A dedicated server is a single server that hosts a website. As a result, it offers immense power and flexibility. However, it does come at a premium, so you must do your research before opting for this type of hosting. Let’s review four reasons why you might need a dedicated server.
You Expect Your Site Will Experience A Lot of Traffic
If you know that your site will have to handle a lot of traffic on a daily basis, then you could benefit from the resources of a dedicated server. For instance, most government websites can expect to receive a lot of traffic. To ensure that their users don’t experience any site performance issues, they would benefit from setting up dedicated server hosting. Preventing site performance issues is key to keeping your website visitors and potential customers happy. People these days have no patience for slow-loading websites. If your website doesn’t load in three seconds or less, your users will leave and may never come back. However, unless your website traffic exceeds 1000 unique daily visitors, you can probably manage other less expensive hosting options like cloud or VPS hosting.
You’re Concerned About the Security of Your Site
Good security is essential for every website but especially for those sites handling sensitive and personal data. This includes everything from confidential emails, credit card numbers, and sensitive customer information. If your website handles this type of information, you need to ensure that your website is safe from hacks, viruses, and other risks.
While most decent web hosts have firewalls and security protocols in place to protect your site, if you’re sharing a server with other sites, you are vulnerable if one of those websites is hit with a DDoS attack or otherwise accessed by hackers. A dedicated server is the most secure form of hosting because you’re entirely in charge of your site’s and server’s security. As a result, you’re able to optimize specific security features to ensure optimal safety.
You Want Complete Control Over Your Server
A dedicated server gives you complete control over your server’s setup. You can choose the operating system you want, you can adjust hardware specifications to your needs, and you can choose to install any website builder, application, or content management system you desire. Furthermore, you have custom programming options. This includes running cron jobs, custom software, and shell scripts.
You Want To Save Money
On the surface, dedicated hosting is more expensive than most shared, VPS, and cloud hosting plans. However, if your website has experienced a lot of growth, you may find yourself on the top tier of your host provider’s pricing plan. And just because you’re at the top tier of pricing doesn’t mean all your needs are being met. Therefore, you might want to consider a dedicated server. A dedicated server is more cost-effective when you consider the control you’ll be able to exude over the server and the scalability of your resources. Even though most VPS hosting packages let you scale your resources, there is a limit because they share server space with other sites. With a dedicated server, you don’t have any other sites sharing the server space, so the growth opportunities are much more significant.
Questions to Ask Yourself Before Deciding on a Dedicated Server
Dedicated hosting packages come in various formats, so before choosing a dedicated server, you’ll need to determine a few things.
- How much bandwidth do you need?
- What type of processor and memory do you need?
- Do you want your server to be managed or unmanaged?
- How many IP addresses will you need?
- Will my hosting needs change in the future?
Conclusion
Most websites don’t need a dedicated server. A dedicated server is a single server that is wholly devoted to hosting your site. As a result, you’ll have a lot of performance and resources at your fingertips. However, not everyone needs that. Most sites can get away with the resource and performance of VPS hosting. Besides, dedicated servers are expensive, so why invest in something you don’t need? That being said, if you’re running a corporate or government website, you will likely want a dedicated server because it can handle over 1000 unique daily visitors. It can also offer you the best security. While VPS hosting is pretty secure, you’re still sharing a server, so you are still vulnerable based on what happens to other sites on the server. Therefore, if you’re handling a lot of traffic and dealing with highly sensitive data, you should use dedicated hosting.
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