The Multi Domain hosting have become popular in 2005 when overcrowded shared web hosting market needed something fresh to attract customers' attention. It brings VPS model to shared hosting by allowing someone to host more than one website on a single web hosting account.
To be able to offer Multi Domain hosting hosting companies have to run a software that enables web server to be configured to associate different directories with the separate domains on a single hosting account. The mail server also needs to be configured to allow processing the e-mail for each domain name added to Muti Domain account.
You can find some articles that say Muti Domain is the same as Reseller account. That's not just like that even both can have similar functionality. The main difference is that Reseller Account requires a hosting software that offers client side account management and reseller side control panel. The Multi Domain plan is intended to bring together a few web sites that someone maintains on a single hosting account.
Let's say you have 5 websites and pay $55/year on web hosting for each of them. Then Multi Domain is a good choice to reduce costs. You can find a hosting provider that will allow you to hosts those 5 sites on a single account by charging for example $120/year.
Offering Multi Domain capabilities to shared hosting looks like big loss of money for web host. Why do they allow their customers to host 5 or 10 domains on one account if they can charge for each of them? That's because they might loose you as a customers forever.
I manage at least 5 web sites and I'm looking forward to reduce my costs. It is better for a hosting company to offer me a Multi Domain plan instead of spending time and money or launching a Reseller hosting software. I don't need to resell hosting services. It is not my business but I would be forced to go for a Reseller, VPS or even to get a Dedicated Server if I need to pay $50/month or more on web hosting.
Bringing Multi Domain plants to life "saved" the shared hosting market choked up by thousands of newcomer hosts offered "huge amounts" of space and bandwidth and gave the industry "fresh start".
Multi plan is definitely not the best solution for website owners who manage multiple websites. It is a good idea to become familiar with the Terms of Service of web host that offers Multi domain hosting before sign-up. Ask them if there are restrictions and what are they. Sometimes is better to pay few bucks more to be sure you receive a reliable service.
About the author and the Blog
DawHB.com was launched on March 14th. The blog covers the web hosting industry, starting with newbie advise and extending to high-end issues. The blog publisher has been in the web hosting industry since 1999, working as a CEO of a web hosting company and then moving to the website marketing and advertising business. He manages a network of web hosting, web design and web master related service directories that cover US, European and other regional markets.
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