What Is Dedicated Hosting, and Who Is It Really For?

Web hosting is like renting space on someone else’s computer to host your website. Web hosting services handle the business of making your website public and managing the computer (i.e., the web server) and generally let you get on with things. Dedicated hosting is when you rent a whole server and don’t share it with anyone.

Dedicated hosting offers several advantages: better reliability than shared hosting, better performance, and full control over your server. A small business that gets lots of traffic on its website, or is developing a custom web app, could benefit a lot from having a server of its own.

We’ll cover who should consider dedicated hosting, pros and cons, and how to choose the best dedicated hosting provider for you.

What is dedicated hosting?

For a little more context, I’ll reiterate: Dedicated hosting is renting an entire physical server just for your website. You can (usually) control everything about it, including the operating system, all the other software on the server, and so on. You can also sometimes let your hosting provider handle most of that.

Dedicated hosting differs from shared hosting in that you’re not sharing server resources with any other website. So if another website hosted by the same company gets hacked or hit with tons of traffic, it shouldn’t affect your website, which is on its own server.

And dedicated hosting is different from VPS and cloud hosting in pretty much the same way. VPS and cloud hosting, like shared hosting, also host a lot of websites on the same hardware, but with more separation of concerns between everyone’s websites, to avoid the drawbacks of shared hosting.

Who needs dedicated hosting?

1. Anyone who wants fast, reliable web hosting will find a dedicated server useful.
2. Companies running CPU- or RAM-intensive apps or web apps may find that a VPS just doesn’t cut it sometimes.
3. Companies that want to give their website room to expand to thousands and thousands of users usually end up on dedicated servers eventually. Or a network of them.
4. Anyone who wants to build their own cloud infrastructure on them, and many companies do.
5. Community gamers because dedicated hosting is very useful for running CPU-heavy game servers.

How does dedicated hosting work?

Renting a dedicated server starts off simple enough:

1. You pay for the server you want.
2. Your hosting company sets it up for you, usually with a basic operating system (OS) and not much else.
3. Depending on the host you choose, you can either take over and configure everything on the server yourself or have the host’s support team install everything you need to get your site or app up and running.

From there, aside from regular maintenance and (in some cases) updates, you are left to your own devices. Install whatever you like, build whatever you want. You will either access your server through a control panel or via the command line with SSH (Secure Shell), and it’s all up to you. You’re in control, but you’re not alone. Your hosting provider is there to back you up — and occasionally back up everything on your server.

Pros and cons of dedicated web hosting

There are, of course, pros and cons to every type of web hosting, including dedicated servers. Here’s a quick rundown:

How to choose a dedicated hosting provider

• Uptime: Reliability is the main benefit of dedicated hosting, as downtime results in lost customers and sales. Look for hosts that offer redundant systems, backups (these may cost extra), disaster-resistant data centers, DDoS protection, and similar precautions.
• Performance/speed: The faster your site or web app is, the more likely that people will stick around. Look at the hardware on offer, and make sure it meets your needs.
• Security: Having your website go down to hackers is annoying, but it could be a straight-up legal problem if customer information gets stolen. Look for hosts that offer malware and traffic scanning, firewalls, web application firewalls, SSL certificates, and other tools to protect your site.
• Customer support: When you don’t have physical access to your server, you have to rely on your host to resolve issues. Look for hosts with a solid reputation for customer service, especially if you choose a managed server.
• Deals: For smaller businesses, hosting costs matter — and dedicated servers are expensive. But some providers offer limited-time deals on servers that can cut prices in half, so it’s worth shopping around.

Best dedicated hosting providers

Our top picks for affordable dedicated hosting all offer good customer service, fast servers, strong network security, monitoring services, and more. They differ mostly in price and the amount of server management they handle for you.

Pick one based on your needs, and you’ll be all right.

InterServer

InterServer offers a wide variety of dedicated server options; each plan is semi-managed, so most basic technical tasks are handled for you. It also has IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) or iLO (Integrated Lights-Out) access, which means you can remotely reboot your server or even install a different OS from an ISO file. As a bonus, there’s a marketplace page where you can find great deals on some pretty impressive servers.

Learn more in our InterServer review.

IONOS

IONOS is a bit more DIY in its approach to dedicated hosting, but like InterServer, it offers a considerable variety of server configurations. It also has a deals page, and you can sometimes find deals that are a little cheaper than InterServer's, but you may find you get fewer server resources for the money. In short, IONOS is the budget option on this list.

Learn more in our IONOS review.

Bluehost

Bluehost has a long history in the hosting world and offers its own special take on the dedicated hosting formula. By default, all dedicated servers are fully managed, so you don’t need to be a server management expert to take advantage of dedicated hosting. This also makes it a little expensive, but it may still be worth it for businesses with small IT teams.

Learn more in our Bluehost review.

Bottom line

Having a whole physical server to yourself is the big draw of dedicated hosting. For small businesses, dedicated servers offer near-unparalleled reliability, plenty of room to expand your digital operations, and the option to choose any technology stack you like.

Of course, there are tradeoffs to consider. Dedicated servers are expensive, and — unless you opt for a fully managed plan — require at least some server management expertise. You also want to make sure you pick a host with a great support team, solid security practices, and redundancies to protect against disasters of all kinds.

But when you find a web hosting provider that meets all the criteria, there are few hosting experiences that are as reliable and performant as a dedicated server.

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