Often, a newly launched online venture is small enough to justify the acquisition of merely a shared hosting package in comparison with dedicated server hosting. On a shared hosting account, your website may have been functioning alright for a limited period of time. Downtime may have been the cause of irritation to you for some time however during your usage of the shared hosting service. Unauthorized access to your account because of intrusion attempts may also have been a matter of concern to you, which kept you worried since you were not pleased with the level of security on your shared web hosting account. However, given the amount of time that you have now spent on your site and the capital that you have put into it, you cannot tolerate to have such a scenario again. As a result, there may arise a need later on to consider other hosting options, either because your online business has flourished to the point where shared hosting cannot support it, or a better functionality is required over the expansion phase.

A VPS hosting service may be regarded as adequate at such a time. This may be okay for some time but as your site keeps growing in size reaching a couple hundred pages, you may look forward to receive millions of visitors in a month depending on how vibrant your web promotion approach is. At this stage of the life of your online project, a dedicated web hosting service may appear to be the only long-term solution to carry on the growth of the project. So, you start seriously thinking about switching to a dedicated web hosting package, which may give you the kind of stability, security, and functionality that you currently require for your project.

This article is written with the aim of giving you an idea of what a dedicated web hosting package can do to support your project expansion. What follows outlines the crucial aspects of dedicated web hosting.

i) Full Server

In contrast to a shared hosting server which simply splits the storage space into a number of virtual partitions, each of which is alloted to a different customer, a dedicated hosting server is a stand-alone piece of equipment that can be rented from a web hosting company. One of the main benefits of a dedicated server is that the system resources are entirely at your disposal.

ii) Option to Install Custom Programs

The installation of applications according to your exact needs is another benefit of a dedicated server.

iii) Full Control over Access Rights

User level access may be allowed by the administrator as well, which implies that the users may also be able to make use of the applications side by side.

iv) No Upper Maximum on Data Transfer

A dedicated hosting server is particularly suited to any website that receives a lot of visitors. This is because of the fact that there is usually no upper bound on the total amount of bandwidth for a site hosted on a dedicated server.

v) Option to Customize As per Requirements

Apart from the ability to set up almost any type of program on the machine, what adds the maximum worth to such a plan is the degree of possible customization. A great majority of companies offering dedicated server hosting give you the option to totally customize the server according to your needs.

vi) Add Additional Functionality As Required

Since a multitude of functionalities are available to the end-user to choose from, so you can purchase any specific features that are most important to you.

vii) Choice of OS

You can choose the right type of OS which may prove to be the ideal platform for your Web applications. Two of the most widely used OSs offered by dedicated server hosting companies include Windows and Red Hat Linux.

viii) A Broad Range of Control Panels to Choose from

As far as the choice of the control panel is concerned, the two most popular brands offered by a great majority of providers include CPanel and Plesk. Of these, CPanel seems to be more popular than Plesk, although the latter also has a huge customer base by virtue of a variety of features offered by it in contrast with the former one.

ix) Reliable Service

Reliability is another main factor behind the recognition of dedicated hosting in contrast with a shared hosting server. Since your website will be the only website residing on the dedicated server, the responsiveness of your applications will be maximum because you are the lone user of the server.

x) Lowest Access Time Due to Unlimited Bandwidth

A dedicated server guarantees that the data transfer to and from your site will be consistent, owing to the fact that the bandwidth is reserved for that particular server. A direct end result of this will be that visitors requesting access to your site through their browsers will be able to view your website almost immediately with the minimum possible delay.

xi) Extra Security

A dedicated server hosting plan is also well known for its capacity to handle any security risks contrary to a shared hosting server. With a shared hosting server, if a user uploads to its account a file or application infected with a recent virus which the antivirus software on the server remains unable to notice, your account may also get infected with the result that you may lose all of your important data. This can in no way be exploited with a dedicated hosting server, in which you not only have an external hardware firewall to thwart intrusion attempts, but also have the capability to change access rights in order to tighten the protection further. This frees you up from any fears concerning unauthorized access to the server, consequently, you can concentrate solely on the business issues.

xii) Maximum Access Speed Because of Unique IP Address

The availability of a unique IP address turns out to be another major benefit of dedicated server hosting, in that when a visitor tries to access the website, it is recognized almost immediately. The availability of a unique IP address with companies offering shared web hosting packages is quite limited. Even those who do offer this functionality typically charge more than those who do not. A shared IP address, available with a shared hosting server, results in a relatively slower access to the site, due to the fact that a separate software on the server identifies the partition to which the URL is assigned. Although this operation is generally pretty fast, it is likely to be slowed down on account of a large number of sites hosted on the shared server all of which have concurrent incoming requests. Contrarily, there is no translation software needed in the case of a dedicated hosting server, which results in a much quicker access speed.

xiii) Additional Level of Protection for Your Data

Another major benefit of a dedicated hosting server is that you have the option to install multiple hard drives on the server. Having an additional hard disk is very advantageous, given that it can be used for performing scheduled backups, aside from the primary hard disk which has the operating system and programs installed on it. This adds a great deal of safety to your vital business data and comes only with a dedicated server. The redundancy in the storage devices may have many applications, one of which may be backing up sensitive credit card information generated by web applications. In addition, a secondary backup FTP account may also be offered by the dedicated hosting company, which may be used to reproduce the crucial content on the regular FTP account.

Conclusion

Having described all the benefits of a dedicated hosting server, it is now up to you, the prospective buyer, to cautiously select a dedicated hosting provider that can fulfill all of your needs without being too heavy on your pocket. This may not be as hard as it seems to be once you have acquainted yourself with all the essential information presented in this article. There are plenty of ways for signing up with the right dedicated hosting company, and frankly speaking, there is no particular line of action that may be taken up to pinpoint the right one. However, irrespective of which dedicated company you eventually decide to go with, the above-mentioned important benefits must be looked for in a company before making the final decision.