multiple sites with one hosting co. , or on serveral?

for those of you who have multiple websites, do you host all of them with one hosting company on the same server, or do you sign up for a different hosting account for each site (domain name) ??

(if all of them are on one hosting account then the remaining 5 would be in folders under the main domain name and have the domain point to those folders as the root)

does it make a difference or matter to search engine placement (google)?

I have 6 domain names and do not know whether I should put all of them with one hosting account (they would all have the same Unique IP), or sign up for 6 different hosting accounts..

of course If I sign up for 6 different accounts it will be more expensive.. $10 a month for each account X 6

as opposed to just $20 a month for all 6




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I personally run a dedicated server with 2 separate ranges of Class C IPs (about 8 IPs on each class C), but they are all housed on the same server right now. I'm looking at expanding to another dedicated server soon when the finances are right and the traffic seems to be overloading this specific server. As far as shared hosting plans go, you should normally be fine hosting them all on the same package. Google does look at the IP address of each domain in consideration for PageRank and website ownership, but the factor (in my opinion), is very small to how it effects actual turnouts of PageRank.

I recommend just hosting those 6 sites on the same account rather than spending the extra cash. If you're looking to be hosting for $90 or $120/mo, you may consider managed dedicated hosting or even just using a company like www.Site5.com or www.DreamHost.com because they offer great hosting plans for cheap prices and they give you a lot of domain options etc.

So in the end as far as Google placement and search go, the difference it makes having them on a single or separate IP addresses is very small in my opinion.

 

the thing that sucks though is that the sites that are under the main site will get less page rank right to begin with since they will be one subfolder below the main domain name.....

the page rank of the other 5 sites will depend on the popularity and page rank of the main top level site I put on the server right??

so if this is the case then I need to make sure that the main domain name that is at the top level of my account is the most popular one!

damn, I wish I could put each one on a separate hosting account.. but too expensive for now

 

If you take a look at the www.site5.com packages, they offer TRUE DOMAIN hosting which gives each domain it's own directory and doesn't cause that problem. It lets you create separate 'shared hosting' accounts for each domain if you want to. It's worth looking into. I used to use it before going to dedicated.

 

What I currently do is using a reseller account. This is basicly a shared hosting plan but with the extra option that you can host extra domain names and have a control panel for each one. It's meant for people reselling their hosting account to others but it also works well if you have multiple sites.

Of course a dedicated server is better, but it'll cost you a lot more. Have you looked in to VPS hosting yet? With these plans you get a fixed amount of server resources allocated and you've got your own OS and software installed instead of sharing it with the rest of the server. It's basicly a less powerful dedicated server plan but it's much cheaper and gives you the ability to host many sites.

Cheapest thing to do is indeed a normal shared hosting plan with extra domain support like site5 or dreamhost offer, but take into account that the very cheap prices are too good to be true. I remember reading that Dreamhost allocates x amount of CPU time to each account, not being enough to actually use the bandwith you paid for.

 

I think the biggest thing with ip concernes is when people have say 1000 domains, 10,000 domains, etc.. The kind of people who build say one or two sites a day consistantly have to worry about google's algorithm latching on to them and killing their network.

If you are running say 10 sites on one server it is not that big of a deal. They devalue your interlinking between domains but I don't even do that anyways.

 

I don't really know when the breaking point should be, but I do use more than one host for my multiple sites (3 hosts). It is partly for the IP thing but also the fact that I hate to put all my eggs in one basket. Remember, you don't need to go all the way to six different hosts. You could go with two though

 

You can get good shared hosting for $5 a month. I have some sites on different hosting, but also have two sites on one account, and the penalties seem minor.