Three brands or locations under one company, unsure if WP Multisite beats separate WP installs.
Multisite sounds tempting because you keep one codebase and one login, but it couples the uptime, plugins and updates of every site together. For SMBs with distinct brands that is usually a risk, not a benefit.
Try this first
- 1Decide on one question: do the sites genuinely share content, users and plugin stack? If yes, multisite is fine. If no, separate installs stay simpler.
- 2Roll out multisite via subdomain (brand1.company.com) or subdirectory (company.com/brand1). Subdomain is more flexible for separate SSL and separate hosting later, subdirectory is slightly stronger for SEO when content overlaps.
- 3Test plugins against multisite before you commit: not everything is network-compatible. WooCommerce, Yoast and the well-known caching plugins work, smaller plugins often do not.
- 4Central: one super-admin, network-activated plugins, shared users table. Per site: own content, own theme, own domain via a mapping plugin if you want separate domains.
- 5Backup and update strategy changes: one corrupt plugin or failed core update hits the whole network. Plan staging tests for every major update more heavily than with separate sites.
- 6When in doubt pick separate installs behind the same host or the same Git repo with deploy scripts. You lose shared users but gain isolation.
When to bring us in
Going past 5 sites or having to sell or split off a brand later, multisite exit is painful. A dev who has done multisite migrations can estimate the pain up front.
See also
- WordPress, plugins and theme have gone 6+ months without updatesOut-of-date WP is the number-one entry for malware. Don't just hit 'update all', back up first.
- Theme update broke the layout or threw a fatal errorThemes overwrite custom CSS on update unless you use a child theme.
- WordPress shows a blank screen after a plugin install or updateWSOD (white screen of death) is usually one crashing plugin. You isolate it.
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