Question About creating seperate websites or using a subdomain or just subfolders...Thanks!

[TheMarketingInitiative]

I am working with a company who has created a reservation software...We have been advertising this software aggressively and have been doing well with companies coming on board...Let's call the company ABC and the url was ABC.com...Now they are launching a customer facing side of things that will have all the clients listed for consumers to book at their location...So an online marketplace...Like VRBO or AirBnB...They are taking the name of the software company and making it the url for the marketplace site...So now the marketplace is ABC.com and we need to figure out if we go with a new site for the software side or if we use subdomains or a subfolder....

Do we go with

ABCSoftware.com - New root domain

ABC.software.com - Subdomain

ABC.com/software - Subfolder

There are a few other intricacies with this...Not all the companies that use the software will be on the marketplace side...And people who book through the company but using the software have a url embedded on their site that books there directly...This booking costs the company less than a booking that comes through the marketplace so this needs to be kept separate...

Thanks for the help everyone!

[Nozzle]

I wouldn't go the route of creating new root domains. I wouldn't want to worry about having to renew all those domains each year.

I always advise to go with subfolders if you can for SEO purposes if at all possible but I understand that sometimes for technical reasons, subdomains are necessary.

I've seen many subdomains rank just as well as subfolders so I wouldn't worry about it if you need to go that route.

[Moni_Jonny]

I always advise to go with subfolders if you can for SEO purposes if at all possible but I understand that sometimes for technical reasons, subdomains are necessary.