Dedicated Website Hosting -What Are The Benefits?

Dedicated website hosting is the “Rolls Royce” hosting service where you have a physical server reserved for your sole use. This is appropriate for a company or organisation running a large/busy website which does not have the ability to host the server in house.  Compared to Virtual Private Server hosting (the level below) dedicated website hosting has a number of advantages but one significant disadvantage – it costs considerably more – so you need to be certain that it is really necessary to go this route.  Do not dismiss VPS services without first establishing that they are unsuitable.

The benefits of a dedicated website hosting service are:

*  You have an entire physical server for your own use, so there is no sharing of resources with other users and hence performance of you website cannot be affected by other users.

*  You can determine the configuration of the server to best meet your needs.

*  The server can be upgraded (e.g. disk space & memory) as your needs change.

*  You can determine the operating system and software running on the server and how they are configured.·    

*  You have a SLA (Service Level Agreement) with the suppler covering percentage uptime.  

*  You have root access to the server.

*  Your hosting supplier can always be called upon if you need help (albeit at an additional cost).

*  You also get the normal benefits of hosting i.e. the hosting company has responsibilty for the connectivity the hardware and its physical environment (security, HVAC etc.).

The cost of dedicated website hosting packages varies considerably and the main reason for this is the differing level of support provided in areas like, software installation and updates, server monitoring, backups and disaster recovery.  Services are often referred to as Managed and Unmanaged although there is no consistent definition of these terms.  You therefore need to have a clear understanding of what you (or you technical staff) will do and what you want the hosting provider to do and then select an appropriate service. It may also be possible to pay for support on an adhoc basis.

There is much choice in this market and it is not easy to find the ideal balance between price, the services offered and the reputation of the company.  Unfortunately there is no easy option, you need to be clear about what you want then do your research.