Dedicated server colocation or a simple dedicated server - making the choice

Who moves from shared to dedicated hosting or to server colocation?

Usually this happens when an individual quits his day job to concentrate full time on the web business, or when a company sees the returns from the web enterprise justify a more professional set up and need better web performance for their customers. They need a server dedicated to their business, in the same way a growing enterprise might need a building of its own.

Colocation versus a dedicated hosting plan

One of the disadvantages of dedicated hosting, as compared with dedicated server colocation, is that you are paying a monthly fee for the hardware itself as well as the physical hosting of the server.  Over a long period, this becomes more expensive than server colocation, where you buy and own the server outright, and place it in the colocation facility.

In addition, if you find that the dedicated hosting service is failing you and you need to move elsewhere, you cannot simply remove your hardware and take it somewhere else. With dedicated hosting, you do not 'own' the server, you are renting it. With colocation, of course, the server is yours.

However, most people go for dedicated hosting (not colocation) as the first step away from their old shared hosting set up.

Dedicated Hosting

There are various flavors of dedicated hosting available.

When you have made the decision to get dedicated hosting, you need to decide whether you will get managed or unmanaged hosting. With managed hosting, the dedicated hosting service's technical staff will look after your dedicated server and its operating system and application software. With unmanaged hosting, you do this yourself, or pay your own staff to do it.

If you do not want to get involved in operating system updates and patches, installation of security related fixes, application software updates and so on, you should go with managed dedicated hosting. If you are technically competent yourself, or trust your technical staff, unmanaged or self managed hosting may be cheaper.

Bear in mind that not all companies use the same terms in the same way when describing their dedicated hosting features. For some, fully managed hosting may mean that you get access to a Cpanel-like interface or a web front end to manage your files and applications as you wish, while other may mean that their staff will look after all updates, patches and security issues for you.

Be very clear before you sign up which degree of managed hosting you are entitled to for the monthly fee.

Check out the plans here -

Plans start at about $70 a month for a dedicated server.