Opting for the best dedicated server hosting means choosing a high-quality solution for your online needs.
With a dedicated server, there’s no CPU, RAM, or bandwidth time swapping, meaning your website stays responsive at all times.
Shared web hosting can seem like incredible value, with feature-packed products available for just a few pounds each month. But the reality is often very different, and it’s not always the bargains they seem.
Cheap web hosting (opens in a new tab)
probably means that the web host (opens in a new tab) is cramming more customers into each server, for example. Performance will be poor as there aren’t enough resources to go around, and the additional load could mean more server issues and downtime.
Dedicated hosting means you also have a lot more control over how the server is set up. You can add and remove software, install updates, or modify all settings, allowing you to optimize the server for your specific needs.
Best of all, dedicated hosting contracts often come with prompt and knowledgeable support. The best providers will even monitor your server for problems, such as failed services, and can often fix them before you’ve realized there was a problem.
This type of energy isn’t cheap, and while there are some good sign-up deals, you can easily spend $50-$140 a month and more on a basic package.
With that type of investment, it’s important to make the right choice. In this article, we’re going to highlight five of the top dedicated hosting providers that you might want to check out first. We have tested and compared these dedicated server hosting services on numerous points, such as performance, ease of configuration, ease of use, customer support, and availability of learning resources. We consider its potential downtime, scalability, pricing, and more.
Best Dedicated Server Hosting of 2023 in its entirety
: (Image credit: InMotion Hosting) (opens in a new tab)
opens in a new tab) offers a range of dedicated server hosting options, divided between managed and unmanaged server hosting ranges.
All servers come with SSD storage for faster load times and use intelligent routing technology to ensure 99.999% uptime. In addition to being on a Tier 1 network, the servers come with multi-layered security protection and also offer zero-restart updates as needed.
The price of the managed server is very affordable, with the most basic cost of $139.99 a month, but it offers a set of hardware specifications such as the Intel Xeon processor, 16GB of RAM, 1TB SSD hard drive, and 15TB of data transfer.
Although six different managed server configurations are provided, you can order custom solutions according to your own specifications. They all come with the option to run WHM/Cpanel for easy backend management.
The range of bare metal servers offer the same specs as those previously managed, but they’re much cheaper, with the lower-end model mentioned above at just $99.99 a month. As with managed servers, you can also set up your own bare metal server according to your own needs.
Overall, InMotion hosting offers a powerful platform for your dedicated hosting, but at incredibly competitive prices.
- Read our InMotion Hosting review
- You can sign up for InMotion dedicated hosting here (opens in a new tab).
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Hostwinds) (opens in a new tab)
Hostwinds (opens in a new tab) is a capable hosting provider that includes a wide range of features across all of its products, from the most basic shared hosting plans to its enterprise-grade cloud-based range.
Its range of dedicated servers can start at just $106 (£76) a month, for example, but even these basic products include features that are premium extras elsewhere.
All systems have 1 Gbps ports, for example (some providers start at 100Mbps). Each server is fully managed, ensuring you don’t waste time running operating system updates or other basic maintenance tasks. Hostwinds monitors your server for problems as soon as they arise, and automatic nightly backups ensure you can recover quickly from even the worst disasters.
The storage is also extremely configurable. Some servers have four drive bays available and can be equipped with any combination of 1TB to 3TB SATA drives or 120GB to 1TB SSDs. That’s considerably more flexible than vendors like IONOS, where you can only use SSDs in some products, and even then they’re often available only in fixed configurations (1TB SATA or 800GB SSD, for example).
There is more good news with the choice of operating system. Not only can Linux fans choose between CentOS, Debian, Fedora or Ubuntu, but Windows users can choose Windows 2008, 2012 or 2016 Server for a low $25 – we’ve seen charges of up to $50 elsewhere.
Put it all together and Hostwinds’ dedicated range is refreshingly honest. Servers aren’t crippled by low specs to reach a price, and yet the final costs remain low, with most upgrades coming at a very fair price. It’s worth checking out to anyone who needs a reliable, highly specified server for a low price.
- Read our Hostwinds review (opens in a new tab).
- Hostwinds 1-month dedicated server hosting subscription options
- per month ($159 total cost
😛 lan – $159
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: IONOS) (opens in a new tab)
Germany-based IONOS (opens in a new tab) is well known as a budget hosting provider, But the company doesn’t just offer value for website newbies — its range of dedicated servers starts at a very low $45 a month for the first six months, then $65.
As you can imagine, IONOS has had to cut a few corners to reach that price point. The cheapest plans are relatively basic, with limited hardware, although network bandwidth received an upgrade with 1 Gbit/s. Features such as SSDs and server management (IONOS updates, monitors and manages the server for you) come at an additional cost. Oh, and there’s also an installation fee of at least $50 (the entry-level plan has no setup fee).
But there are also positive points, including unlimited bandwidth, included Symantec SSL certificates, and the Plesk Onyx server control panel for free. In general, even the most limited IONOS dedicated server plan has enough power to handle many tasks. Plus, you get a personal consultant for free.
Discerning users have plenty of paid upgrades to explore, including a faster CPU, more RAM and storage, an included backup service, and more. Some of these add-ons also include more than you might expect. Paying $14 a month for administration doesn’t just mean IONOS will take care of server administration: you also get a website builder, simple analytics, a photo slideshow service, automatic backup and restore for WordPress sites, and more. Sounds like a good deal to us.
Read our IONOS review (opens in a new tab)Sign up to receive 1&1 Ionos US offers here (opens in a new tab).
- Sign up to receive offers from 1&1 Ionos UK here (opens in a new tab).
Liquid Web) (opens in a new tab)
Liquid Web (opens in a new tab) is a popular provider of high-end business hosting products ranging from managed WordPress and WooCommerce plans, to cloud VPS, dedicated servers, and private clouds.
The company’s dedicated offerings may seem expensive, with a starting price of $199 a month (it can be reduced to $169 a month if annual billing is chosen), but they’re also much better specified than most budget competition.
Even the cheapest dedicated server includes two fast 240GB SSDs, for example. There is also a 1TB SATA backup drive provided, making it easy and convenient to run regular backups.
The plan includes a dedicated IP. Support for Cloudflare CDN should increase the speed of your website, and your server may be hosted in one of three data centers (Arizona, Michigan, or the Netherlands).
Most importantly, all dedicated servers are managed by Liquid Web’s professional support team. They monitor system health, proactively respond to notifications (for example, they will restart a failed service), and install and update the operating system. If you have any difficulties, support is available 24/7/365, and the company guarantees a response time of 59 seconds by phone or chat, 30 minutes by ticket and email.
Note the wide range of optional plugins (load balancers, firewalls, VPNs) and the range has more than enough power for almost any purpose. While Liquid Web’s prices may seem higher than some of the competition, you’re absolutely paying for what you get in terms of hardware and support.
- Read our Liquid Web review (opens in a new tab).
Liquid Dedicated Web Server Hosting Subscription Options:1-month plan – $79 per
- month ($79 total cost
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Opting for dedicated hosting instead of shared will speed up your website itself, but there’s still plenty of room for improvement. A2 Hosting’s managed server plans (opens in new tab)’s combine multiple tricks and technologies to try to ensure you see the best possible performance.
This starts with a powerful set of server components: OPcache and APC can speed up PHP processing by 50%. Memcached contains key MySQL data in RAM for faster retrieval, while mod_pagespeed uses multiple tricks to optimize site content. SPDY and HTTP/2 further speed up page loads, and support for technologies like edge-side inclusions and websockets allow for more precise optimizations of your site.
A2 hosting plans also include Cloudflare’s free CDN and its Railgun Optimizer, which “compresses previously uncacheable web objects up to 99.6%” and can result in an average performance increase of 200%. You may not actually see any of that, the momentum will vary greatly, depending on your site, but it’s still a technology worth having.
Elsewhere, performance-boosting add-ons include RAID 1 SSD storage up to 2 x 1TB. The Turbo Boost feature is added in higher tiers and those plans start at $279.99 a month. The Turbo Boost feature replaces Apache with the LiteSpeed server, seemingly bringing page loads up to 20 times faster, and another plugin can cache a page’s HTML content, then quickly reload it without needing to run PHP. We were happy to see that cPanel is also released (it’s often a chargeable extra with other hosts).
- Read our A2 Hosting review (opens in a new tab).
- A2 Dedicated Server Hosting Subscription Options
- 12-month plan – $99.59 per month ($1,195.08 total cost
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Bluehost) (opens in a new tab)
Bluehost (opens in a new tab) offers a wide range of hosting services, including dedicated server hosting that is divided into three plans. Although they are quite similar, all three plans come with features to host the busiest sites.
The Starter plan features a 4-core CPU, 2.3GHz, 4GB of RAM, 2x500GB of storage, and 5TB of bandwidth/month server for $79.99 a month for three years ($119.99 on renewal). The high-end Premium plan also has a 4-core core, but it comes with 3.3GHz CPUs, 16GB of RAM, 2x1TB storage, and 15TB bandwidth/month settings for $119.99 a month for three years ($209.99 on renewal).
These plans are reasonably priced and should provide decent performance for your high-power, speed-critical web projects. Their dedicated server hosting comes with 24/7 support, the ability to add more VPS or even shared hosting services to your account and manage it all in one place.
For advanced users, Bluehost’s dedicated server hosting offering comes with optional full root access that gives you unrestricted access to perform custom installations and more. There’s also the 30-day money-back guarantee safety net in case the service doesn’t meet your needs.
- Read our Bluehost review
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- And we consider the merits of shared hosting versus dedicated hosting (opens in a new tab) here
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Frequently Asked Questions About
Dedicated Server Hosting
Best Dedicated Server Hosting: How We Tested
Like other web hosting services, trying out dedicated server hosting solutions isn’t much different.
We are particularly interested in features that many customers will use, but are not available from all providers. For dedicated server hosting that could include SLAs, public bandwidth, memory, and more.
We also test and compare other features such as pricing, customer support, performance, and ease of use. If you’re a beginner, it’s good to know that the dedicated server hosting provider you choose has enough support to guide you through the setup process, should you need it.
