Can You Host Multiple Websites on a Shared Hosting Plan?
If you need hosting for more than 1 website, then you’re in the right place. This article will help you learn what shared hosting is and if you can host multiple websites using this service. Later in the article, I will also give you the 3 best shared hosting providers who come with support for multiple websites in a single account.
What is Shared Hosting?
First, let’s talk about what shared hosting really is. To help you understand this better, we’ll recap what hosting is in essence. When you finish creating your website, you need to look for a hosting provider. When you find the one that suits your needs, you can sign up for one of its hosting plans. To be able to host your website with the chosen provider, you have to upload all the data files of your website on to the server. When everything is done accordingly, your website will become online for others to see it and access it.
Before this happens however, you must come up with a domain name that goes best with the site’s subject. Most hosting providers come with the possibility to buy cheap domain names for your websites. If you find one that is good enough, preferably one with the .com extension (or your own country’s extension), you just link it to your website. This way the hosting is all set up, so you can start receiving visitors. This is pretty much (the short version) on how you can set up a hosting account and upload your first website to the web.
But does shared hosting differ from this method? No, not really. The process is all the same. The point where shared hosting is different from hosting a website in general is the service itself. What do I mean by this?
Shared hosting is a type of website hosting. Using this method, multiple websites can use the same server. In most cases, you can’t know what other websites are sharing the resources of the server, but you don’t have to. When you sign up for a shared hosting plan, the amount of resources that is given to you, will be mentioned in the package’s description. This really depends on what you choose.
The idea is, that if you sign up for a shared hosting package, you and other site owners will share the resources of a single server among you. This is actually not a bad thing. Let me tell you why!
Advantages of Shared Hosting
The first perk that comes with almost any shared hosting plan is the price. By far, shared hosting is the cheapest type of web hosting you can find on the whole internet. Usually it costs from $2 to $15-20, depending on the package.
The second pro with a shared hosting plan is the possibility of upgrade. Almost any company, who provides this type of hosting, let’s you choose between 3 plans. If you outgrow one that you chose at start, you can anytime upgrade to a more efficient version. Of course, it will cost more.
No technical knowledge is required. This might be one of the most popular positives that come with a shared hosting package. You don’t have to make any technical maintenance on your end of the server. Everything is done by the developers behind the service.
Now that you know what shared hosting is, and why it could be a good choice, could it be a good idea to purchase it for multiple websites as well?
Shared Hosting for Multiple Websites
The short answer is YES, you can host more than 1 websites on a shared hosting plan. But this depends on the plan itself. I already mentioned that most companies come with 3 or even more plans to choose from. Many of these companies give you the ability to host 2,3 or even unlimited websites on any of the possible plans. Others only let you do this on certain plans, for a certain price.
To be able to host more websites, you just have to purchase a new domain name, and create a new website for it in the same account. It’s that simple. But this only works if you’ve chosen the right plan.
Now I’ll tell you about the 3 best choices you can have to find a shared hosting plan that supports multiple websites.
1. InMotion Hosting
InMotion is an American company specialized in web hosting services. They provide many types of hosting services, but in this article, we’ll focus on shared hosting for multiple websites.
The following features are all included in any of the 3 plans they offer:
- Free SSD drives for storing data. This results in a much faster website(s).
- Integration for Google Apps
- Free backups
- IMAP email for free: this is more secure
- All kinds of apps are easily installed with just 1 click
- If you pay for a whole year in advance, they give you 1 domain name for free for 1 year.
Now, what do the separate plans give you? InMotion is offering shared hosting for multiple websites using any of the 3 plans:
- The Launch plan is the first and cheapest package that costs $6,39/month. This one lets you host 2 websites in the same account for the base price I just mentioned. For that price you get unlimited storage space, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited emails, free marketing tools and even a free SSL certificate for security purposes.
- The Power plan is the second package and it comes for a monthly $8,49. This plan is granting you access to 6 websites on a single account. The features from the previous plan are all present here as well, but you also get 2x the processing power and RAM.
- The final plan is called Pro. It costs $14,71/month. An unlimited number of websites is supported using this plan. The performance is tuned up 4x.
A 90-day money back guarantee is added to any plan, if you’re not satisfied with the service. But I don’t think that will be the case.
2. BlueHost
This company is a well-known player in the web hosting industry. There’s a huge chance you already heard about them. And that’s for a good reason. They host millions of websites worldwide, and many of them are using shared hosting plans.
BlueHost’s second and third plans support multiple websites. Let’s see what they offer:
- Plus: this is the second shared hosting plan (the first one supports only 1 site). It comes for a monthly $5,95 fee. For this price, you get unlimited SSD storage along with unlimited bandwidth. An SSL certificate is added to any site you host with this package. But how many sites can you have using this account? That’s right. For such a low price, you can host unlimited websites using a single account.
- Choice Plus: This being the 3rd plan, you might think it costs more. But here at BlueHost, that’s not the case. This plan comes for the same price as the previous one, but with some additions. It’s no surprise this is their most popular package.
Besides all the features that come with any plan, they also include 1 domain privacy and CodeGuard Basic. The Domain Privacy will hide your personal information from the web (you don’t want personal data out there). The second bonus is taking care of the backups. Using it, you can restore a previous version of the site with just 1 click.
BlueHost is also notable for their customer support. When we talk about support, we must mention 2 things: knowledge and response speed. BlueHost’s support team knows all there is about web hosting and possible issues that could come up (+ how to solve them). The response speed is almost instantaneous.
3. HostGator
HostGator is one of the cheapest shared hosting providers out there. But they still come with great features as well. Let’s take a look at their offering:
Just like BlueHost, HostGator also supports multiple sites in a single account with the 2nd and 3rd plans.
- Baby Plan: This one costs $3,48/month. Both this plan and the next one let you host an unlimited number of websites. You get the following features included in the price: 1-click installs, free SSL certificate, support for CMSs (Joomla, WordPress, Drupal, Magento), unlimited email accounts and sub-domains.
- Business Plan: The 3rd and final shared hosting plan comes for a monthly $5,23 fee. Everything from the previous plan is still here with 2 additions:
- Free upgrade to a positive SSL.
- A dedicated IP address.
Both the plans come with many other features as well, but the main ones that most people need were listed here. If what you want is a service that is very cheap, but still reliable, then HostGator could be a good choice for you.
Conclusion
Now, that we’ve reached the end of the article, you should know what shared hosting is and why it’s a good choice for many new site owners.
You also know that hosting multiple websites in a single account using shared hosting is possible.
Now, all you need to do, is pick the one that’s right for you.