24-06-2021

Dedicated web hosting: What is it, pros and cons, how to choose

A professional website is practically the basis of any company’s online presence. However, you have to optimize it properly and invest in a suitable server to work quickly and efficiently.

If you have a simple website or business card, shared hosting is enough. But this solution may not be sufficient concerning large portals or online stores with thousands of products. Thus, the question arises: Should the website owner invest in a dedicated server? In the article below, we will try to answer this question by presenting the pros and cons of dedicated web hosting services.

Dedicated web hosting is, in fact, simply a physical machine that, as part of the service, is made available to only one customer as a server. Site owners don't have to share server resources with other clients. This solution allows you to make many combinations in terms of server volume and functionality. Of course, dedicated web hosting has its advantages and disadvantages. We will look at them.

Pros of dedicated web hosting

Most often, dedicated web hosting services are chosen by those who know that their company website is extensive and subject to frequent updates. Therefore, they need to be able to create multiple backups. In fact, dedicated web hosting services can be used by both a company, an entrepreneur, and even an individual customer. Dedicated web hosting has many advantages to consider:

1. NO NEIGHBORHOOD OF OTHER USERS ON THE SAME PHYSICAL SERVER

The main advantage of dedicated web hosting is that the customer who buys such a service has it at their sole disposal. There are no users that you have to share this service with. Therefore, they do not influence the operation of the resources located on it.

2. THE HIGHEST PERFORMANCE

Dedicated web hosting is much more efficient and stable than other solutions. In most companies, such servers guarantee availability for a minimum of 99% of the time of use. Moreover, website owners can choose its parameters themselves to the needs of their website, thanks to which they can be sure that the website will work without any complications. And in the event of traffic spikes, the server is scalable, and you can adjust its memory or capacity to your needs.

3. FULL CONTROL OF HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE

If you choose dedicated web hosting, you will take full advantage of the available RAM, CPU clock speed, or disk space. At the same time, your physical server will allow you to install and configure any system, environment, applications, and services.

4. HIGH SAFETY

Thanks to the separation from other users, dedicated web hosting is a much safer solution than shared servers. However, you should be aware that dedicated web hosting security depends primarily only on the person managing it.

Cons of dedicated web hosting

1. HIGH PRICE

These servers are subject to individual pricing, but you have to consider that having dedicated web hosting is associated with the need to incur high costs. The severe downside of dedicated web hosting is that you can't only pay for resources consumed. If you do not use it, e.g., after working hours, you still have to pay for its operation.

2. COMPLICATED CHANGE OF PARAMETERS

When ordering a specific service, the selected server has particular parameters. Their change of these parameters is not easy, and it cannot happen without negotiations with the service provider. That means that your business can waste valuable time and money that you could use more productively.

3. NO SUPPORT

Dedicated web hosting is nothing more than owning one physical computer. The biggest advantage of this solution is also its most significant disadvantage. You rent just a place on a physical machine. In the event of a failure, your entire business stops because it is impossible to transfer data to another server. The same is true when it comes to server repairs and upgrades. Even such a small change as adding a RAM chip can cause downtime and stoppage of the server and the virtual environment.

4. DIFFICULTIES IN MANAGEMENT

Managing a dedicated web hosting will require professional knowledge. If you do not have it, the purchase of a dedicated web hosting will require you to incur an additional cost of the server administration service. Another option may be colocation, i.e., putting the server in the care of a selected hosting company.

Dedicated web hosting: how to choose one

As you probably already know, you shouldn't choose dedicated web hosting at random. It is this decision that will determine the speed and stability of your services. Therefore, it is worth paying attention to a few fundamental issues when choosing a dedicated web hosting provider.

  • Processor: They can have many cores responsible for simultaneously handling many threads or processes in a given unit of time. The more cores, the better because the performance of our server depends on them. The speed of the processor is no less critical. As before, a higher clock speed can allow us to work faster on a given query.
  • RAM: Usually, vendors offer customers from 4 to even 256 GB of RAM. For small businesses, 8 GB is the minimum. But, you should choose a more significant number so that the applications and scripts on the server can run flawlessly. You can also allocate some of these memory resources to the hard disk cache for frequently used data.
  • Disk: It is a good idea to choose a configuration with two hard disks so that you can recover your data even if one of them fails. The type of disk is also essential. SSD disks are ideal for databases as they are much faster. You can use SATA disks for storage projects. An important issue is also the disk controller–hardware will be much faster than software.

Above all, the first decision you should make is to choose the company whose services you will use. Choose a trusted partner who provides services at the highest level, advises you on choosing the best solution, and provides 24/7 support and technical assistance in case of problems. If you are sure whether a given service provider will be the best, use the services of companies that offer trial periods. Then you will be able to check whether the server really meets your needs and whether the website or your service works properly on it.

When is it worth choosing a dedicated web hosting?

A dedicated server has many advantages that cheaper hosting methods do not offer. However, these advantages will usually be necessary only regarding websites with very high traffic and those where operational stability is a critical issue. Therefore, it is a solution intended mainly for large companies that can afford high costs of such a hosting solution.


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