Multiple Domain Hosting

Compare Services Of Multiple Domain Hosting Providers

Inexpensive multiple domain hosting - a low-cost solution for owners of multiple sites. Comparison and reviews of the most popular multiple domain web hosting providers.

Since mini web sites are becoming the new marketing method to generate traffic and sales, many webmasters own a lot of domains and need multiple separate web hosting accounts (one for each mini web site).

Realizing this, many hosting companies have developed plans which offer discounts for multiple domain hosting. Here are companies that, instead of merely offering a 10%, 20% or even 50% discount when buying additional accounts (standard for many hosts), have taken it a step further...

Name  Disk space Bandwidth POP3 emails Domains FrontPage Money back Annual Price Setup Additional Features midPhase 1750 MB Unlimited Unlimited 2 + 14 days $9.95/mo Free Free domain name, site builder InfinityHost 400 MB 15 GB/mo 400 3 + 30 days $7.95/mo Free Site Studio, Miva Merchant, data backups, dedicated IP address SpeedFox 1200 MB 20 GB/mo 500 3 + 30 days $7.96/mo Free Site Studio, dedicated IP address WebsiteSource 1600 MB 40 GB/mo 1000 4 + 30 days $7.83/mo Free Site Studio, Miva Merchant, dedicated IP address Jumpline 1000 MB 15 GB/mo 150 6 + 30 days $14.95/mo Free Dedicated IP address, Miva Merchant NewWebsite Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited 200 + N/A $29.00/mo Free 2 weeks free NewWebsite Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited 1000 + N/A $49.00/mo Free 2 weeks free WebsiteSource 2000 MB 80 GB/mo Unlimited Unlimited + 30 days $39.96/mo $25 Site Studio, Miva Merchant, dedicated IP address Jumpline 4000 MB 40 GB/mo Unlimited Unlimited + 30 days $49.95/mo $30 Dedicated IP address, Miva Merchant

Of course, all of them offer FTP access, CGI/Perl, SSI, PHP, site statistics and the like. Plans with a lot of domains are especially good for hosting mini web sites (micro sites) and redirecting to affiliate programs or other sites. Here are quick reviews of these providers...

midPhase

InfinityHost

SpeedFox

WebsiteSource

Jumpline

Site Builder can be used in two ways...

• As a stand alone development tool which includes basic web hosting, 10 GB of bandwidth, and costs $4.95 a month.
• Combined with one of the above hosting plans (for a one-time $30 setup fee).

NewWebsite

They offer three multiple domain hosting plans with up to 1000 domains and unlimited disk space and bandwidth so you can host a lot of content. Advanced Control Panel enables adding a group of domain names all at once and managing them in a multi-variety of ways. For instance, you can view a list of all your domains and the current unique visits for the month and compare them with the previous 2 months. Domains can be put into categories so that you can manage them by category.

How Multiple Server Hosting Impacts Your Web Site's Uptime

By Godfrey E. Heron

This article describes the technology behind multiple server hosting and how you may utilize it to maximize your site's security and uptime.

Hosting of web sites has essentially become a commodity. There is very little distinguishing one hosting company from the next. Core plans and features are the same and price is no longer a true determining feature. In fact, choosing a host based on the cheapest price can be more expensive in the long term with respect to reliability issues and possible loss of sales as a result of web site downtime.

Selecting a host from the thousands of providers and resellers can be a very daunting task, which may result in a hit and miss approach. But although hosting may have become a commodity, one distinguishing feature that you must always look out for is reliability.

If you don't know the uptime of your site, or its performance level, try an independent web site monitoring service.

At the heart of any hosting company's reliability is redundancy. This ensures that if a problem exists at one point, there will be an alternative which ensures continuity as seamlessly and transparently as possible.

Most hosts do employ redundant network connections. These are the high speed pipes that route data from the server to your web browser. But, redundant 'multiple web servers' have been extremely rare and very expensive, requiring costly routing equipment which has previously been used only in mission critical applications of Fortune 500 companies.

However, a very neat but little known Domain Name Server(DNS) feature called 'round robin' allows the selection and provision of a particular IP address from a 'pool' of addresses when a DNS request arrives.

To understand what this has to do with server reliability it's important to remember that the Domain Name Server (DNS) database maps a host name to their IP address. So instead of using a hard to remember series of numbers (IP address) we just type in your web browser www.yourdomain.com, to get to your web site.

Now, typically it takes at least 2 to 3 days to propagate or 'spread the word' of your DNS info throughout the internet. That's why when you register or transfer a domain name it isn't immediately available to the person browsing the web.

This delay has stymied the security benefits of hosting your site on multiple servers, as your web site would be down for a couple of days if something went awry with one server. You would have to change your DNS to reflect your second server and wait days before the change was picked up in routers on the internet.

Failover Monitoring

However, the round robin DNS strategy solves this predicament, by mapping your domain name to more than one IP address. Select hosting companies now employ the DNS round robin technique in conjunction with 'failover monitoring'.

The DNS round robin failover monitoring process starts by a web hosting company setting up your site on two or more independent web servers (preferably with different IP blocks assigned to them). Your domain name will therefore have 2 or more IP Addresses assigned to it.

Then the failover monitor watches your web server(s) by dispatching data to a URL you specify and looking for particular text in the results. When the system detects that one of your IP addresses is returning an error, and the others aren't, it pulls that IP address out of the list. The DNS then points your domain name to the working IP address/s

If any of your IP's come back online they are restored to the IP pool. This effectively and safely keeps your site online - even if one of your web servers is down.

The average failure detection and recovery time with a system like this can be as low as 15 minutes. This time varies depending on the speed of your site and the nature of the failure and also how long other ISP's cache (save) your DNS information.

The time taken for other ISP's caching your information can be manipulated in the failover monitor by lowering the "time to live" (TTL) cache settings. These are the settings that other ISP's will use to determine how long to cache your DNS information.

Of course you must bear in mind the matter of how frequently data is synchronized between your web site's servers. This will be the hosting company's responsibility, and this may become complicated where databases and user sessions are involved.

The very expensive hardware based failover monitoring systems that point a virtual IP address to other ISP's, while behind the scenes juggling a number of unique IP addresses on different servers, is of course the most 'elegant' solution to multi server hosting.

That way, the whole issue of ISP's caching your information does not come into play.

Therefore, for web sites that need to have true 99.99995% uptime, without huge outlays of money, the technology is readily available and certain proprietary failure monitoring systems are now relatively cheap to apply.

About the Author
Godfrey Heron is the Website Manager of Irieisle Multiple Domain Hosting Services. Sign up for your free trial, and host multiple web sites on one account.