is still automated but for the life of me I can't figure out what kind of automated process would result in these results. Thanks! Megan (Rebecca's minion)
Web Design | | RebeccaRalston0 -
Avoiding duplicate content with multi-lagusage site
Hi, We have a client in China that is looking to create three versions of the same website, English, Chinese and Korean. They do not want to use a translation plugin like Google translate, preferring to have the pages duplicated. What is the best way to do this bearing in mind that the site needs to be found in all three languages. Would also appreciate if anyone knows of a good hosting company that has English support on the Chinese main land. Thanks Fraser
Web Design | | fraserhannah0