In the new version of cPanel, Subdomains, Domain aliases and addon domains all are managed from Domains function of cPanel
Subdomain
A subdomain is a secondary website with its own content and uses the same domain as the main website. The subdomain name looks like private.domain.com and help.domain.com.
You can use cPanel to create subdomains and the function is free in all 2MHost web hosting packages.
Here is how we can create subdomain support.2mhost.com in the cPanel of 2mhost.com, when we create the subdomain, a folder called support.2mhost.com will be created inside public_html of the main account (2mhost.com), we can upload the files of the subdomain inside the created folder.
Domain Alias
An alias domain is not a separate website. It is just a masked forwarder to the main website of your hosting account; Aliases are commonly used when you need domain.net shows the same content or website of domain.com. We use 2mhosting.com as an alias of 2mhost.com!
In other words, domain alias is used when you want 2 domains to show the same website.
You can use cPanel to create aliases, and the function is free in all 2MHost web hosting packages, in the following example, we will create a domain alias called 2mhost.net that will load 2mhost.com website. Note that we leave 'share document root' checkbox checked.
Addon domains
An addon domain is a cPanel function that lets you host multiple websites in a single hosting account each with its own content and email. When we mention how many websites you can host in a single hosting account, we mean how many addon domains you are allowed to create in each hosting account + the main website.
You can use cPanel to create addon domains, addon domain's function is enabled in Personal-x2 packages and above.
In the following example, we will add new domain secondwebsite.com to be full website hosted in the same package, note that we unchecked 'Share document root' checkbox.
Important notes:
- We can't convert a separate hosting account to addon domain of another hosting account, in other words; we can't combine hosting accounts under one big hosting account.
- We can't convert or replace the main domain to be an addon domain or vice versa.
Which is better, to have a separate hosting account for each website or host multiple websites in single hosting account?
We always recommend using separate hosting accounts for each website, for 3 reasons:
- Addon domains share the same server resources like space, RAM and CPU allowed to the main website, one busy website may slowdown the rest.
- Addon domains do not come with their own separate cPanel access. which makes websites harder to manage if websites belong to several owners.
- Web Hosting accounts are really cheap nowadays, there is not much saving in hosting multiple websites in single hosting account equal to the extra layer of management complications you will add.