Multi-site Hosting Real portfolio capacity
How Many Websites Can You Really Host on One Hosting Plan?
A plan can advertise 50, 100, or “unlimited” websites while every site still shares storage, files, databases and server resources. The practical portfolio size depends on what those sites consume—not just whether the control panel lets you add another domain.
Calculate capacity by storage, inodes and databases, preserve operating headroom, and then reduce the result when CPU, RAM or dynamic PHP work becomes the tighter constraint.
Advertised website allowances
The number shown on the sales page is only one limit.
| Provider | Current shared website allowance | Published storage | Important secondary capacity check |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hostinger | Web Single 1 · Premium 3 · Business 50 | 10 / 20 / 50 GB | 200k / 400k / 600k inodes plus CPU/RAM/PHP workers |
| Bluehost | Starter 10 · Business 50; higher tiers publish more | Starter 10 GB · Business 50 GB | Verify account inode/resource thresholds; current inode docs conflict |
| DreamHost | Launch 25 · Growth 50 · Scale 100 | 25 / 50 / 100 GB | 25 / 50 / 300 databases plus shared CPU/RAM behavior |
| SiteGround | StartUp 1 · GrowBig unlimited · GoGeek unlimited | 10 / 50 / 100 GB | 200k / 400k / 600k inodes and CPU-second fair-use thresholds |
| Namecheap | Stellar 3 · Plus unlimited · Business unlimited | 20 GB / unmetered / 50 GB | 300k / 300k / 600k inodes plus LVE CPU/RAM/process limits |
Original portfolio-capacity tool
Multi-Site Capacity Planner
Estimate the maximum site count from three measurable account limits. CPU, RAM, PHP concurrency and traffic can lower the real result further.
A better way to calculate portfolio size
- Measure existing sites. Record storage, file count and database use for a representative WordPress site.
- Reserve capacity. Keep space for updates, cache rebuilds, staging, backups and growth.
- Calculate each hard ceiling separately. A 50 GB plan with 2 GB sites suggests 25 by storage, but a 400k inode plan with 50k inodes per site suggests only eight by file count.
- Take the lowest result. The smallest measurable ceiling is the starting portfolio cap.
- Then subtract for workload risk. Dynamic ecommerce, membership, LMS and high-traffic sites can need far more CPU/RAM/PHP headroom than small brochure sites.
Why “unlimited websites” can still be legitimate—and still be misunderstood
“Unlimited” usually means the provider does not set a small numerical domain/site count on that feature. It does not remove other service limits. SiteGround explicitly ties unlimited hosted sites to resource limits, while Namecheap publishes separate CPU, memory, entry-process and inode controls. The right interpretation is “no fixed site-count cap within the rest of the plan’s rules,” not infinite application capacity.
Best candidates for multi-site shared hosting
- Several small brochure or local-business sites with modest traffic.
- Low-traffic content sites using efficient caching.
- Development or low-demand projects where separate account isolation is not required.
- Portfolios with disciplined backup, staging and file-retention practices.
Projects that can outgrow a shared multi-site plan quickly
- Several WooCommerce stores with uncached checkout traffic.
- Membership, LMS or community sites with many logged-in users.
- Plugin-heavy WordPress sites that generate large cache/file trees.
- Client sites requiring strict account isolation or separate resource guarantees.
- Applications with frequent imports, crawlers, cron jobs or background processing.
Related: compare all published resource limits, check inode ceilings, and estimate dynamic PHP concurrency.
Claim-level official citations
Use the same source the capacity claim came from.
Resource terminology is not standardized across hosts. Recheck the provider documentation before buying or upgrading because thresholds, plan names, and public disclosures can change.
Research method & evidence discipline
Published limits are compared only when the underlying metric matches.
The page separates hard limits, soft thresholds, planning figures, shared-resource policies, and unavailable public data rather than converting unlike controls into one score.
Page-specific update history
Resource changes are recorded only after substantive verification.
- 01
August 8, 2026 Initial source-backed comparison, original capacity tool, provider caveats, and internal-link cluster published.
- 02
Metric discipline Unlike resource controls stay separate instead of being converted into a fake universal score.
- 03
Future revisions Record the previous value, new value, source, provider context, and verification date when a limit changes.