I'm currently looking to purchase my next site and was wondering, am I able to host it on the same account my current website is on to save costs? If so, would you recommend or discourage it?
I currently host with bluehost and can honestly say I rarely go on there because I have no idea what most of the apps or folders are for! For someone with little to no knowledge on that subject, would having two sites on the same hosting account be to confusing?
You certainly can do that. The only reason I wouldn't is if it might cause a performance issue. So long as the site you're buying doesn't have any exacting hardware requirements, sure, add it to the bill.
You'll need to have a look at your agreement with your current hosting company. It's certainly possible to host multiple sites on one hosting account - if your agreement allows you to do so. If it doesn't, you may be able to upgrade it.
It sounds as though you'd benefit from learning a bit more about hosting so that you can better understand the subject and get more for your money. Or indeed, you might find you're paying for stuff you don't need and could easily reduce costs by choosing different hosting. We have loads of threads here discussing the issue, as well as recommendations and otherwise from the members.
If you'd like to have a look around and see what's on offer from various hosts, WhoIsHostingThis is a good place for independent reviews. It's owned by an EP member, QualityNonsense.
FWIW, my sites are mostly on our VPS with ServInt (probably too big/expensive for your needs), and where we want separate hosting for some of the sites we use BetterWebSpace (BWS). Kieron, the owner of BWS, has an advert in the EP "Services Offered" forum, and you can see some testimonials in there for BWS too from EP members. We've been satisfied customers of ServInt and BWS for a number of years.
Hope this helps.
PS: It's usually a bad idea to use the same company for both domain registration and hosting. So if you currently have both with the one company, you'd be as well to look into either transferring the domain elsewhere or getting a new host.
Last edited by Kay; 5 February 2014 at 11:02 pm. Reason: oops - spelt "ServInt" wrongly
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Hi, I concur with the above comments.
Whilst it can be easy and convenient to stick with your current hosting company, I would recommend against registering your domain name with that same company. This is simply because if you register and host with 1 company only and they cease trading you cannot easily set up on another host as it would take a while to get the domain name transferred out of the deceased company and across to the new hosts.
If you are happy with your current hosts, their uptime, and comfortable with their customer support and systems, just buy your domain name elsewhere and point it to your current hosts nameservers.
There's another reason for not doing it - and it depends on how your hosting works.Originally Posted by dymockpoet
Most cheap hosting accounts have a "lead domain" - the one with which you started the account. Other domains that you add to the account are internally operated as subdomains of that account, although to the eyes of the browser they work as separate site entities.
The search engines can detect that "association" between two domains hosted this way, although if you use reseller hosting or a private server / VPS, they regard sites hosted on those as separate (because you could easily be reselling your webspace).
If they can see an association between two sites, the search engines will discount links between those sites because the links are not "natural". They have been seeking out unnatural links for a very long time, so it pays to use two or three small hosts if you want to link between your own sites, and not make any reciprocal links between two sites.
So hosting a new site on your existing hosting is generally OK if you don't want to link to it from your other sites. If you do want to make links, you want it hosted separately.
It's good advice - but that's not the full story. When it did happen that a major hosting provider ceased trading about 5 years ago, the domains were all reassigned to other registrars inside of a week, and all the domain holders were informed by email who their new registrars were.
Some people found they were working with companies that they didn't like, but in the main the domains were back and promptly available for use.
The real hassle was for people who had built sites using proprietary tools and had not taken back-ups of their sites. They had a very long wait before they could access their material and get a site running again.
So the most important lesson is to maintain a backup of each site in case of disaster. If the domain host goes down forever, you could be back in action on a new host inside a week. With a separate domain host, if the site host goes down forever, the downtime reduces to a day or less, because you put the domain backup onto a new host and redirect the servers.
No backup and you could be reduced to tears.
There are other good reasons for not keeping the domain hosting with the site host. One big reason is that a lot of site hosts charge higher fees than the main domain registrars for doing exactly the same tasks. Another reason is that some of those site registrars get very stroppy if you want to transfer the domain away from them - which is very inconvenient if you sell your site to someone else.
Ask a major domain registrar to transfer ownership of a domain, and they do it simply and efficiently, the process only needs a couple of emails. Costs range from free (ICANN domain transfer between accounts at the same registrar, called a "push" in the trade) to around £/$10 for most transfers to a new registrar.
Ask a "German host" to transfer ownership of a domain and you can get into a real mess, ranging from being told that "it is not your domain, we rent it to you", to having to fill in paper forms and submit them with proof of ID using snail mail. Enough said, bcause I've said it before.
I like Dynadot and Namecheap because they are cheaper than other major domain registrars for privacy. I use gandi.net for the occasional exotic registration. I wouldn't recommend any of my site hosts, but they are very cheap ...
I have been doing some research on my hosting account and was wondering, if I were to purchase a domain from a different company then my host do I assign it as an addon domain (since I would want this to be a separate site)?
yes, that's what add on domains are for. I have a small bluehost account that I purchased some time ago when they had a huge discount and I got 6 small sites there.
It's best not to purchase the domain with the same company where you have the hosting generally, since it would be hard to transfer later and for added security.
Lobigalo (10 February 2014)
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