Comparission between multi website single store for each and multi store for one single website

Question

I have requirement to create multi-store magento 1.8 app with single website. where product is based on categories and each store owner can sell many products of all of the categories on demand,

each store owner need to request for product for sell. I have created it two approach one is

1. single website multiple store
2. multiple website and single store for each website

first one is not allowing me to show only those product which are related to one store. I mean all the product are displayed on all the store or no product to display message.

second one is working fine and I am able get single product in single store or multiple store by checking the option here Catalog->manage product->websites

I am confusing that which is the good way to implement above requirement?. Is there any other way to implement this requirement?

If you not understand my requirement let's assume like this

one product or Catalog to many store on demand of store-owner

one store to many product or Catalog on demand of store-owner

one store to one product or Catalog by default

Thank you in advance

Answer 1

To me the option multiple website and single store for each website sounds like the best fit, not only will this allow you to split the product display but there will allow you to split users which might also be useful.

Answer 2

Except as usual people give theory, not practice. When you start adding 10s stores/websites Magento slows to a crawl due to the way it works internally. Then you need to start adding increasing amounts of hosting which generally make most stores unprofitable. It is true, the best way is multiple websites, but it is also the most expensive way - there are always tradeoffs. We know you are looking for both - low cost and 10s websites with 1-2s dynamic page loads, very very few have ever done it (we know one of them).