Advantages And Disadvantages Of Dedicated Servers

Dedicated servers are often recommended as an elite form of hosting. Depending on one’s needs, this statement might be true. But in some instances, purchasing a dedicate server might end up being ‘overkill,’ especially if your website receives low traffic. Let’s take a look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of dedicated servers.

Disadvantages of a dedicated server

1) Cost is the first disadvantage of a dedicated server. A dedicated server costs more than a dedicated VPS server, or a shared hosting account. Since you’re paying all the costs for one piece of dedicated server, the cost will always be more than service which share the same hardware.

2) The learning curve for a dedicated server is steep. If you’re not familiar with being a system adminstrator, then attempting to manage your own dedicated server can become a nightmare in no time. Of course, this won’t happen with a managed dedicate server option. But un-managed dedicated servers will require extremely competent system administrators who are knowledgeable about everything from O/S intricacies to security. A failure to understand any of those elements could result in overtime, which is the enemy of profit online.

3) Having all of your websites on one dedicated server represents a ‘single point of failure,’ which is not generally a good idea. Of course with proper backups and monitoring, any downtime should be mitigated quickly enough that you won’t lose too much money.

Advantages of using dedicated servers

1) A dedicated server may cost more upfront than other packages, but for web entities that own several hundred properties, a dedicated server may end up being much less money ‘per site.’ One dedicated server can reliably manage many websites in a manner that shared hosting is not necessarily capable of.

2) Using dedicated servers gives complete control to the system administrator. For those who are skilled in operating websites, this control can save a lot of time when simple or complex configuration changes need to be made. Having control of a dedicated server eliminates a lot of guesswork and you get exactly what you pay for without compromise.

3) System performance is ‘guaranteed.’ With a dedicated server, what you see is what you get. The hard drive and RAM are all yours for the taking, and there’s no real danger of such a service being ‘oversold.’

One great bit of news for consumers these days, is it doesn’t have to be ‘all or nothing’ when it comes to wanting the power of a dedicated server. Now you can consider using VPS servers in much the same way that once could only be accomplished by dedicated hosting. For example, managed VPS hosting offers many of the same advantages of a dedicated server at lower prices than the traditional product.

There’s a lot of flexibility being offered by web hosts these days, so always look for a customized plan that gives you exactly what you need at a price you can afford.