Are you looking for the best cheap dedicated server hosting? You are in the right place.
This is Dedicated Server Hosting when the client has its own dedicated server. He can usually administer it as he wishes, which is the main advantage of this type of hosting. The host of the dedicated server, however, remains the owner of the server. The user only rent the server.
Renting a cheap dedicated server can be a very rewarding investment for your business. However, dedicated hosting is often an unfamiliar concept for beginners. As a result, you will probably have a lot of questions about what dedicated server hosting actually entails.
In this article, I will explain the basic concepts of dedicated server hosting. Then, I will show you how to find the best cheap dedicated server that best suits your needs. Finally, I will answer the most frequently asked questions about hosting dedicated servers
Before I begin, I suggest you take a look at this comparison of the best dedicated servers. You can filter the results according to the countries of your choice.
I strongly recommend that you read the analyses as well as the opinions and comments of the clients of the host you are interested in. It is important to focus on the quality of customer service and SLA uptime.
Comparison of the best Dedicated hosting in 2024
| Hosting | Details | Scores | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|
Value for money  |
| 9.8 | $50 Free Credits |
Best Support  |
| 9.7 | Visit LiquidWeb |
For Small Budgets  |
| 9.2 | Visit Linode |
For heavy-websites  |
| 9.1 | Visit PhoenixNAP |
Best Storage Space  |
| 8.3 | Visit Hostwinds |
All you need to know about dedicated server hosting
Choosing a dedicated server is usually only useful if you receive more than 500,000 visitors a month and you have the technical staff to maintain and optimize your server.
There is no true and false when it comes to hosting. Instead, it just depends on what is the best choice for your website. We all have different needs. So be sure to take stock of the type of web hosting you will need before choosing a web host.
The 5 main advantages of a dedicated server
Shared hosting is the most common option for website hosting. It consists of the share of one single server’s resources by many websites. Yet, if you’re looking for having more power and more control, then you will need to subscribe to dedicated hosting. You won’t have to pay the initial costs that a business has to pay by having your resources: processor, RAM, disk space…
Let’s talk about the advantages of dedicated hosting.
You won’t be sharing the server’s resources with anyone, which means that your website will work at its best. No processing issue, nor planting or slow loading… All the resources allocated to your server will be dedicated to your website.
2. Improved performance and security
You will have access to more resources as we just said, which means that the performance of your website you dramatically increase, which will also increase the traffic. Also, with dedicated hosting, you will ensure your website more stability.
You won’t be sharing the server with anyone, which will avoid you to be relocated to your customers’ spam category because of other malicious websites that would be sharing with you the server. Also, the security is more important with dedicated hosting than with shared servers.
3. Flexibility
With shared hosting, you share the server’s limited resources with other customers, which means that your website won’t have access to a fixed amount of resources. This means that there would be days where the loading will be fast, while it will be very slow during other days.
With dedicated hosting, you are sure to always have enough resources for your website: you will have the possibility to customize the CPU, RAM and disk space.
4. Unique IP address
We were talking about it on the second point. By having your IP address, you are sure to not be confused with other spam sites that share with you the server (and therefore the IP address too).
For instance, if you run an e-commerce website, SSL will be required for credit card processing. You will need to have your IP address to create a confidence climate with your customers/visitors.
5. No overhead for the purchase or maintenance of the equipment
You will save the cost of maintenance and resources management by choosing dedicated server hosting. Indeed, the building and maintaining costs are saved, which will reduce the overhead costs and will improve the ROI.
How to choose the best cheap dedicated server?
With time, your website will need to have access to more resources to operate safely. Larger and powerful servers will be needed by your website to work, just like a baby growing.
With dedicated servers, you will be able to upgrade your subscription to adapt it to the size of your website. You can find a very cheap and perfectly adapted host for your website and your budget. The best ones are the most expensive. But this article will tell you about the way to find the cheapest ones with high quality.
1. Find the most convenient server configuration that meet your needs
Don’t look after the newest offers, just like with cars. You aren’t looking for Rolls Royce when shopping for a car, so with hosting servers, it’s the same. The first step to take is to have a look at your current hosting and make an estimation of the growth of your website during the next two years.
The following factors are examples of what you need to take into account:
- Number and type of processor
- RAM life memory
- Bandwidth
- Disk space
- Storage type (HDD or SSD)
- Operating system
CPUs and cores
As you know, the CPU refers to the processing unit of your computer. It contains a certain number of cores. These will allow the processor to make more requests. For instance, a quad-core processor contains only 4 cores, which will process fewer requests than a processor with 6 cores.
RAM
Having more information processed at the same time is allowed by your RAM. The loading of the data depends on it.
Bandwidth
For dedicated servers, it’s counted based on terabytes (TB). The higher the number of terabytes of bandwidth allocated, the smaller the loading time is.
Storage
This determines the space that is available for your files on your server. The more files you upload on your website, the more professional it looks at the more storage you will need. Keep in mind that power and flexibility are needed to grow your website.
Disc type
Data is stored on several hard drives, which is allowed by the RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks). If a hard disk fails, your data will still be stored and protected on other hard disks. The use of RAID is indicated by dedicated hosting companies.
SSD drives are interesting since they are much faster than other traditional hard drives. The cost is 6x higher and the storage capacity is lower.
2. Save money by taking more responsibility on your server
As you have probably already experienced with VPS hosting, many hosts are proud to offer customers the opportunity to rent a managed server or an unmanaged server. Managed services may have different meanings for different hosts, but may include a combination or all of the following:
- System monitoring
- Software and system updates
- Security patches
- Automated backups
- Load balancing
- Automatic scaling configuration
- Disaster recovery
- Regulatory compliance
- Performance optimizations
- Antivirus and malware scans
- SysAdmin dedicated time
Managed servers are very useful, especially with VPS hosting. They include the security patches, the antivirus and malware scans, the system monitoring or the software/system updates for instance.
You’ll be able to save that money by dedicating a little time to learning the server management. Semi-managed plans are preferred by professional developers. This contains the basic monitoring, maintenance tasks and security.
Don’t hesitate to have a look at the difference between the managed dedicated servers and the unmanaged ones.
3. Reliable hosts and powerful SLAs help you avoid costly downtime
Unexpected shutdowns cost companies over 25 billion dollars every single year… Datacenter failure cost more than 5,000 euros/minute. A lot! For instance, taking the example of Amazon Web Service’s 3 hours’ shutdown in 2017, it caused the loss of $150 million to the company.
Look for 99% reliability hosts to have less than 45 minutes of downtime every single month. This is acceptable and it won’t cause a lot of loss.
4. Protect your brand by focusing on security
You need a greatly protected server if you want to save your business from external threats. Hacking causes 400 billion euros/year loss to eCommerce websites. A huge part of these operations isn’t even noticed.
In most cases, they get secrete data and hold it until the owner pays the ransom. Data breach ruins the confidence climate that you may have established before.
DDoS protection, SSL certificates, and firewalls are extremely important if you want to have a solid server monitoring that has a reliable backup system to identify any kind of attack and be able to restore the data very quickly.
5. Methodical scalability ensures predictable and cheap prices
With cloud hosting, great traffic will cost a lot. In this perspective, dedicated servers can be more interesting. You may need more resources for your website, and this can be easily prepared with dedicated servers.
6. 24/7 support in most cases is free and can be crucial
You also have to check the support team’s service. If it’s not a 24/7 support service by phone, email, and chat, then the chances that the host isn’t reputable are high.
Being able to contact the support at any time can be great, even if the package you subscribed to is managed.
The average response time, the problem-solving time, the video tutorials or the community forums are resources you need to give close attention to.
Control your server customizations to make room for upgrades
By paying only what you really need, you can invest money in features that improve your performance and security, such as:
- Supercharged DNS
- DDoS protection and mitigation
- Load balancing
- Caching tools
- Content distribution network
- Dedicated IP addresses
- Firewalls and VPN access
- High Availability and Disaster Recovery
Try to save money by choosing only what you need for your website to invest in other interesting features such as the load balancing, the Firewalls/VPN access or the DDoS protection for instance.
Every year, the dedicated server market grows by 237 million euros/year. Customers have access to great reliability, speed, isolation of the hardware and flexibility. Make priorities of the features you need to use.
Difference between a VPS and a Dedicated server
People think that VPS means that the server they will have access to is completely isolated. It’s false. Indeed, VPS means that you share a server with other VPS customers but the resources that are allocated to your website are fixed, opposite to shared hosting. Therefore, if a neighbor has bad behavior, they will still face a problem.
In opposite, dedicated servers are made available for one single client. The disk space, the bandwidth, and RAM, for example, are exclusively dedicated to your website.
The difference between dedicated resources and unlimited resources
People think that shared hosting offers unlimited resources because it is stated on the package. People need to understand that it’s not true, or that it is partially true.
Indeed, shared hosting is only for small businesses and personal blogs. You need to understand that the server that welcomes shared hosting customers has a fixed amount of resources. Since small businesses and personal blogs use a small number of resources, they feel like they have access to unlimited resources. Here is the trick. Because when they will use a bigger amount of resources, they will be kindly asked to upgrade their subscriptions. Otherwise, they will have planting and huge loading time problems.
On the other hand, dedicated servers have a fixed amount of resources: RAM, disk space, OS… Also, you will have a choice between managed and unmanaged servers.
What is the difference between managed and unmanaged dedicated hosting
You will have more flexibility with dedicated cloud servers thanks to the features that are provided by the platform with these packages. If we talk in terms of performance, security, and control, we can say those cloud servers are similar to dedicated hosting servers.
The difference is that instead of being based on physical hardware, your server is managed by your cloud hosting provider in a virtualized environment.
The great part is that the payment is only made for the disk space you used. No payment will be made for unused resources.
With Cloud Servers, no purchase/management of fully dedicated server costs will be taxed. It’s the ideal hosting plan for many companies that have varying demands/workloads. They will pay only for the resources they used.
What is the difference between Cloud hosting and Dedicated hosting?
You will have more flexibility with dedicated cloud servers thanks to the features that are provided by the platform with these packages. If we talk in terms of performance, security and control, we can say that cloud servers are similar to dedicated hosting servers.
The difference is that instead of being based on a physical hardware, your server is managed by your cloud hosting provider in a virtualized environment.
The great part is that the payment is only made for the disk space you used. No payment will be made for unused resources. With cloud servers, no purchase / management of fully dedicated server costs will be taxed. It’s the ideal hosting plan for many companies that have varying demands / workloads. They will pay only for the resources they used.
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
It’s the type of web hosting that gives your control over the whole physical server. They are typical servers in extremely large data centers.
It’s highly recommended to begin with shared hosting plans since the dedicated servers are costly. The second step would be the VPS hosting before the dedicated server hosting.
It’s designed for users who are more technical: developers for example. The management and the maintenance of a server costs a lot of time and needs expertise.
High-traffic websites are the type of sites that subscribe to this kind of hosting, as well as high-complexity applications and other businesses that need a high level of security. It’s also very costly. Therefore, customers who subscribe to this kind of hosting are leaders of important businesses.
Dedicated hosting gives you full control of your server. You are the only owner of the server. In opposite, shared hosting is the rent of a portion of a server.
If we take the example of a building. When you rent one apartment, it’s like the shared hosting. But if you rent the whole building, you are like the owner of the dedicated server. You have access to the full resources of your server, not sharing it with anyone.
No. It’s a kind of lease agreement.
Choosing dedicated servers when you don’t have expertise in server security and management can be a huge risk. It can be interesting in this case to choose a package with the administration included.
Yes. The closer the data center is to your customers, the better it is. The best location is in the same country, but choose a data center that is, at least, on the same continent.
Many Linux distributions are offered to you with dedicated servers You may run Windows Server if it is needed for some applications, but it’s usually costlier.
It’s not necessary. Yet, you need some basic knowledge concerning the management of dedicated servers to secure the scripts for example.
Sometimes, you will have to pay fees to get the help of your host if your server is misconfigured. Buying a fully managed server can be the right choice if you don’t have any knowledge in the field.
Yes. Monitoring the tools by yourself can be great in order to know the status of your server. Yet, with managed and semi-managed plans, the host will do it in your place.
Yes of course. Hosting management includes remote support, monitoring, and management! There are also other services that you will need to pay extra fees for (backup plans for instance).
Keep in mind that benefiting of management for your server will always increase the bill. Cheap servers often don’t provide the expected support. You will need to check it by yourself.
Starters better choose shared hosting. Dedicated hosting is hard to manage unless you have technical knowledge. However, if you still want to subscribe to dedicated managed servers, you can benefit from management from the host.
Also, the cost can be a disadvantage. It’s the most expensive option on the market. Therefore, beginners are low budget people better choose another type of hosting.
