Designed for: well-funded, established businesses/projects

Difficulty of Management: moderate to advanced

Price: high

Performance: high

Customization: high

Using a dedicated server for web hosting involves renting your own physical server inside of a web hosting provider’s datacenter. The server is “dedicated” to whatever hosting needs you decide to do with it, meaning that you have a lot of flexibility with the server configuration. The amount of flexibility varies depending upon how much involvement you want to have with the management of the dedicated server.

Dedicated web servers cost more than the other popular alternatives for web hosting, including shared web hosting and VPS web hosting, typically ranging from just over $50 per month on the budget side to well over $100 per month for dedicated servers with higher performance. The additional cost for a dedicated server over shared and VPS hosting pays for higher performance and significantly more configuration and control options that exist for dedicated servers. On a dedicated server, you can install and configure resources and applications for security, performance, and to add features that you simply cannot with most other types of web hosting.

The added cost and flexibility associated with dedicated web server accounts make it apparent that dedicated web servers are used less by small, budget-restricted individuals and organizations and more by well-funded, established businesses that require reliable performance for their business needs. In many scenarios, the management of a dedicated server requires someone with technical expertise to handle. Hiring an IT person to take care of critical hosting management activities that are usually managed by the hosting staff for shared and VPS types of hosting is expensive.

Many web hosts allow dedicated server account owners to control everything about how their server is set up, including even the operating system (normally some version of Linux, but Windows can be installed on a bare bones dedicated server) as well as security and performance features.

Managed Versus Unmanaged Dedicated Servers

Managing a dedicated server can be a challenge for companies who need the power, resources, and flexibility that the dedicated server environment offers, but who don’t want to spend time and money setting up and configuring the server, managing security updates, network issues, and the other hosting maintenance issues that are involved with having your very own server in a data center. For that reason, most hosts that provide dedicated server plans also offer the option of having them manage those intricate details. This option is called managed dedicated server hosting, referring to the fact that the hosting provider handles server level issues, including installing and setting up the web server program and other supporting features. With a managed dedicated server, you’ll pay extra (usually $20 to $50 per month – built into the hosting plan pricing and depending upon the provider and the server management needs) for the support that goes along with the  server.

I’ve been able to make good use of these managed dedicated servers for the ecommerce stores I operate. In general, they each need the advanced storage and memory that comes with a dedicated server, and they get enough traffic that it downtime or slow performance could cost me thousands of dollars per month. On the other hand, I don’t have a budget for hiring an IT person specifically to manage the hosting details. It’s much more efficient for me to pay extra for my managed dedicated servers than to hire someone to do those same tasks on behalf of my companies.

For those businesses who have an IT team or for those who have extensive experience with networking and managing web hosts, it can make more sense to go with an unmanaged dedicated server plan. In this scenario, you’re simply renting access to a server and network in your host’s data center, and you do everything from installing and configuring your preferred operating system on the server to tweaking network and security settings to installing and configuring applications that offer features you want to publish on the web, including things like websites, content delivery networks, and mobile apps.

Unmanaged dedicated servers cost less, but that type of setup is much less commonly used than managed dedicated servers, since it’s much more efficient for most companies to allow the web host to manage the hosting details for them.

Dedicated Server Web Hosting Providers

Most of the popular web hosting companies provide dedicated server web hosting options in addition to shared and VPS hosting, including the following.

GoDaddy

• Intel Xeon-D
• 4C/8T – 3.0 GHz Turbo
• 32 GB DDR4 RAM
• 2 x 4 TB HDD Storage (RAID-1)

LiquidWeb

• Intel Xeon 1271 v3
• 4 cores @ 3.6 GHz
• 16 GB RAM
• 2 x 250 GB SSD Primary Storage (RAID 1)
• 1 x 1 TB SATA Backup Storage
• 5 TB Bandwidth
• Includes cPanel Premier 100 (100 accounts)
• 250 GB Acronis Cyber Backups

1&1 Ionos

• Intel Atom C2750
• 8 Cores x 2.5 GHz
• 8 GB RAM
• 240 GB Intel SSD Storage

Bluehost

• CPU 4 Cores x 2.3 GHz, 4 Threads, 3 MB Cache
• 4 GB RAM
• 2 x 500 GB RAID Level 1 Storage
• 5 TB Network Bandwidth
• 3 Dedicated IP Addresses

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With VPS web hosting, your account still exists on the same physical hardware as other clients of your hosting provider. However, differing from shared web hosting setups, your hosting account has its own operating system, which gives you much more flexibility with using the hosting account. Also, the performance of a VPS server tends to be higher than with a shared web hosting account.

VPS hosting solves the problems associated with shared web hosting by setting up multiple operating system and hosting environments using virtual machine (or computer system emulation) software so that one physical server can be used to look like multiple, separate computers. However, the physical elements (including the memory, CPU, network interfaces, and other elements of the physical computer) of all of the virtual private servers existing on one machine are still shared, making it so that there is still a possibility of being affected by other hosting clients that share the physical hardware on which your VPS account exists. The risk of poor performance of VPS web hosting accounts is still much lower than with shared web hosting accounts.

VPS Web Hosting Pricing

The cost of VPS web hosting ranges from as little as $10 per month to around $100 per month. Pricing for VPS web hosting packages is normally based mostly upon how much memory (RAM) comes with the VPS host and how much disk space comes with the VPS account. Other factors that affect VPS host pricing include bandwidth (essentially how much network traffic is allowed for your VPS account) and other special hosting features that VPS hosting providers often use to differentiate their products from competitors.

Where to Get VPS Hosting

VPS web hosting is available from most major web hosts, including almost all of the most popular ones. The largest and most popular web hosts almost always offer several hosting different options to their customers, including:

• shared web hosting
• VPS hosting
• dedicated server hosting
• other special hosting options, such as Windows hosting (most web servers run on Linux operating systems) or pre-installed WordPress hosting

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A shared hosting plan is one of the most economical ways for individuals, small businesses, and others on a budget to create and publish a website on the internet. Shared hosting plans can be purchased for around $5 per month, sometimes less.

Because the resources on each physical server (primarily memory, disk space, and network bandwidth) that is used to create a shared web hosting environment are limited, shared web hosting plans usually place limits on the use of those resources for each client. For instance. Google’s “Economy” web hosting plan (which costs $8.99 per month) allows users to store up to 25 GB of data on their account.

One of the difficulties of using a shared web hosting service is that the performance can be unpredictable. Slow page loads, downtime, and other performance issues can arise because system resources are being used by “neighbors” on a shared server, and it can be difficult if not impossible to predict whether or when those kinds of interruptions will happen.

It is very common for shared web hosts to have more than 100 different clients using a particular web server. Each client in the web hosting environment may have multiple websites and other web resources (apps, images, etc.) using the memory, processor, and network bandwidth allocated to the physical web host.

Server Administration for Shared Web Hosting

Shared web hosting plans normally come with a control panel that can be used to perform functions related to a domain and website, including:

• Managing files on your web hosting account, including uploading new files
• Set up email accounts and configure them
• Create new databases and manage or delete existing ones
• Perform security functions, such as blocking IP addresses from accessing your website
• Perform a limited set of other functions that affect your account on the shared web server

The most commonly used control panel tools used on shared web servers are:

• cPanel: the most popular hosting automation software platform
• Plesk: a hosting control panel that can be used for both Linux and Windows based hosting.

Shared hosting is budget hosting. It is good for small projects that don’t require much customization, and for website owners who don’t want to have to deal with the complexities that can be involved with managing the physical hardware and network configurations that are necessary to build a reliable web host.

Shared web hosting can be used to publish static websites as well as to create dynamic websites using content management systems (like WordPress) that use databases.

Shared Web Hosting Providers

According to data provided by HostingTribunal.com, there are over 330,000 web hosting providers worldwide. The majority of these web hosting companies have shared web hosting accounts available. To put it simply, there are  thousands of potential choices available for you to use for hosting a website on a shared account.

With so many web hosting provider choices available, it’s a good idea to do a quick check of reviews and ask questions about any specific questions you might have about your particular hosting needs. If you don’t have anything out of the ordinary that you need for your website, it’s likely safe to go with one of the most popular web hosts, considering that they pass the client review test.

Advantages of Shared Web Hosting

• Most affordable type of web hosting (besides free hosting from sites like BlogSpot.com or WordPress.com)
• Easy to get set up
• Easy to manage
• Maintenance of hosting account is minimal
• Ability to host multiple domains (most shared web hosts allow this)
• Flexible and scalable – usually can upgrade to higher performance hosting

Disadvantages of Shared Web Hosting

• Website performance is sometimes slow and unpredictable
• Limited server resources
• Limited security
• Limited control over configuration
• Limited customer support for specific issues

Alternatives to Shared Web Hosting

The most common alternatives to shared web hosting include:

• Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting
• Dedicated Servers
• Software as a Service-based hosting platforms like Wix.com and Squarespace.com, which combine hosting with built-in website builder tools.

The video below provides an excellent explanation of shared web hosting, along with graphics that help you understand how shared hosting works as well as the advantages and disadvantages of using shared hosting.

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