Dedicated servers are servers based remotely and offered for rent. There are many businesses that offer these services. They are called dedicated server hosting providers. Many of the dedicated server hosting services available on the market today started out as web-hosting providers, which gives them a longstanding reputation and experience in managing services for others.

Why you need dedicated server hosting

As the server is probably the hub of your business, you might be reluctant to outsource the hardware. However, servers are expensive to buy and maintain. The metered charging structure or subscription model used by dedicated hosting providers saves you a lot of capital expense. Your investment costs drop if you are prepared to trust a dedicated server hosting provider.

Check out our roundup of the Best Web Hosting Providers for Small Businesses

When you need dedicated server hosting

Any company can benefit from dedicated server hosting at any point in its existence because contracting out the provision of hardware saves time and money. The hosting services that provide these dedicated servers have spare capacity. In fact, they mirror servers, so if the one you rent fails, they can instantly switch over to the reserve. This type of equipment redundancy is very expensive, but using a dedicated server hosting service cost less than having your own server.

The benefits of outsourced dedicated servers over an inhouse option for startups and servers are obvious. These dedicated server plans remove the upfront costs of managing an IT system. If you have a virtual office with all of your staff based at home, or if you have offices all over the world., then a dedicated server is the ideal choice because it is accessible from anywhere and you won’t need to employ IT technicians on each site to look after a server.

How to choose dedicated server hosting

It goes without saying that you can’t just pick any dedicated server provider out of the yellow pages or just plump for the first hosting service that appears in the results from a search engine. Find a reliable hosting provider that won’t go out of business or cut corners with service quality. 

Think about whether it is necessary to have a team of technicians to manage the server employed directly by the company. If the dedicated server is just part of your infrastructure then the company will need a support team to manage all of its other resources. In that case, it would be advisable to look for an unmanaged dedicated server hosting plan. If, on the other hand, the company is going to move all infrastructure out to the cloud or if you are a small business or startup and don’t have an existing IT team, then pick a managed dedicated server hosting plan because that includes the services of a technical support team.

Dedicated server hosting plans are priced by a combination of the number of CPUs, RAM, disk space, and data transfer bandwidth. So, decide on the capacity that you will need for the new dedicated server and its hard drive before signing up for a hosting service. If your business is growing fast, prioritize dedicated server hosting plans that allow enough flexibility to quickly expand the server capacity.

With a list of capacity and flexibility requirements, you will be ready to narrow down the options until you discover the perfect hosting provider and dedicated server hosting plan.

Best dedicated server hosting services

To start the process of reducing the number of candidate hosting companies to a manageable size, we have put together a shortlist:

1. Bluehost
2. HostGator
3. GoDaddy
4. Liquid Web
5. SiteGround
6. A2 Hosting
7. Hostwinds
8. InMotion Hosting

Bluehost

Bluehost offers shared hosting plans, VPS hosting packages, and dedicated server hosting services. The dedicated server hosting packages are managed and are offered in three plans: Standard, Enhanced, and Premium. Each plan can also be taken as an unmanaged dedicated server.

Dedicated server hardware

All of the plans have four CPU cores, however, successively higher plans have higher clock speeds with the range being from 2.3 GHz to 3.3 GHz. 

Additional benefits

All plans include mirrored storage and 3, 4, or 5 free dedicated IP Addresses, depending on the plan. Bluehost includes a free domain name and a free SSL certificate with each plan. The support team is available by phone or live chat app. This is separate from the customer support team that deals with general account issues. 

The technicians will install all of your software for you and have access to a library of free software, including the OpenStack cloud platform.

The interface for the customer is the cPanel control panel and root access is also possible. The interface also includes a database manager. The Google Postini spam filter is applied to web implementations and the hosting package includes SiteLock vulnerability protection.

Pros

• Free SSL certificate
• Free domain name
• cPanel control panel
• Root access
• Free spam filter
• Database manager included
• Unmanaged options possible
• 30-day money-back guarantee

Cons

• No DDoS protection

HostGator

HostGator is one of the longest-running web services providers in the world. The company registers new domain names and offers web hosting. The web hosting plans of HostGator are based on shared servers, VPS hosting, and dedicated servers. However, the VPS and dedicated server hosting plans do not need to be limited to web hosting.

Dedicated servers are available with the option of semi-managed or fully managed services.

HostGator promises a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee and if it fails to meet that target, you get a month’s free service. The company also offers a 45-day money-back guarantee.

Dedicated server hardware

HostGator has three plans in its dedicated server category, all of which offer Intel Xeon-D servers. These can be tailored with choices of HDD or SSD storage with RAID-1 disk configuration. Benefits of the HostGator dedicated hosting packages include free DDoS protection, an IP-based firewall, 3 IP addresses, unlimited databases, and unmetered bandwidth.

Additional benefits

The servers are available with Linux or Windows Server as the operating system. Customers get a control panel to manage the server, which is cPanel on Linux and Plesk on Windows.

Pros

• Free DDoS protection
• Free firewall
• 3 free IP addresses per account
• Unmetered bandwidth
• 99.9% uptime guarantee
• 30-day money-back guarantee

Cons

• No unmanaged option

GoDaddy

GoDaddy has been the world’s largest ICANN-accredited web name registrar since 2005 and the world’s largest web host since 2018. This is a big organization and it has a lot of experience in managing servers. The company has been migrating all of its hardware over to AWS servers since March 2018. GoDaddy offers dedicated server plans, but these will really be servers in AWS data centers.

Dedicated server hardware

The server types offered in the dedicated server packages of GoDaddy are Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC servers. They all have the option of SSD or HDD disk drives, all of which have RAID-1 architecture. 

Additional benefits

The standard dedicated server plans are all unmanaged. They all include DDoS protection, a choice of Windows Server or CentOS Linux for the operating system, and a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee. Control panel options are cPanel or Plesk.

There are four plans available and any of those server types can have CentOS Linux or Windows Server as the operating system. Those who want a managed server package can add on server management as a paid extra.

Pros

• cPanel or Plesk control panel
• Option of RAID-1 disk configuration
• Choice of SSD or HDD hard drives
• 99.9% uptime guarantee

Cons

• No money-back guarantee

Liquid Web

Liquid Web has some interesting dedicated server hosting options. It has the most varied list of dedicated server hosting packages of all of the providers on this list.  It provides dedicated server hosting, a cloud dedicated server option, a server cluster, and a number of multi-server plans.

The straightforward dedicated server category of services includes the option of server locations: Michigan, Arizona, and Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The company also offers core dedicated servers and unmanaged dedicated server hosting services.

Dedicated server hardware

 In each data center location, there is a choice of three server models – all are Intel Xeon servers. In all cases, the server’s hard drive is an SSD storage device. In the Amsterdam data center, they are RAID-1 disks. All of the plans are managed and include high-end hardware and a top-quality support team to run the server for you. Initially without an operating system, but the technicians will install Windows Server or CentOS Linux.

Additional benefits

Included with every dedicated plan are the Cloudflare CDN, DDoS protection, a backup drive, root access, and a choice of cPanel, Interworx, or Plesk control panel, ServerSecure Advanced, and a dedicated IP address. All plans are offered with a 100 percent uptime guarantee. These are all managed dedicated server packages, although it is still possible for the client’s own technicians to get root access.

Addons

Liquid Web offers addon services for its dedicated server plans. These include a premium business email plan, a data backup plan, server protection, and anti-malware. These addons are cheaper if they are taken out as part of a server plus utility bundle.

Cloud Dedicated Server plans

The Cloud Dedicated Server category of plans at Liquid Web adds on a cloud platform to the server rental. The basic server options are the same as offered with the dedicated server hosting plans. These options are also available in managed, unmanaged, and core versions.

Other Liquid Web options

The hosting server offers cluster, distributed, and replicated multi-server configurations. Other plans from Liquid Web include specialist managed WordPress hosting packages and WooCommerce web hosting services for e-commerce sites.

Pros

• Options for managed, core, and unmanaged dedicated servers
• Possibility of cluster, distributed, and replication servers
• Choice of Linux or Windows Server
• Choice of Interworx, cPanel, or Plesk control panel
• 100 percent uptime guarantee
• DDoS protection included
• Free Cloudflare CDN
• Free dedicated IP address
• No setup fee

Cons

• No free domain name offer
• No free SSL certificate

SiteGround

SiteGround is a web hosting service that offers a range of server configurations from shared hosting plans to bespoke server space rentals. Although the company is focused on catering to websites, its servers could be used for any purpose.

The Cloud Hosting package from SiteGround is a managed dedicated server hosting plan. It includes a dedicated IP address and a free SSL certificate. 

Additional benefits

The Cloud Hosting plan includes the services of a technical support team that will organize daily backups of your server and manages the storage space, server statuses, applications, and software. You don’t need to employ your own technical IT staff when you are on this plan.

The servers include SSD disks and a free CDN improves the response times of any websites that you host on your dedicated server. The control panel enables you to create sub-accounts and this is a suitable dedicated server hosting plan for resellers.

This hosting plan is very flexible because it is possible to add extra server resources at any time. The Cloud Hosting service can be customized to include any combination of servers, services, and configurations.

Other SiteGround options

SiteGround also offers shared hosting plans and plans tailored to WordPress sites and e-commerce with the WooCommerce platform.

Pros

• Free CDN
• Free SSL certificate
• Dedicated IP address
• Technical support team
• 24/7 customer support

Cons

• No uptime guarantee

A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting has three types of dedicated hosting services. These are managed dedicated server plans, unmanaged dedicated server plans, and core dedicated server plans. The core category is the same as the managed service but it allows the customer root access, which isn’t possible with the managed dedicated server package.

Dedicated server hardware

All of the dedicated server hosting packages use Intel Xeon servers with Linux for the operating system and the managed service can be adapted to use servers with SSD storage. 

Additional benefits

The managed and core plans include the cPanel control panel. A2Hosting offers three plans with each category of dedicated server service, each plan includes different levels of server resources, such as the number of CPU cores, RAM, and storage space. A2 Hosting offers a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee.

Other A2 Hosting Options

A2 Hosting offers shared hosting for websites, VPS hosting plans, and dedicated server hosting packages. The dedicated server hosting service could be used by resellers. However, those businesses would probably be better off going with the VPS hosting service.

Pros

• cPanel with managed and core plans
• Technical support team with managed and core plans
• 99.9% uptime guarantee
• Reseller accounts possible
• 30-day money-back guarantee

Cons

• No free SSL certificate offer

Hostwinds

Hostwinds is a web services provider and a managed service provider of server resources.

Dedicated server hardware

The dedicated server systems are available with a range of options including SSD or HDD disk drives, the addition of RAID-1, choice of operating system, and the number of included IP addresses. The operating systems offered by Hostwinds are Windows Server or CentOS, Unbuntu, Debian, or Fedora Linux.

Additional benefits

The standard dedicated server plan is unmanaged but there is a managing addon available. Other service addons are nightly backups and server monitoring. Customers get root access and the cPanel control panel.

Other Hostwinds options

Hostwinds offers dedicated server plans that are specifically tailored for resellers. There are three packages in this category. The Basic plan will manage one domain, the Advanced plan manages four domains, and there are unlimited domain capabilities with the Ultimate plan. 

The reseller system can host more than 50 accounts. Other benefits of the reseller plans are a free SSL certificate, unlimited email accounts, free site migrations, a free website builder, unlimited databases, and unlimited subdomains.

Hostwinds offers shared hosting plans and a VPS service as well as dedicated server hosting plans.

Pros

• A technical support team for the managed plans
• 99.9% uptime guarantee
• 60-day money-back guarantee
• IP address options
• Choice of operating system

Cons

• No SSL certificate with the standard dedicated server plans

InMotion Hosting

InMotion Hosting is a web hosting company and server resources managed service provider. The Dedicated Server services of InMotion Hosting can be taken as managed and unmanaged options. There are eight plans in both managed and unmanaged categories. 

Dedicated server hardware

All dedicated servers are Intel Xeon and come with a choice of SSD or HDD hard drives and RAID-1 configurations for backup are available. The unmanaged dedicated server customers can choose the operating system with CentOS and Ubuntu Linux available.

Additional benefits

The managed dedicated server plans include a cPanel control panel and the unmanaged plans give full root access. The plans all include free IP addresses – from five to 15, depending on which plan is chosen. 

Other InMotion Hosting options

InMotion Hosting also offers shared web hosting, VPS hosting, and cloud server packages. The Private Cloud service is a variation on the Dedicated Server option. This has a hypervisor system added on, which makes it great for resellers. The company also provides a specialist WordPress site hosting service.

Pros

• Free SSL certificate
• Service redundancy for 100% uptime
• Technician support team for managed plans
• 24/7 customer support team
• Free site migration
• 90-day money-back guarantee

Cons

• DDoS protection is only included with the unmanaged Dedicated Server options