In this article, we will cover each type of domain that can be added to cPanel and we’ll explain the difference between a primary, addon, parked (alias), and subdomains.
What is a Primary Domain?
Your primary domain is the main domain name on the cPanel account. It’s the domain you use when you first order your hosting service. The document root for your primary domain; it’s always the public_html folder.
What is an Addon Domain?
An Addon domain is an additional domain that will display a completely different website and not the same site as in the primary domain.
Let’s suppose you MyDogSite.com, but you also want to launch a new site called MyRabbitSite.com. You would do this using an addon domain. Before adding an addon domain in cPanel, make sure that your domain name is registered.
Tutorial: How to Create an Addon Domain in cPanel
What is a Parked Domain or Alias?
A Parked Domain or Alias Domain is a domain name that leads to the same site as another domain name. The domain is, in essence, parked on top of the primary domain name.
For example, suppose we have a domain name my-site.com. If we park my-site.net on top of the .com domain, a visitor to our site will be able to access the site from either the .com or the .org address. The visitor won’t notice any difference in the website at all no matter which one she chooses.
Tutorial: How to Create a Parked Domain (Alias) in cPanel
What is a subdomain?
Subdomains, though, will work off of your existing domain names. They can be used for the same purposes as regular domain names; they just have an extra part in front.
Another example could be if you created two subdomains dogs and rabbits on mypestore.com.
You’d visit those subdomains in your browser using http://dogs.mypetstore.com/and http://rabbits.mypetstore.com/, respectively.
You could set each subdomain to go to its own website or to go to a section of the main mypetstore.com site.
Tutorial: How to create a Subdomain in cPanel
That’s it! Now you know the difference between a Primary, Addon, Parked and Subdomain!