Best Dedicated Server Hosting in 2020

If you have an established business and money is no constraint, then it's definitely the time to look for the best dedicated server hosting out there. There are over 1.5 billion websites in the world, and they live in servers and data centers spread all over the world. Many of them are personal websites and blogs sit in free hosting servers, while most professional and business websites use dedicated servers. This is simply because these websites see a lot of traffic and require large bandwidth, have to be responsive and fast loading. And, these services are taken care of by web hosting servers.

As a business, you want a server with complete capabilities such as total control over your apps, RAM, CPU, storage, speed and a capacity to handle large traffic, and this is exactly what you’d get with a dedicated server. While every host will advertise itself as the best in the business, it is up to you to decide which one is the best solution for you.

In this article, we will review some of the top hosting options for you to help you make that choice.

These providers are:

• InMotion
• Siteground
• HostGator
• iPage
• LiquidWeb

Founded in 2001, InMotion is based in Los Angeles, California and has been a 3-star CNET certified company since 2003. InMotion offers a large bouquet of services that include shared hosting, dedicated servers and even VPS hosting, web design services and site hosting tools. The service is fast and reliable and trusted by millions of customers worldwide. Let’s take a look at InMotion’s pricing plans and features and find out which one is the best web hosting.

InMotion offers a total of 6 plans, 3 of which are fully customized commercial class dedicated servers. Each of the 3 plans below come with 2 hours of free managed hosting.

• Essential: Now selling at $105.69 per month (at 44% off), this plan offers Intel Xeon E3-1246 v3 servers that clock a speed of 3.9GHz Turbo with 4 cores and 8 CPU threads, 8GB DDR3 (now double the RAM under a promo offer), a choice of 500GB SSD or 1TB 7.2K HDD, software RAID, 6TB data transfer and 5 free IPs.
• Advanced: Now selling at $166.59 per month (at 24% off), this plan offers Intel Xeon E3-1270 v6 servers that clock a speed of 4.2GHz turbo with 4 cores and 8 CPU threads, 16GB DDR3 (now double the RAM under a promo offer), a choice of 500GB SSD or 2TB 7.2K HDD, software RAID, 10TB data transfer and 10 free IPs. You can also have your choice of a data center that is closest to your team, clients and employees.
• Elite: Now selling at $238.99 per month (at 20% off), this plan offers Intel Xeon E3-1270 v6 servers that clock a speed of 4.2GHz Turbo with 4 cores and 8 CPU threads, 16GB DDR3 (now double the RAM under a promo offer), a choice of 2x500GB SSD or 2x2TB 7.2K HDD, 10TB data transfer and 15 free IPs. You can also have your choice of data center closest to your team, your clients or your employees. Hardware RAID-1 is included in this package.

All the following plans come with 4 hours of free managed hosting. Let’s take a look at their prices for customizable commercial class dedicated servers.

• CC-500: Priced at $340.00 per month (at 18% off), this plan offers Intel Xeon E5-2430 servers that clock a speed of 2.7GHz Turbo with 6 cores and 12 CPU threads, 16GB ECC DDR3, 2x500GB SSD, hardware RAID-1 included, 15TB data transfer and 15 free IPs.
• CC-1000: Priced at $414.49 per month (at 15% off), this plan offers Intel Xeon Silver 4110 servers that clock a speed of 3.0GHz Turbo with 8 cores and 16 CPU threads, 32GB ECC DDR3, 2x1TB SSD, hardware RAID-1 included, 15TB data transfer and 15 free IPs.
• CC-1000: Priced at $519.49 per month (at 11% off), this plan offers Intel Xeon Silver 4110 servers that clock a speed of 3.0GHz Turbo with 16 cores and 32 CPU threads, 64GB ECC DDR3, 3x1TB SSD, hardware RAID-5 included, 15TB data transfer and 15 free IPs.

With all plans, you can configure your server and come with a 30-day, 100% money back guarantee. If you opt to take up any of these offers now, you will get an additional 10% off your fully managed servers. Here are some other features:

• Free cPanel and WHM
• Free SSD
• Low server pings worldwide
• Fully compatible with Auto SSL and 3rd party SSLs
• Assistance in PHP, Perl, Python, phpBB, MySQL, Apache and Apache Tomcat

Pros

• 30-day, 100% money back guarantee
• 999% network uptime
• Very fast servers
• Great customer support
• Customized solutions for your budget
• 1-1 sysadmin time

Hostgator has been providing plans for all kinds of clients including professionals and beginners since 2002 worldwide, including the United States. The company quickly grew from a dorm room to a leading services provider and now has over 7,000 servers under management and around 8 million domains which translates to about 1% of the internet’s traffic. The company offers web, reseller, VPS, WordPress and cloud hosting and plans for a website builder as well.

Hostgator has the following dedicated server hosting plans on offer:

• Value Server: Priced at $119 per month, this plan offers Intel Xeon-D CPU with the option of 4/8 threads, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD and unmetered bandwidth.
• Power Server: Priced at $139 per month, this plan offers Intel Xeon-D CPU with the option of 8/16 threads, 16GB RAM, 2TB HDD or 512GB SSD and unmetered bandwidth.
• Enterprise Server: Priced at $149 per month, this plan offers Intel Xeon-D CPU with the option of 8/16 threads, 30GB RAM, 1TB SSD and unmetered bandwidth.

As of now, all the plans are being offered at 37%, 44% and 45% off respectively. All plans are available with Linux or Windows OS. These are some of their other important features:

• DDoS protection
• IP-based firewall
• Fully redundant server
• RAID-1 configuration
• Dedicated IPv4 IPs (3-5)
• Unlimited databases
• Full root access

Pros

• No bandwidth and space restrictions; unmetered bandwidth
• Has a comprehensive support portal with over 700 searchable articles and more than 500 video tutorials
• Quickly manage your website with tools such as Plex control panel and WebMatrix
• Customer support team available 24/7, 365 days a week via live chat and telephone
• Apart from the highly reliable and efficient server performance, options of SSD available to boost your server’s performance
• Free migration of your website from your old host to Hostgator

The developers at LiquidWeb promise hassle-free hosting that is reliable, secure and with constant customer support available whenever you need it. Established in 1997, the company is known to deliver IT solutions to customers in Europe and the United States. The company has 5 global data centers and has been cited as reviewers as the best hosting providers in 2020. With 500,000 sites under management and 30,000-plus customers in over 150 countries, the company offers many services such as cloud VPS, cloud, private cloud, WordPress, email, managed WooCommerce hosting and cloud sites.

Liquid Web has hosting plans for single and dual processors.

Let’s take a look at the single processor plans.

• Priced at $199 per month, this plan offers Intel Xeon E3-1230 v6 server, 4 cores at 3.5GHz, 16GB of RAM, 2x480GB SSD primary storage, 1TB SATA backup drive and 5TB bandwidth.
• Priced at $269 per month (down from $578), this plan offers Intel Xeon E3-1230 v6 server, 4 cores at 3.5GHz, 32GB of RAM, 2x480GB SSD primary storage, 1TB SATA backup drive and 8TB bandwidth. All these options are customizable. The plan also offers 500GB of offsite backups, cPanel/WHM/Plesk and server protection and malware remediation.
• Priced at $299 per month, this plan offers Intel Xeon E5-1650 v4 server, 6 cores at 4GHz, 32GB of RAM, 2x480GB SSD primary storage, 1TB SATA backup drive and 5TB bandwidth.
• Priced at $389 per month (down from $698), this plan offers Intel Xeon E5-1650 v4 server, 6 cores at 4GHz, 32GB of RAM, 2x480GB SSD primary storage, 1TB SATA backup drive and 10TB bandwidth. All these options are customizable. The best dedicated plan also offers 500GB of offsite backups, cPanel/WHM/Plesk and server protection and malware remediation.

Let’s take a look at the single processor plans.

• Priced at $399 per month, this plan offers Intel Xeon E5-2620 v4 server, 16 cores at 2.1GHz, 64GB of RAM, 2x480GB enterprise SSD primary drive, 4TB SATA backup drive and 8TB bandwidth.
• Priced at $599 per month (down from $883), this plan offers Intel Xeon E5-2620 v4 server, 16 cores at 2.1GHz, 64GB of RAM, 2x480GB enterprise SSD primary drive, 4TB SATA backup drive and 15TB bandwidth. All these options are customizable. The plan also offers 1TB of offsite backups, cPanel/WHM/Plesk and server protection and malware remediation.
• Priced at $599 per month, this plan offers Intel Xeon E5-2650 v4 server, 24 cores at 2.2GHz, 64GB of RAM, 2x480GB enterprise SSD primary drive HW Raid 1, 4TB SATA backup drive and 8TB bandwidth.
• You can also completely customize your plan and pay accordingly.

If you buy any of the plans now, you can save 40% for 3 months on dedicated servers using the code ‘WINTERSPECIAL’. This code is only applicable for new customers. You can also buy a server and add 40% on add-ons, or you can buy both and save an additional 10%. The available operating systems for dedicated servers are CentOS, Ubuntu, CloudLinux and Windows.

Other features include:

• Protection from several types of DDoS attacks
• SAN, guardian and cloud off-site backups
• Firewalls and VPN
• Data protection with SSL certificates
• CloudFlare CDN
• WHM + cPanel, Plesk, iThemes and WHMCS.
• Microsoft SQL hosting

Pros

• Excellent customer support available 24/7, 365 days a year
• 59-second initial response guarantee on phone and chat and 59-minute initial email response guarantee
• Great scalability
• Lower-level plans have excellent resources

What to Look for?

With so many options available on the market, choosing the best dedicated server hosting option may sound difficult, because these services come at a high price when you look at other options. That is the reason you should look for the right kind of host for you when you are setting up a website. If you consider these following factors such as operating system, RAMs and the bandwith you may find the best managed dedicated server hosting.

Price

When you want the best website host, great service often comes at a great price. Some providers may ask for the whole year before you start, while others may ask for a monthly fee and some may even have a pay-as-you-go model. A lot of providers might offer you a seasonal discount on some of their services, while others may offer you a bundled price. Some others, like some listed in this article, may offer you slashed-down prices as a one-time offer. So discounts and offers play an important role in choosing a service for you.

Managed or Unmanaged Dedicated Server Hosting?

When you choose unmanaged, you have to be pretty sure that you are quite hands-on with the challenges of managing a website. By choosing this option, you will be doing the on-site maintenance, software updates and the troubleshooting yourself. This could prove to be very cost effective if you have a small business or a blog, with a limited number of visitors. But, this could get out of hand if your business grows and you decide to expand your online operations.

When you choose managed, all you have to do is sit back and relax and make sure your payments to the service provider are on time. The provider will take care of all the troubleshooting, provide you with all the tech support you need and take care of your daily operations. You will have to pay a little extra for it, of course. This is great for large websites and companies who do not have their own IT support.

Bandwidth Limits

Pay close attention to this while choosing a plan. Some websites clearly state a cap on how much data can be transferred. Other websites, such as Hostgator offer you unmetered bandwidth, but it is always good to know what it means. Bandwidth can make or break your operations!

Specs

You may want to choose the provider who is offering the most resource-rich servers, and a lot of providers list their cores and processors in a server. Also, consider choosing a host that lets you add on more RAM as your requirement grows. There is also the consideration of choosing RAID, SSD or SATA drives.

Uptime

This should not be very difficult to determine. You may want to read up a few expert or customer reviews to find out which host has a good uptime rating. You certainly do not want consistent downtimes if you are running a website with many users.

Security on dedicated servers

Make sure that the provider is offering various security measures such as DDoS protection, SSL certificates, malware protection and software patching. 

Cloud Hosting vs Dedicated Server Hosting

Cloud hosting is a server hosting platform that is virtualized. It is made up of several physical servers that are located in a secure data center. Each of these physical servers may host any number of virtual servers. This is a distributed computing environment that is a software construct.

Dedicated servers, on the other hand, are physical servers that are packed with huge amounts of memory and multiple processors, and are great as a single-server hosting option. They are either rented or purchased and are used for only your organization.

Let us take a look at some differences between the two:

Availability: Your website’s integrity is not at stake in a cloud environment because in case one node goes down, another node will take its place, hence ensuring no downtime at all and the end users would not experience a “website not found” (or a 404) error.

In the case of a dedicated server, there are no multiple nodes but just the one server. If it goes down in case of a hardware failure, there is a likely chance of your website seeing downtime.

Security: When you are using a cloud server, you are dependent on the service provider for proper security measures, but you are ensured IT support, firewalls and encrypted solutions. You can also upgrade or downgrade the server as you go, which means there would be no need for reboots.

With a cloud server, this is a time-consuming procedure and the responsibility of these falls squarely on your shoulders or of your IT department.

Scalability: If you want to upgrade your allotted resources such as RAM, storage or computing cores, the task is pretty simple when using a cloud server.

The same process with dedicated servers can be time consuming and in some cases, risky because rigid procedures need to be followed. Also, this would require a certain booting time, meaning little downtime.

Cost Factor: One of the biggest benefits of cloud hosting is the option of pay-as-you-go, which means you don’t pay a lump sum and pay only for the services that you actually use.

In the case of dedicated servers, you either pay a monthly or a yearly amount, regardless of the services and resources you use.

Conclusion, which one is the best dedicated server provider?

Hopefully, this article will help you choose a provider that can provide the best dedicated server hosting for you. Some factors to consider before choosing a hosting provider should not just be the cost factor, but also the company’s performance in terms of customer satisfaction.

As far as selecting between cloud or dedicated hosting, the former is preferred by those who are just testing waters or do not need a highly-specialized service. But for those who are looking for performance, reliability or high-end services, dedicated hosting is the way to go.

Resources:

https://www.siteground.com/datacenters

https://www.hostgator.com/blog/