Run a second site on the same account
A second site is a common enough thing to want: a separate brand, a side project, a partner’s business, or a new idea you would rather keep apart from the one you already have.
The prompt
“I want to run a second site alongside this one. Tell me what I need to add to my plan and what happens once it’s on.”
Press Copy and fill in the [bracketed] parts. First time? Connect your AI to bernard once: Use your own AI (opens in a new tab).
One site per size, and a switch for more
Every size on bernard covers one site. That includes the largest, which is worth saying because most platforms use extra sites as the reason to sell you a bigger plan.
Room for another site is a switch instead. It costs the same whatever size you are on, and you can add it more than once. So the answer to “do I need to move up?” is no: you need room, and room is the same price either way.
You will find it in Settings, in two places that lead to the same thing: under Billing with the other switches, and on the Add a new site tab, which is where you were probably standing when you wanted one.
What happens once it is on
The Add a new site tab turns into a working form, and from there you have three routes: bring in a site from elsewhere, start from scratch (see I don’t have a website yet - build me one), or copy one of your sites (see Start a new site from one I already run). Add a new site to my account walks through all three, step by step.
Both sites then live in the same account. You switch between them from the sites menu, and you can copy pages and posts across rather than rebuilding them, which Reuse a page or photos from my other site covers. Every way to start a site is in Start a new website - which way in?.
Your mailing lists
Each site keeps its own mailing list. The people who signed up on one site belong to that site, and so do their unsubscribes. Someone who leaves one list stays on the other unless they leave that one too.
Email comes with every site. Campaigns and automatic emails are part of the extra room, with no extra charge for them.
Each extra site also brings its own monthly allowance for campaign emails, the same one Small starts with. Your first site keeps the allowance your plan gives it, so adding a site never takes anything away from the one you already have. How many campaign emails can I send? explains how the allowance works.
A new site can send from the address your first site already uses, so you do not have to set up email twice. It can have its own address later if you would rather keep the two apart.
If you ever end up over
You might cancel the extra room, or a card might fail, while the second site is still live. Being completely plain about what happens then, because it is the question worth asking before you commit:
Your sites stay up. All of them. Nothing is unpublished, nothing is taken off its web address, and nothing is deleted. We are not willing to make bernard the reason a business’s website went dark, and a billing state is nowhere near a good enough reason to do it.
What actually happens is that you cannot add another site until your plan covers what you are running, and you get a plain note in Settings saying how many sites you have, how many your plan covers, and one button to sort it.
If the money side matters more than the mechanics, What does it cost? is the wider picture.
Whether your sites should link to each other is its own question: see I run several sites - should they link to each other?
Questions people ask
- Does a bigger plan give me more sites?
- No, and it is worth being clear about it: every size covers one site, including the largest. Room for another is a switch you add, and it costs the same whichever size you are on, so there is no need to move up just to get a second site. Everything on the new site still previews and waits for your approval exactly like the first.
- Can I have as many as I want?
- You can add room for several, one at a time. Each one is the same price, and they all sit on the same subscription with the same renewal date, so it stays one payment however many you run.
- What if I cancel the extra room while the site is still up?
- Your site stays up. We will not take a website off the internet over a billing question, so nothing is unpublished and nothing is deleted. What stops is adding another one, until your plan covers what you are running. You will see a plain note in Settings explaining it, with one button to put it right, and your pages carry on previewing and waiting for approval as normal.
- Does each site get its own mailing list?
- Yes. Each site keeps its own list of people, its own unsubscribes and its own monthly allowance for campaign emails. Sending from one site never uses up another site’s allowance. Campaigns and automatic emails come with every extra site at no extra charge, and every campaign still waits for your approval before it goes.
- Can my second site send from the same email address as my first?
- Yes. A new site can use the sending address your first site already has, so you do not need to set up a second one. You can give it its own address later if you want the two kept apart. Nothing is sent until you approve it.
- Can I move things between my sites?
- Yes. Once both are on the same account you can copy pages and posts from one to the other rather than rebuilding them, and you approve the copy on the new site before it goes live.