Ask the average blogger how many domains they own, and chances are their answer is not going to be just one. We share an entrepreneurial spirit that means site ideas are plentiful, and domain names are inexpensive enough to scoop up when inspiration strikes. Some bloggers even have dozens of domain names just waiting to be built.
In addition to multiple domain names, many bloggers have multiple sites at various stages of development and growth. In fact, 27% of Agathon clients have more than three WordPress installs!
For many bloggers, this means a primary site and then another (or several more) on the side. The side blog could be a hobby blog, a book site, or a speaker site. Maybe it’s a site for your kids or a portfolio site that links to various online projects. Or maybe it’s a new business site you’re growing in your spare time. Often, these additional sites are smaller, without the traffic or media storage of your primary site.
How do I host multiple sites?
So what does that mean for your hosting account? Do you have to set up a separate hosting account for each blog? Are there extra fees? Do you have to upgrade to a higher plan?
While many hosting companies require either a separate plan for each site or charge a premium for a plan that allows you to host multiple sites, Agathon’s pricing is based on the resources you actually need, and that’s true whether you have one site or ten.
Our professional WordPress hosting plan starts at a base rate of $70 (and incidentally, this provides adequate resources for 49% of our client base!). We then add storage (aka disk space), RAM (aka memory), and CPU (aka processing power) in $10/month increments as needed. So a site with tons of high quality photos might need additional disk space, while a site with a forum or storefront might need additional RAM or CPU.
Regardless of the resources your main site needs, these secondary sites often use few enough resources to be added to your account at no additional cost. When they do require additional resources, it’s often just an additional block of RAM or an extra 15GB of disk space (at $10/month each) to keep things running well.
Will hosting multiple sites on one plan slow down my sites?
This is a great question. It’s true that having many sites on one server can slow it down compared to having just one site on that server. This is why our hosting is built on dedicated environments rather than shared servers. Shared servers typically include many clients on one server, and those clients all share a limited number of resources. But if you’re running two or three sites of your own that are well built and optimized, and you include plenty of resources to power them both, the savings of having them on one server is a clear win.
The exception to this may be if you have two extremely popular, high-traffic sites that are competing for the same resources. In that situation, it might be worth separating them onto two separate servers (which would require two separate plans) so that a spike of traffic on one doesn’t affect the performance of the other. But of course the income from two successful sites would justify the additional cost!
How do I add a site to my plan?
If you’d like to set up a brand new WordPress site on your server, shoot us an email and we can get that set up for you!
If you need to transfer an existing site from another host, we’re happy to provide you with detailed instructions based on your current setup. We also offer a migration service for $150 per site.
How do I know what resources my site(s) need?
We don’t expect the average blogger to know the exact resource needs of your site(s), especially since we look for ways to improve performance and reduce the resource needs when we can! Whether you’re an existing client getting ready to start a new site or looking for a new hosting company, we offer a no-obligation hosting assessment to give you an idea of what your hosting will cost per month. Request a free hosting assessment here.
With 10 years of experience as a professional blogger—and as a former Agathon hosting client herself—Mandi’s passionate about the good work Agathon does and sharing that message with more people.