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Thoughts on Multiple Accounts for Personal and Business Use?
Hey LET community,
I’m curious about how others handle situations where you need to separate personal and business usage with the same provider. Let’s say you’re using Provider A for personal projects and find them reliable enough to also host some of your business-related stuff. However, due to reasons like billing separation, account sharing, or maintaining clear distinctions between personal and business activities, you prefer creating a separate account instead of lumping everything into one.
The challenge is that most providers on LET explicitly prohibit multiple accounts under any circumstances. This makes it tricky if you're trying to follow their rules while still needing account separation for legitimate reasons.
So, my questions to the LET community:
- How do you approach such situations?
- Have you found providers that are more flexible or open to discussions about this?
- Any experiences (good or bad) where you’ve raised this with a provider directly?
Would love to hear your thoughts, strategies, or even horror stories about this!
Cheers!
Comments
Our platform supports team management, allowing you to maintain separate teams for personal and business purposes. You can also invite other users to collaborate and manage services within each team seamlessly.
I always do separate accounts for work and personal use.
I've never encountered any provider actively blocking accounts.
Even with OVH or Hetzner, they don't seem to pay much attention to it.
Just use your work email + work details (and maybe a separate browser & IP address for the first purchase).
Most providers don't seem to care.
I just create two accounts. I don’t ask permission. It’s simple. Company policy doesn’t allow mixing. Doesn’t matter what provider policy is. The person paying set the rules. Even if you pay yourself. Security first.
I'm sure if you proactively contact the company and explain your needs for two accounts it'll be no problem. I forbid having multiple billing accounts but allow it if the person contacts and asks.
So many people, specifically ones trying to use VPS for abusive purposes will try to create multiple accounts using different information, even having matching fake payment methods with that fake info, and when they're asked about having multiple accounts they'll play dumb.
Asking first is usually the best choice with most things in life.
It's just not something that would occur to me to ask. I can't think of a vendor outside of this space that require me asking permission to have separate business and personal accounts, or even multiple personal accounts for whatever reasons (taking advantage of deals, being responsible for a friend or relative's bill etc).
Mind you I'm not arguing with your policy, just vaguely surprised. Interesting stuff.
If an account is clearly for business and another is clearly for personal I wouldn't care personally and wouldn't even bother asking the person. My point was just that there's policies like that in place for multiple accounts mainly to prevent fraud/abuse, and from my experience there's more people abusing stuff than there are doing legit stuff that need multiple accounts. most cases in my situation they aren't just making 2 accounts anyway but many.
don't worry. I'm just explaining from my POV representing a businesses interests.
Strategy, if you have need a personal and business account, if it is a problem for the provider, don't do business for the provider.
If you need a personal and a couple dozen different business accounts, I can understand the provider kicking you off their platform.
Right -- a brilliant strategy [irony]
Until the provider notices
Well, while he sounds a bit ignorant what he says is not nonsensical IMO (just weirdly put). I mean we all are bound by laws and regulations, it's not like we're free to chose between private and company being mixed up or properly separated. So, a provider who simply doesn't allow 2 accounts, period, just acts stupidly and ignorantly.
Agreeing with @MikeA I would expressly ask the provider though, assuming that their problem isn't someone having both a private and a business account, but rather hackers, spammers, etc. having many accounts.
If one is a business account and the other is your personal account they're not operated by the same legal entity, depending on how your business is incorporated. Basically not a double account.
There should be no issue.
Rule of thumb, don't do anything shady and 99% of the time you'll be fine.
Exactly, this was the message that I wanted to convey to @huntercop
@MikeA put it well above ( https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/4157615/#Comment_4157615 ):
But it's best to clarify the situation to the provider so that there isn't an issue
We all know that no provider gonna have any problems with you having "business" and "personal" accounts if you don't use them to go around the "free stuff" rules - coupons once per client, self-referrals, etc.
You can’t call what I said ignorant. Unless you just don’t like the fact I don’t waste time on this and just follow the laws.
For example in the USA - IRS hates mixing. They won’t approve mixed business expenses. Governments expect separation for clean audits. Having personal servers and business servers on the same account with multiple cards does actually fail independence audits.
I have seen many business owners ordered to pay tax on legit expense for mixing + fines.
I am just being blunt. Not arrogant. I am not interested in dealing with unpleasant audits. I keep things separate. I don’t make multiple personal accounts.
P.S. it’s short hand since I was about to drive out
Also a provider that creates a legal liability for you by forcing you to merge accounts or banning one of those accounts would technically break many USA consumer protection and business laws. Now if it’s two business accounts or two personal accounts, different story. One personal and one business is completely legal by all lenses. You don’t OWN your business account. Your company does, that’s 100% true. When you leave the company, the company still owns it and may reassign it to someone else. That’s why business is different. Businesses are not people, they are entities.
No agreement or arbitration clause will protect them in court if they merged your account forcefully and you got into trouble during an audit as an example. I get arbitration easily thrown out all the time. All they have to do is bring it up first and you can claim it’s coercive and unfair business practices because you never mentioned it but they used it to avoid doing the right thing. This has been upheld for decades in court. Even they hate arbitrations and will take any reasonable excuse.
I didn't say that what you said was ignorant (and nor did anyone else, as far as I can tell)
You're arguing about something that no one here has disputed
Again, no one here has disputed any of this
What happens if a shared hosting account started as personal and then evolved to become business-only? Would US tax authorities have a problem with that?
In most countries, in the eyes of the law a company is considered a "person" in its own right - the term for this is "legal entity". In theory, no provider should object to having separate accounts for you personally and the company, because legally they are, and must be, distinct.
I always make sure that I sign up for personal accounts using email on a personal domain, and company accounts on the company domain name. That's been easy for things I bought specifically for the company after formation, e.g. my Hetzner dedi.
However, I previously bought a whole load of services for the company's product before the company was formed. In those cases, I just absorbed the cost personally rather than trying to retro-actively bill it to the company. When it comes to renewal, I've changed my personal account to include the company details and the company has paid for it going forward. I know I've lost out on tax (twice) doing this, but it never seemed worth the effort for the relatively small amounts I'd get back.
I haven't yet needed to have both a personal and company account with the same provider, although that might happen with GreenCloud this year when all the 3 year deals I bought personally but for evaluation for the company will need renewing and I'll want to transfer them to the company, while keeping the 2 year deal I've had for ages on a different personal account. I'll contact them nearer the time about how to handle it, but I might decide just to drop the personal server as I'm mostly just idling it anyway!
Some of our customers will often run different projects under different accounts and companies, and will often do so for tax-related purposes, so there should not be much of an issue there with experienced companies.
But, I would not encourage this type of behavior, or even make it the norm, it can cause issues whe employees part ways with the company, and if it's the same accountant in charge of both of the accounts, it kind of defeats the purpose to begin with.
We advise different corporate entities with different people in charge of the projects. It ensures complete and total separation of the projects and each project leader is responsible for making sure that their bills are settled, and reports filed on time.
I've always allowed this, just never allowed multiple personal accounts.
Maybe. Dunno, never thought about it that much really. I have plenty of accounts both personal and for business. Not limited to hosting.
I always use my private info on accounts I use for private purchases and business info (comp. , representative, separate bank account, business address, email phone) for accounts I use for business purchases.
Never had an issue.
In the low-end scene I'm positive there might be hosts who have an issue with that. Those who do, probably don't grasp the difference.
My business(es) and myself are separate legal entities. Just like you and me are different legal entities.
You NEED separate accounts because the invoices have to be different.
I’ve only gotten a question from a provider about this once, I think it was on BuyVM/NameCrane. I just answered honestly and it was all good from there.
Any provider having an issue with this don’t know what they’re talking about.
Also I don’t agree one should ask the provider, it’s common sense unless they want their clients to commit tax fraud.
If I’m the COO of one company and have a personal account there as well, should I ask them for permission?
If I’m a team manager?
If I just work at a company that I think might have an account there?
Separate legal entities are separate and that’s it.
You sound like my accountant
I sometimes accidently mix things up. He probably hates me.
This.
Lol, I’d be the world’s most annoying accountant.
It's not a negative tbh. They need to be. I need someone to stop my insanity.
It's better that they notice than that the tax agency does
I do my own books though so if I miss something...
There's this guy in Sweden that recently that was sent to prison for one year and four months because he just skipped doing the books whenever he felt like it, apparently, he said bookkeeping was "for nerds", the judge didn't agree
https://www.unt.se/nyheter/uppsala/artikel/tyckte-bokforing-var-for-nordar-doms-till-fangelse/jopyv97r
Lol, definitely. I used to do my own books because I want to know about what going on, want to be in control. As I got involved in more businesses and partnered up it was about time to get an accountant involved.
Usually I just spend money. My partner makes us money
I wear a real nice sexy outfit on Fridays to make up for that.