Hostlantern Knows Best: What is the Difference Between Addon Domain, SubDomain, and Alias Domain?

addon-domains

What is the Difference Between Addon Domain, SubDomain, and Alias Domain ?

I was putting together a website for a up and coming Toledo Restaurant today that has many new domain names. They plan on expanding their web presence with multiple brands and a little planning by the web-developer can save them cost and whole lot of headache when using a web hosting plan Like Hostlantern’s Unlimited Hosting plan.

As i was putting everything together, I thought to myself, how many people actually know how to setup multiple domains on one hosting account? Better yet, How many people actually know the difference between addon domains, sub domains, and Alias or parked domains? This article is geared towards a Cpanel hosted environment offered at Hostlantern but the principles apply universally. Below hopefully will help demystify the lingo and functionality.

Addon Domain

An addon domain is a second website, with its own unique content. This type of domain does require you to register the new domain name before you can host it. So, if you want to host www.someotherdomain.com,on the same hosting plan, this is the best solution.

Subdomain

A subdomain is a second website with its own unique content, but there is no new domain name. Instead, you use an existing domain name and change the www to another name. The subdomain name looks like forums.samedomain.com, clients.samedomain.com, help.samedomain.com (assuming you already host samedomain.com).

Parked Domain

An Alias or Parked domain is NOT a unique website. Instead, it is a forward to the primary domain name of your cPanel account, much like a website alias. Parked domains are commonly used when:

  • Parked domains can be associated with their own DNS and e-mail services and cannot have a unique website. Instead, it can only act as an alias to the website hosted on the primary domain on that hosting account, like the main website alias.They are used for:
    • DNS service for any domain;
    • Mail service for any domain;
    • reserving the domain name for future development;
    • to have more than one domain that would lead to your primary domain;
    • to protect against common misspellings of your domain name that you have registered.