Best Dedicated Server Hosting

What Is a Dedicated Web Hosting Server?

A dedicated web hosting server is a physical server that is exclusively allocated to one client in its entirety. This means you get total control of your privacy and prioritized allocation of resources. So, if you are a client using a dedicated server you’ll get an isolated server for your own use without having to deal with all the problems that arise time and again from shared hosting.

Dedicated servers are mostly for high traffic or mission-critical sites that need dedicated hosting to cater for their massive visitor load. If your site hasn’t shattered this glass ceiling yet, you can start with simpler hosting solutions that offer such juicy features as unlimited bandwidth and storage, plus some are even free. Our 9 Best Hosting Unlimited Bandwidth in 2020 is an article that can help you get you started.

Dedicated hosting is sometimes confused with Virtual Private Server (VPS); and this is understandable. However, in case you are in the same predicament, we think it may be important you note that dedicated servers come with more RAM than VPS.

How Much Does Dedicated Hosting Cost?

Dedicated hosting just like the other hosting options available out there is priced either on a monthly or yearly basis. Most hosting providers include both options and you get the opportunity to choose which pricing plan best suits you. However, since dedicated hosting basically avails a physical server strictly for your website needs, you can expect it to be more than just a little pricey.

As you are about to see below on our review, most dedicated servers have an average starting price of around $100 per month. At this price, however, don’t expect to get plans that come with a fully-managed package. If you want dedicated hosting that is not only state-of-the-art but also top-of-the-line, prepare your coffers to pay monthly rates of up to $300 per month.

The Dedicated Hosting Features You’ll Need

It is paramount you know that not all dedicated hosting providers are similar or even close when it comes to the features they offer. When upgrading to dedicated hosting services you should therefore ensure that the provider you are opting for has the best combination of features for unequaled performance.

Among the many features available in various dedicated hosting providers, you should pay closely to the following:

• Freedom to choose an Operating System
• Control over the server configuration
• Available hardware options
• Security 
• Server management options
• Uptime and speed
• Available customer support service

ReviewsOur review relies on various determiners for rating. These include:

• Pricing Plans & Features
• Performance (Speed and Uptime)
• Customer support services
• Pros & Cons discussed in each review below

Having taken all these important factors into consideration, our overall best dedicated hosting provider is HostGator.

HostGator – Best overall for dedicated server hosting.

HostGator tops our review of the best dedicated hosting providers. It is our best overall solution for dedicated hosting based on its competitive pricing, incredible range of features and overall good performance. Other than these, this platform is reputed for how easy it is to get started with.

This platform provides all Linux servers with cPanel and WHM and if you need dedicated hosting for Windows you’ll get Plesk cPanel and WebMatrix.

Pricing Plans & Features

HostGator has the following plans for dedicated hosting:

• Value Server– starts at $89.98 per month. This plan comes with an Intel Xeon-D CPU that is 8 Thread/ 4 Core. You also get 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD and uncapped bandwidth.
• Power Server– Starts at $119.89 per month. This plan comes with double of everything in Value Server i.e.16 thread, 8 core, 16GB RAM and 2TB/ 512GB SSD.
• Enterprise Server– starts at $139.99 per month. It comes with 30GB RAM and 1TB SSD for storage. The server’s CPU is 16 thread/ 8 core.

All HostGator pricing plans for dedicated hosting are optimized for Linux or Windows OS. Plus you get a free SSL certificate and a free domain for a year.

You can read in detail about their three pricing plans on their website here.

Performance

HostGator has data centers that are top-notch and state-of-the-art. They also offer DDOS protection and a firewall that is IP based for the protection of your server and ensuring optimum performance isn’t impeded.

This hosting provider offers you an uptime guarantee of 99.9%. Their speeds, however, aren’t particularly impressive with most of their users getting speed averages of up to 1,190ms.

Customer Support Service

HostGator has 24/7/365 customer support service via phone, fax and LiveChat.

Pros

• Competitive pricing
• Good uptime
• Knowledgeable customer support team
• Easy to get started with

Cons

• All their servers are located in the U.S
• Loading speeds are sometimes poor

Bluehost – Best value for money.

Bluehost comes second on our review of the best dedicated hosting providers. This platform is infamous for its pocket-friendliness. It arguably has the cheapest plans as compared to any other dedicated hosting provider out there. And, they don’t compromise on quality either. To show for this, the platform currently powers more than 2 million websites globally.

This platform, however, failed to top our list due to a few shortfalls that you are about to witness below; top of the list of these being a lesser number of cores and them having only one Utah-based server.

Other than the shortfall above, Bluehost is great for dedicated hosting. As a dedicated hosting customer, you can expect to get such basic yummies as a 1-year free domain and free SSL to such advanced features as Unmanaged ( for unfettered control and access to everything), an enhanced interface for cPanel and more than one server management in case you need extra dedicated hosting services.

Pricing Plans & Features

Bluehost offers you the following plans for dedicated hosting:

• Standard– starts at $79.99 per month. It comes with 4 cores operating at 2.3GHz, mirrored storage of 500GB and 4GB RAM. You also get a 5TB bandwidth and up to 3 IP addresses.
• Enhanced– starts at $99.99 per month. This plan comes with 4 cores operating at 2.5GHz. You also get a mirrored storage capacity of 1TB, 8GB RAM and bandwidth of 10TB. It also includes 4 IP addresses.
• Premium– starts at $119.99 per month. It comes with 4 cores at 3.3GHz and a mirrored storage capacity of 1TB. The RAM for this plan is staked at 16GB and you also get 15TB bandwidth and up to 5 IP addresses.

All these of Bluehost’s plans come with a Free SSL Certificate for security, a free domain for the first year and a money-back guarantee period of 30 days. 

Read more here.

Performance

Bluehost doesn’t offer an official uptime guarantee. What they try to assure all their clients is that if any issues that may cause downtime arise they will resolve them in roughly 15 minutes or less EXCEPT in extreme cases. This, however, shouldn’t be worrisome. Most Bluehost users report impressive average uptimes of not less than 99.98%.

The loading speed of Bluehost is also quite good with response times clocking at less than a second from various points of the world. Below is a screenshot of Bluehost response times from a user.

Customer Support Service 

Bluehost offers 24/7 support from trained experts via call, chat or email. All of their dedicated server clients also get prioritized access to specialists that offer support 24/7 over an exclusive support line.

Pros

• Cheap pricing
• Excellent uptime and speed
• Good customer support

Cons

• All plans only include 4 cores
• They have one Utah-based server
• No uptime guarantee

InMotion – Best for tech-heavy websites.

Our 3^rd best provider of dedicated hosting is InMotion. This provider has earned its spot due its optimized service provision especially for websites that are tech- heavy. InMotion offers you the opportunity to work with a large number of availed CPUs with the highest of their plans offering an impressive 16 CPUS for your use. With this many CPUs you can rest easy knowing that your website maintains good speeds and has a better chance for a higher ranking from Google.

This platform’s popularity is also boosted by an amazing customer support team that responds fast and is well-versed. Other than this, the platform promises you dedicated hosting plans with SSD servers that are 20X faster. Their servers also come with cPanel, WHM and SysAdmin Support.

Pricing Plans & Features

InMotion has the following tiers for dedicated hosting:

• Managed Dedicated Servers– starts at $139.99 per month. This tier is optimized for business owners, agencies and resellers. It has three plans which are:

1. Essential which starts at $139.99/ month. It comes with 4 cores, 8 threads and a 3.50GHz turbo. You get a DDR3 RAM of 16GB, 1 TB SSD, and 5 IPs.
2. Advanced which starts at $189.99/ month.  It has 4C/8T and a turbo of 3.50GHz. You also get a primary 1TB for storage, 32GB DDR4 RAM and 10 free IPs. 
3. Elite starts at $259.99/ month. This tier has 6C/12T, a 3.30GHz turbo for optimum performance and 1x1TB SSD OS drive/ a secondary 2x1TB SSD.
4. CC-1000 which starts at $439.99/ month. It comes with 12C/24T, a 3.2GHz turbo, ECC DDR4 RAM of 128GB AND A 2x1TB NVMe SSD.
5. CC-2000 which starts at $539.99/ month. It comes with 24C/48T, a 3.2GHz turbo, ECC DDR4 RAM of 192GB and a 2x2TB NVMe SSD.

• Bare Metal Dedicated Servers– starts at $99.99 per month and comes with 99.999% net uptime. This is the perfect solution for developers and system administrators. This tier gives you total control from full root access. Power and flexibility is also optimized via a command lined server that is completely unmanaged. This tier has the same plans and features as Managed Dedicated Servers with their pricing being the only difference:

1. Essential- starts at $99.99 per month
2. Advanced- starts at $149.99 per month
3. Elite- starts at $219.99 per month
4. CC-1000- starts at $399.99 per month
5. CC-2000- starts at $499.99 per month

All of these tiers come with automated backup service and varying numbers of Hours of Launch Assist. Plus, every plan from Elite upwards comes with 15 free IPs.

Read more here.

Performance

InMotion Hosting offers you 99.999% network uptime on dedicated servers with average server speeds of up to 170ms as reported by users.

Customer Support Service

InMotion Hosting has excellent customer support service available 24/7 via Skype, live chat or phone.

Pros

• Excellent customer support
• Impressive number of CPUs
• Good uptime guarantee and server speeds
• Automatic backup services available

Cons

• Their 2 data centers are all in the U.S
• No Windows server

A2 Hosting – Best customer service.

A2 Hosting is our 4^th best dedicated hosting provider based almost entirely on its customer service that has been inarguably rated as the best. A2 Hosting’s Guru Crew team for customer support can only be rivaled by that provided by InMotion Hosting but A2 Hosting still bags this category by a mile.

Pricing & Features

A2 Hosting has the following plans for dedicated hosting:

• Unmanaged Server– starts at $99.59 per month. This plan comes with Root Access and an option for you to choose your Linux OX. You also get an optional 20x faster turbo and an uptime commitment of 99.9%. This plan is great for developers since it is fully customizable.
• Discount SSD Server– This is the most popular plan and it starts at $129.30 per month. It comes with a free cPanel, and full HostGuard Management. It lacks root access.
• Managed Flex Server– starts at $141.09 per month. This plan, just like Discount SSD Server, is fully managed and lacks root access.
• Core Flex Server– starts at $141.09 per month. This plan is fully managed but includes root access. It also comes with free cPanel and full HostGuard Management.

You should note that all the plans listed above have various sub-plans incorporated within. To view these plans and all the subsequent sub-plans, use this link.

But, in a nutshell, the lowest sub-plan from the main A2 Hosting plans is Sprint which starts at $99.59 per month. This sub-plan comes with 2 cores, not less than 8GB RAM, a storage of 2X500GB, Intel and anytime money-back guarantee.

Performance

A2 Hosting has 99.9% uptime commitment and they claim their turbo can provide up to 20x faster speeds. Below is a screenshot that shows a speed test for A2 Hosting and how their new Turbo Boost improves your sites responsiveness as compared to their older Turbo Hosting 

Service.

Customer Service

A2 Hosting has a professional Guru Crew team that operates 24/7 via phone and live chat and may be the best in the world.

Pros

• Excellent customer support service
• Good uptime
• Amazing loading speeds

Cons

• Relatively pricier than most other better options
• No option for Windows server
• Few CPU cores

iPage – Best for nothing, but okay at everything.

iPage, our 5^th option for dedicated hosting, is a provider that can’t be rightfully touted as being the best at anything. All their services are simply ‘ok’. This provider offers good but not super-impressive features and a fair pricing without being particularly cheap or expensive. You’ll also get managed support, pre installed scripts and a free domain for 1 year.

Plans & Features

iPage has the following plans for dedicated hosting:

• Professional– starts at $151.99 per month. This plan comes with 4 core CPU, a RAM of 8GB, storage disk space of 1000GB and an inclusion of 4 IP addresses. This plan is recommended by iPage.
• Startup– starts at $199.99 per month. It comes with a 2 core CPU, a RAM of 4GB and disk space of 500GB. You also get 3 IP addresses.
• Enterprise– starts at $191.99 per month. Enterprise comes with 4core CPU, 16GB RAM and a storage capacity of 1000GB disk space. You also get up to 5 IP addresses.

All these plans come with cPanel and CentOS 7. You can read more on their website page here.

Performance 

iPage has uptime averages of more than 99.9% according to most users. However, this isn’t backed by a solid uptime guarantee figure. The server speed also clocked at averages of roughly 746ms according to reports submitted by most users.

Customer Support Service

iPage offers you 24/7 support via telephone and live chat.

Pros

• Includes free backups
• Functional features

Cons

• Pricey
• Doesn’t include free SSL certificate

GoDaddy Hosting – Best bandwidth.

GoDaddy comes 6^th on our review of the best dedicated hosting providers with a notoriety for providing the best bandwidth offers. GoDaddy offers you unmetered bandwidth from the lowest of its pricing plans to the highest whereas most hosting providers offer capped amounts of bandwidth.

Other than unmetered bandwidth, GoDaddy offers you dedicated hosting that comes with a cPanel that is easy to use, 99.9% uptime guarantee and root access for full control. You also get an option to choose between SSD and HDD drives.

Pricing & Features

GoDaddy has plans that differ according to two distinctions- HDD (high capacity) and SSD NVMe (up to 25 times faster).

HDD

This has the following plans:

• DS-32- starts at $99.99 per month. It has 4 core/ 8 threads, a DDR4 RAM with 32GB capacity and a 2x4TB HDD for storage.
• DS-64- starts at $139.99 per month. It has 6C/12T, a DDR4 RAM with 64GB capacity and a storage of 2x4TB HDD.
• DS-128- starts at $249.99 per month. It has 16C/32T, a DDR4 RAM with 128GB capacity and a storage of 2x8TB HDD. This plan also comes with a 2.9GHz turbo.
•  DS- 256- starts at $329.99 per month. It has 16C/32T, a DDR4 RAM with 256GB capacity and a storage of 2x8TB HDD. This plan too comes with a 2.9GHz turbo.

SSD NVMe

This tier has plans that have similar features as the plans in the HDD tier, with the only difference being on pricing and storage. Here are the plans on SSD NVMe:

• DS-32- starts at $109.99 per month. Its storage is 2x500GHz SSD capacity for storage. You also get a 3.0GHz turbo.
• DS-64- starts at $149.99 per month. Its storage capacity is 2x500GB SSD. It has a 4.5GHz turbo.
• DS-128- starts at $269.99 per month. Its storage capacity is 2x1TB SSD and it has a 2.9GHz turbo.
• DS-256- starts at $349/99 per month. Its storage capacity is 2x1TB SSD and it has a 2.9GHz turbo.

For more on GoDaddy pricing, use this link.

You should note that all GoDaddy prices are in Euros.

Performance

GoDaddy has an uptime guarantee of 99.9% and average speeds of up to 554 ms.

Customer Support Service 

GoDaddy offers professional support 24/7 via phone and chat.

Pros

• Massive RAM
• A wide range of options
• Good technical support team

Cons

• No free domains
• Lacks versatility

DreamHost – Best storage space.

If you want a provider that gives you the best deals on storage, then DreamHost is your go-to platform. For this and much more as you are about to see below, DreamHost comes 7^th on our listing of the best dedicated hosting providers.

Pricing & Features

DreamHost has the following plans for dedicated servers:

• Standard-starts at $149.00 per month and comes with a capacity of 4GB RAM and 1TB HDD. This is 4C/8T.
• Enhanced- starts at $279.00. It is 12C/ 4T and comes with a capacity of 16GB RAM and 2TB HDD.

All these plans come with root access, Ubuntu, 100% network guarantee and DDOs protection.

For more, use this link.

Performance

This provider guarantees 100% network uptime on dedicated servers. Their speeds average at around 648ms according to speed tests from various users.

Customer Support Service

24/7 in-house customer support via phone

Pros

• Massive storage capacities
• Unmetered bandwidth
• Their servers are scattered across the U.S, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.

Cons

• Limited options for customer support
• Pricey with bland features

Comparison Table

Nate R. Reiner

My name is Nate Reiner and I am the editor here at 10Webtools. I have 8 years of experience using 50+ different web tools ranging from podcast, web hosting, email marketing, and much more. I previously managed a team offering support services to a large conglomerate that utilized tens of software solutions. I now run this blog full-time and when I am not reviewing or testing software, I enjoy riding bikes and supporting my clients achieve internet success. You can reach me directly at [email protected]