Disadvantages of add-on domains vs a full account

Indichosts.net offers a great solution for those wanting to share resources with a parent domain. However, there are some drawbacks to that too. Many do not realize that there are drawbacks until it is too late! There are advantages and disadvantages to an addon domain, but there are more disadvantages than advantages... So we offer these tips to help you:

1. Add-ons domains are not to be treated as a solution to be a poor mans reseller solution. It does not give you individual accounts inside of one master account. They all share resources!
   
2. Backups for a package with many add-on domains becomes a problem since if you do any kind of restoration with the backup system you replace ALL accounts. Backups work best for one domain, not dozens. You can either find that out the hard way or the easy way... we hope you take this tip seriously!
3. Cross Site Contamination: The domains all share one common root folder. Granted each add-on domain can have their own folder, but each can access one another's files. So if one is compromised, guess what? ALL domains are compromised. Nothing beats isolating each domain with a single package. It gets cheaper in the long run if you value security.
   
4. If you are a business, and each domain are not part of one business, most professionals agree that keeping each one isolated with one account each is the best approach. If for instance you do not pay your bill on time, guess what? All of your domains get shut down. That's just how it is. You risk that if you forget to update your credit card, etc. This happens more than you realize, so keep that in mind. And also, if one of your domains belonging to another customer of yours decides to spam the world, that also means your ENTIRE set of domains are all shut down.
   
5. Sharing resources can save a few pennies in the short term, however in the long term, it is better to scale one busy account into its own account than to share. You can control it... you can see statistics and can determine best course of action for your busy domain rather than constantly adding more and more space and bandwidth for one huge account full of domains. This becomes a problem when you have more than 5... you won't see it as much with less, but the more you have the greater the need to manage each one, and you cannot manage each one well when sharing everything.
   
6. Case in point with sharing: DNS is all the same. One change affects them all. Each domain shares one setting, and that's it. You cannot indvidualize them unless the domain is part of its own package. We cannot change that.
   
7. Server settings you adjust affect all domains. In other words, you cannot have one set of apache settings and the rest something else. This becomes more important if each domain have different requirements. For instance if one domain needs one content management solution to have a feature turned on, but off for another domain using a different software solution - that is when you are in trouble! People don't see this until it is too late, so we really prefer you to isolate the domain with its own account. Only then can you control all your wonderful apache, htaccess, PHP, etc... all so nicely!

Ask yourself this:

If you are using it for vanity purposes, then add-on domains is perfect. Meaning you have 5, 10, 20 domains with different extensions as part of the same business, add-on domains work great for having different sites do different things. So is it all one business? If so, then add-on domains are perfect.

Is it to host many domains with each one belonging to other customers? Then you are doing this wrong. That's using the add-on domain as a poor mans reseller solution. You will be in a world of hurt down the road if for instance you get hacked and all customer domains get hacked to not paying your bill and all of them get shut off. Risk is higher, sure, saving a few pennies is nice... but you ultimately spend more doing this - and only the professionals tend to see that fact.

Summary:

Are we biased toward individual packages per domain? Absolutely! Mostly because we value security first. If you do, then you'll see that shaving pennies does not help you when it ultimately costs you more in the long run. We want you happy. We offer the feature as a convenience, not to be exploited. We know who exploit it and if this item does not discourage poor mans reselling nothing will: