WordPress Multisite vs Single Sites for Higher Ed Websites: Pros, Cons, and Best Practices

Higher education institutions face a lot of specific and unique challenges when it comes to hosting their websites. From managing enrollment surges to streaming virtual commencements, decision makers must balance performance, governance, and resource allocation. One of the many important decisions a higher education team must make is whether to use a WordPress multisite setup or manage individual single sites.

The Case for Multisite

WordPress multisite offers several benefits, particularly around ease of management and governance. Aaron Ware, president of digital agency Linchpin, shares an example of a client that had a network of over 1,000 microsites for its various locations and departments:

They wanted to give them the ability to have a few pages that they could customize, and they would have that sole role to do that. So for them it was governance, right? Hey, we have these loan officers that can only control their site. The template – everybody got the same exact template. So the branding of it was exactly the same. There were no child themes. And that’s how they handled their governance.

The key advantages of multisite in this case study were:

Consistent branding and design across all sites
Easy management of user roles and permissions
Ability to push updates and changes network-wide
Unified management of themes and plugins

The Constraints of Multisite

However, multisite also has some unique challenges, especially when it comes to performance and resource allocation. In a multisite setup, all sites share the same server resources. This can lead to what Aaron and Joshua Goode, of WP Cloud at Automattic, refer to as the “noisy neighbor” problem.

Aaron explains, “We call this the noisy neighbor. [All the sites] are all connected. They’re all in this neighborhood. And we have to deal with that.” If one site in the network experiences a surge in traffic or resource usage, it can consume a disproportionate share of the available resources, causing slowdowns or even outages for the other sites.

Joshua elaborates on the technical constraints, noting that regardless of how many sites are in a multisite network, they are all treated as a single site in terms of resource allocation. So even if a hosting platform offers generous resources or dynamic scaling, those benefits are diluted across the entire network instead of being available to individual sites as needed.

This “noisy neighbor” issue can be especially problematic for higher education institutions, where different departments or properties may have vastly different traffic patterns and resource needs. A high-traffic admissions site could easily overwhelm a low-traffic department site if they’re sharing the same limited multisite resources.

Notably, Aaron points out that “over the last three years or so, I haven’t had a single client come to me and say we need a multisite.”

The Benefits of Single Sites

In contrast to the constraints of multisite, managing individual WordPress single sites for each property offers a number of compelling advantages:

Granular resource allocation – Each site can be provisioned with the specific resources it needs based on its traffic and requirements.
Independent scaling – Since each site is separate, traffic spikes on one won’t impact the others. There’s no worry about “noisy neighbors” taking everything down.
Flexibility – Without the constraints of a shared environment, individual sites can use different themes, plugins, and configurations as needed.
Performance – Single sites typically perform better since they’re not competing for resources and can be optimized independently.

Even for higher ed institutions coming from a multisite background, single site platforms can still provide the centralized management and governance features they need. Joshua explained how WP Cloud has evolved to offer multisite-like capabilities for single site networks:

When it comes down to, ‘Oh we want all of these themes to be available on all of these, this segment of sites. We want these plugins to be available by default on these segment of sites’ – we’ve worked really hard on WP Cloud to build in some of those features just for general day-to-day management, but they can be definitely used by multisite operations.

A good managed hosting solution offers full platform management at the account level for single site platforms, so that all plug-in’s and themes can be updated at once – just like multisite but without the constraints of multisite. And user roles can still be synced across sites and third-party solutions.

So with a modern robust and adaptable single site hosting platform, higher ed institutions can get the best of both worlds:the flexibility and performance of individual sites with the governance and control of a centrally managed network.

What Higher Ed Institutions Should Look for in a Hosting Solution

When evaluating hosting platforms for their websites, higher education decision makers should consider solutions that provide:

Robust performance and scalability to handle traffic spikes
Flexibility to customize themes, plugins, and configurations on a per-site basis
Granular resource allocation and independent scaling for each site
Centralized governance and management features for efficiency
Ability to highlight scale application resources as needed

A platform that offers the management benefits of multisite with the performance and flexibility advantages of single sites can provide the best of both worlds for higher ed institutions.

Conclusion

The decision of whether to use WordPress multisite or single sites for higher education ultimately depends on the specific needs and priorities of the institution. This is another case where bringing in the right people, like an adept digital agency, can help institutions make the best decision.

Multisite can work well for organizations that need strict control over design and permissions across a large network of sites and are willing to sacrifice some performance. But for most higher ed clients, the scalability, flexibility, and performance advantages of single sites are hard to ignore, especially given the “noisy neighbor” risks of shared multisite resources. When evaluating hosting solutions, decision makers should look for a platform that combines robust governance and management features with the power and speed of independent sites.