Have Multiple Websites? Get a Reseller Account!

“I plan to host several WordPress websites, which host and what plan would you recommend?”

“I need to host my own personal portfolio, my band’s site, a small blog, and my neighbor’s dog’s website. Would a shared hosting account do?”

I’ve been asked several variations of the above questions many, many times and I’ve got one answer for all of them: Get a reseller account!

Initially, this answer might sound confusing to some because reseller hosting is supposed to be for reselling accounts, not for hosting your own websites. But trust me – despite its name, a reseller account isn’t something that only actual web hosting resellers should get. In fact, reseller hosting is pretty much like shared hosting, except that you have the power to create separate hosting accounts for each of your websites!

So why should you get a reseller web hosting account when you can have all your websites in one shared account, and for a fraction of the price at that?

Less Security Risks

Having separate accounts for each of your websites can help minimize security risks. If you had everything in one account and a certain script, plugin or theme gets exploited, it’s possible for a hacker to gain access to all of the files in your hosting account. This means all of your websites could be compromised! Just imagine how big of a mess it would be if you had ten websites and all of them went down, got defaced, or even got deleted at the same time…

On the other hand, it would be easier for you to get things back on track if each of your websites had its own separate cPanel account. If a site gets hacked, the issue will be isolated. All your other sites would continue to run smoothly and you could focus on fixing just one website’s issues.

More Flexibility

Different websites have different requirements, and sometimes a certain site’s requirement may be in conflict with another site’s. Having a separate cPanel account for each website allows for more freedom with regards to some server settings. Although the level of customization is very limited compared to a VPS, you’d still have a bit more control over each website.

One good example is having control over each site’s PHP version. Nowadays, a lot of web hosts use CloudLinux and I like taking advantage of that fact. CloudLinux has a neat feature that allows clients to select the PHP version and also enable/disable PHP modules for each account.

So how does this make a reseller account superior?

Some scripts require your hosting environment to run the latest PHP versions for optimum performance. Some scripts still have issues with these versions of PHP and require outdated PHP versions instead. With CloudLinux’s PHP selector, you can set the PHP version for each cPanel account. This means if you have all sites in one cPanel account, you’d be forced to use a version that’s compatible with all your sites. However, if your sites are separated, then you would be free to choose whichever PHP version works best for each website!

Better Resource Management

Since we’re talking about CloudLinux, it’s also worth noting that this helps web hosts in limiting their clients’ resources. Hosts can define limits for CPU, I/O, entry processes, etc. for each cPanel account and naturally, if you have a lot of websites in one account, all those sites would share the same CPU resources.

A reseller account allows you to somehow use up “more” CPU resources. Because each cPanel account has its own resource allocations, each website can run tasks without consuming resources meant for your other websites. Plus, if one of your sites uses up too much resources and gets suspended, it won’t affect all your other websites!

Easier Organization of Files, Folders, and Backups

A reseller account makes it easier to organize your websites and keep track of different things from site files to backups.

Files and Folders

This one’s a no-brainer. If you’ve ever had a shared hosting account and made use of a feature called addon domains, you should know that all your addon domain directories are placed in the same folder as your main website’s files.

Putting many websites in one shared hosting account could easily clutter your main public_html (or similar) directory. Maybe it’s just me but I want all my site files neatly organized. A reseller account does the trick for me and it will do the same for you, too. ;)

Full cPanel Backups

A full cPanel backup’s file size could easily reach several gigabytes if you have many websites in one account. Not only would keeping a fresh copy in your local machine be a hassle, this could also mean that uploading and restoring a full backup would be a much more time-consuming task.

Having separate cPanel accounts would allow you to take full backups for each site. This means that you can generate and download backups of websites with recent changes and leave out sites which haven’t been updated.

I know partial backups exist and you can backup sites and email accounts selectively even with a shared hosting account, but that takes much more work and the average user might have a difficult time trying to do that. Clicking one button to have everything done for you is definitely more convenient and we all love convenience, right?

Final Thoughts

If you’re going to host just one or two non-resource intensive websites then I guess shared web hosting would do. But…

If you maintain many websites, are serious about them, and could spend an extra $10 or so per month for hosting, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t opt for a reseller web hosting account. It’s way better than a regular shared hosting account in many aspects and it’s damn well worth the money. Sure, most shared web hosts allow for unlimited domains, but would you rather save a few dollars per month than gain access to the numerous perks of reseller hosting AND eliminate as much security risks as possible? Think about it. :)