Multisite installations

A multisite installation is where you run multiple websites from a single set of code.

If you need multiple websites that need to share very similar branding or functionality, a multisite setup is an ideal way to provide a consistent web experience across your brands at significantly less cost than doing multiple individual website builds.

Your original website code is used sort of as a template, creating any number of sites can then be set up and run - but you save time and effort by essentially copying and pasting, rather than designing and building all five sites from scratch. Importantly, they all still share the same original code underneath, so while you do have multiple live sites you don’t directly multiply the maintenance and development costs.

Whilst there are efficiency gains to be had through knowing at the start of a project whether a site will be standalone or multisite, it's possible to go multisite at any point.

Compared to running multiple separate new website builds, additional sites built on a multisite strategy can have significant reductions in built cost, time to completion and ongoing costs. 

Reduced build cost for additional sites

Even with the customisations and branding tweaks, 99% of the site is already built. The spec, design and build phases for the site are already done, so you can concentrate effort on the new or unique functionality for the additional sites.

Scalability

Once decisions are made on which functionality is shared and which functionality is site-specific, scaling your multisite platform can become quicker and quicker.
Our multisite platform for the Conservative Party has scaled to run and serve over 1000 websites, for example!
Adding new brand sites, internal resources, product databases and applications can be incredibly quick and cost-effective when using the multisite route.

Consistent experiences for customers and editors

Giving a consistent brand experience is so much easier when all the brands are using the actual same code underneath. Multisite setups give you your original base styling, while still allowing for easy per-site customisation - for example, adjusting site colours to match the brand, while retaining the overall look and feel.
Editors and internal users also benefit from having the same consistent interfaces and flows for getting things done, eliminating the need for long training sessions on multiple new platforms.

Centralised management

Since multisite setups use a single centralised codebase, they also have their key configuration in a central place, giving a single point for making system and administrative changes.
The more that is kept identical or consistent between sites, the easier it is to add functionality and configuration later.