# Pros and cons of multiple standalone containers vs one for multiple Discourse installs?

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/pros-and-cons-of-multiple-standalone-containers-vs-one-for-multiple-discourse-installs/32978
**Category:** Self-hosting
**Created:** [September 7, 2015, 11:11am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/pros-and-cons-of-multiple-standalone-containers-vs-one-for-multiple-discourse-installs/32978 "2015-09-07T11:11:01Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 6

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### Author: ![itsbhanusharma](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/itsbhanusharma/32/180717_2.png) [@itsbhanusharma](https://meta.discourse.org/u/itsbhanusharma)
#### Post date: [January 3, 2026, 7:47am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/pros-and-cons-of-multiple-standalone-containers-vs-one-for-multiple-discourse-installs/32978/6 "2026-01-03T07:47:13Z")

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Leaving my $0.02 here,

it really boils down to plugins. Multisite will make any plugins you install available to all the sites in the network whereas standalone sites will have their own unique subset.

The standalone sites will likely have higher system utilisation compared to a single multisite because each container will be running the same process. This doesn’t necessarily mean a performance impact in practice unless some sites experience exponentially higher traffic than others.

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