locally hosted web server Static IP address cost v dynamic DNS cost?

Hi there

I have recently purchased 6 domain names, 4 of which will eventually point to 1 locally hosted web site and the other 2, to 2 different locally hosted web sites. So 3 web sites, 6 domain names. They are not commercial businesses as such.

I currently have a dynamic IP address and I have been looking into free dynamic IP address Web Sites, including those which also offer paid services. They are all American because I couldn't find any UK companies offering the service.

My current ISP is O2 and if I want a static IP address it would cost me £60 a year. However it seems if I want to use the services of some of these companies, they charge per domain name and given I have 6, the costs soon equal £60 if not more.

So is there a cheaper way of doing this than a £60 static IP address?

Kind regards

MacPioneer said:

I use DynDNS, for something like $25 per year. It allows me to manage my own DNS records, with unlimited hostnames. I have about a dozen, most of them pointing to my home server. I set up two A records, mydomain.com and mail.mydomain.com (your MX records must point to A records, not CNAMEs), and CNAME the various other hostnames to the mydomain.com A record. My primary server is a Mac Mini Server; I use Apache's reverse proxy function to direct each hostname to the appropriate server and port on my network. I use DynDNS's Unix client software on the Mac Mini to update my two A records when my ISP changes my IP address (which happens rarely).

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Thank you for your reply. Since I posted here, someone at work suggested make use of CNAMES just as your suggesting. I'll read up on them and how it all works and do just that.

Thanks

Analog Kid said:

Keep in mind that you can't virtual host https sites. You can overlay as many http sites as you'd like on one IP address (static or dynamic) but https needs its own IP.

Not sure if you're doing anything that would require that.

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That is really useful to know because I am currently using https. However it isn't a requirement going forward.