I've been making sites for years but I'm only recently learning how the hosting business works. Forgive me if I'm getting this completely wrong but...

Lets say for made up example that I've got 4 wesites, all of them mine (not clients). They're all reasonably small and low traffic so I'm paying $5/month each on 4 different hosting accounts. That's $20/month. Okay, now lets say there's a bigger plan that has enough resources for all 4 websites (space, bandwidth, emails, databases, etc.) and this bigger plan costs $15/month. (This bigger account is not necessarily a 'reseller' account.)

Can I / should I move my "main" site to this bigger plan and then move the other 3 over too as "parked" domains in subfolders of the main account? I know I'd only get one single cPanel for the account but my experience with my one parked domain now is that I can still create emails separately.

- Will that work? Do people do this?
- So long as site visitors enter my 'other three sites' via the intended domain names, will people ever have a clue that they're really in a subfolder of another domain (my main account)?
- If this is possible, easy, and can save me money... what are disadvantages?

Thanks!

P.S. One more related question and if it needs to be aseparate thread then so be it. Lets say I make a 5th website and there's still room left on my account. Should I get my client his own separate hosting account or should I host him as a parked domain and he can pay me directly.

Hi.

What you need really is to get a host that can do true multi-domain hosting.

Parking typically just means that anyone typing the other 3 domains other than the main one will all still be directed to the main website. i.e. not 4 separate accounts. So what you wanted to do is not considered as parking.

One way is to do it as subdomains. But that is definitely not the intention from your post.

The beauty of true multi-domain hosting is that all sites have their own private directory, own login, and such. The only difference is that all 4 sites will share the same bandwidth.

If you predict you have more sites to come, look for a host that can accomodate you either in the current plan or has plans that make it an easy upgrade path for you.
There really isn't any disadvantages if you get true multi-domain hosting.

Let me know if you require more information.

Thanks. That may have been the answer I was looking for but just incase I didn't explain it right, let me break away from the "examples" and give you a real situation.

My personal homepage is www.mikesussman.com . If you browse around my site you'll see a consistant theme (except for the splash page that I'll probably get rid of). Okay, now even though there's no link to it in my navigation menu, go to www.mikesussman.com/softball . It appears to be a completely different website with no connection to my personal homepage (except for the url in the address bar). It's obviously just a folder "softball" within my main site but what I really want to do is get it its own domain name, so that nobody really knows its hosted on the unused extra resources of my main site (and plus it's cheaper for me to not get a separate account :))

Now that you have a real world scenario, does that change anything?

Thanks again for your input.

No. I understood perfectly and my answer was meant to answer that scenario :) and I had done it many times for other clients. That's why it's not as mystical as it seems.