There are a lot of different terms within the web hosting world, some of which have easily identifiable meanings whilst others may not seem as clear in what they mean or refer to. This may cause confusion amongst those who may not have an extensive knowledge of web hosting related technologies and systems or even accommodate the neglect of important features and hosting extras that are beneficial to website owners.
A quick look into many web hosting features will reveal an abundance of various terms and options that may have otherwise been missed. Looking specifically at domain names for example you’ll see a range of items including subdomains, parked domains, DNS zone editor and addon domains. Each of these are consistent across most web hosts and may be something that website owners only use on a rare occasion, if at all, but each of these, addon domains in particular, are important and worth knowing about.
What Is An Addon Domain?
An addon domain is a fully functional domain name that can be attached to a web hosting account via a control panel such as cPanel. The functionality of an addon domain name allows you to essentially create additional hosting services, websites, within the same control panel as your primary domain. This means you can create multiple websites, email addresses and email forwarders under a single control panel but on separate domain names without having to pay additional monthly fees for multiple web hosting accounts.
How Do Addon Domains Work?
Addon domains are easy to set up and work by creating a subdirectory within your existing directory which is dedicated to the new addon domain. When the addon domain is created it will set up 3 URL paths that can be used to access the new directory:
- addondomain.primarydomain.com.au
- primarydomain.com.au/addondomain
- addondomain.com.au
The new directory can then be used to house an entirely new set of files and applications for a website unique to the addon domain and has no impact on the primary domain name.
When someone visits the addon domain there is no reference or evidence to show that it is an additional domain and acts as if it is an independent domain name and website.
A note of importance is that all addon domains share the resources applicable to the primary domain name. This means that if your web hosting account includes a 10GB storage limit and 100GB bandwidth limit, these resources will be shared between them all because it is still just a single account.
Why Use An Addon Domain?
Many website owners use addon domains for various reasons however the most common use is to simply allow for the creation of multiple websites, under multiple domain names, without having to sign up for more than a single web hosting account. This is useful if you operate, or plan on creating, more than 1 website that only has minimal traffic and may not require an entire web hosting service to itself. This provides not only a great platform for the hosting of multiple websites but also saves you a small fortune along the way.
Digital Pacific provides a range business web hosting services that include the ability to host addon domain names with each account.
