Baby and multiple sites

[leeturner]

Hi

I am really sorry if this has been covered before but I am quite nervous about moving all my sites and I wanted to make sure I had not misunderstood the plan.

At the moment I have about 12 sites with a hosting company that I am not too happy with from an uptime and customer service perspective so I am looking to move them over time. Also every time I create a new site with them my costs are linear as I pay for new hosting with every site. Is it correct that with the baby plan I would no longer need to do this? If so then this seems too good to be true :-)

I currently need to create a new site so I was thinking of purchasing the baby plan (do you guys register the domain as well or would I do that elsewhere?) and getting the site set up and then over time using the domain add on feature to move all of the hosting for my other sites over. Is it correct that my hosting costs would stay the same no matter how many sites I host? I assume I just leave the domains registered with my previous provider and point the name servers to hostgator? At the moment my hosting plans are restricted by bandwidth and disk space. The baby plan says that both of these are unlimited. Is that for only the primary site (the new one I create) or for all the sites I add as add on sites also?

Do the add on sites have to be related to the primary in any way or can they be totally unrelated?

I was also wondering how the email side of things is managed for each of the sites I add on? At the moment I have active email accounts set up on most of my domains and just redirect emails on others. Does all this stay the same regardless of whether it is the primary account or an add on domain?

This is the first time I have ever moved hosting so I am sorry about all the questions and I appreciate any help you can give.



Lee

[RBX0122]

It sounds like you need the reseller account. It would give you more flexibility.

[leeturner]

Hi RBX0122

Many thanks for your reply. I looked through the forum threads and saw that the main difference between a reseller account and the baby account is that in a reseller account each site gets its own cpanel. Is that important enough to warrant the extra cost? Are there any other benefits ?

Lee

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by leeturner

Is it correct that my hosting costs would stay the same no matter how many sites I host? I assume I just leave the domains registered with my previous provider and point the name servers to hostgator? At the moment my hosting plans are restricted by bandwidth and disk space. The baby plan says that both of these are unlimited. Is that for only the primary site (the new one I create) or for all the sites I add as add on sites also?

Do the add on sites have to be related to the primary in any way or can they be totally unrelated?

I was also wondering how the email side of things is managed for each of the sites I add on? At the moment I have active email accounts set up on most of my domains and just redirect emails on others. Does all this stay the same regardless of whether it is the primary account or an add on domain?

Yes, you can add as many domains as you like, and HG can register them if you want (though lots of people use other registrars).

They don't need to be related in any way, though there are two restrictions, one in the Terms of Service and one, that may be irrelevant, a limitation of cPanel and the way it creates addon domains.

The former: HG does not allow reselling or charging for shared space.

The latter: addons aren't good for e-commerce, because you can have only one private SSL cert per shared account, and it has to be for the main domain.

You can do almost anything you want with the email account setups (no spam).

Originally Posted by RBX0122

It sounds like you need the reseller account. It would give you more flexibility.

Only if the OP wants to either charge for space or needs private SSL certs for more than one account. Otherwise, s/he runs into bandwidth/space limitations, which are lower on reseller accounts.

[leeturner]

Hi Gwyneth

Thank you for your detailed reply. Are the bandwidth/space limitations on the reseller plans across all sites that you set up or for each site. So for example, the Aluminum plan says 24GB disk space and 250GB bandwidth. Would I have to divide that between all my sites or does each site get 24GB disk space and 250GB bandwidth?

I am considering charging for space as part of my business in the future so maybe I should just bite the bullet now and get a reseller account. My original plan was to host all my sites using the baby plan and then look at the reseller account when I needed to but maybe I should rethink that?

Lee

[RBX0122]

Its divided between all you sites and you can designate how much bandwidth and space each account gets up to the limit of your plan.

You also get private name servers and billing solutions.

Take a loo at this demo http://www.cpanel.net/products/cpanelwhm/try-demo.html and scroll down to Reseller Domain Panel. Thats pretty much what you get then each account you create has the cPanel which I am sure you are familiar with.

Oops I screwed up try http://x3demoa.cpx3demo.com:2086/?po...56732555324875 or use the above link and click on whm.

[leeturner]

OK, So I guess I need to decide whether to use the baby plan for my website and then to get a reseller plan along side that when I need it for the clients of my business or just to get a reseller account from the start and use it for everything.

Lee

[erythisis]

If you already can afford to be paying for every site to have its own hosting, then pay for a reseller account. Having each domain with it's own cpanel is more than just a matter of looks. Especially if you end up needing to split one off.

I've untangled websites before and I have paid for hosting individually before. I find having a reseller account, even without me really intending to host sites other than my own, to be far more manageable and smart for my money (and time).

When you set up a reseller account, you will also set up a primary domain. You do not have to immediately set up any other domains/sub-hosting accounts. Just that one and support will help you if you ask for it. When you're ready, it's rather easy to set up additional domains, whether as addons on current ones or with their own accounts. You can find a lot of information about doing stuff in the WHM here on the forum.

[GvilleRick]

Originally Posted by erythisis

If you already can afford to be paying for every site to have its own hosting, then pay for a reseller account. Having each domain with it's own cpanel is more than just a matter of looks. Especially if you end up needing to split one off.

This is very good advice. It is not an easy matter to copy stand alone accounts to an addon domain or vice versa. Having a lot of addon domains, especially if they are fairly extensive sites, also will run into exceeding the inode count or process limit. Having the accounts within a reseller account is much better in the long run. My opinion is that even if you can do something with a Baby account doesn't mean you should.

[RBX0122]

I started off hosting individual sites that I was not charging people for then decided to switch to the reseller plan. People then started contacting me to see if I could host their sites so considering I had the reseller plan I was able to charge a little for hosting to help cover my costs. I will never turn back. Hopefully one day I might be able to switch to a dedicated server.

[leeturner]

Thanks for all your replies everyone. I think I will go with your advice and just head straight for the reseller plan that will do everything I need to from the start. I can then start migrating all my sites to it over time and maybe cover some costs if I host for other people.

Many thanks for taking the time to help me out. I can see I'm going to like it here

Lee