How to Choose Quality Dedicated Hosting

dedicated hosting is a type of web hosting where service providers allocate one dedicated server to every single client. There are quite a few factors that you must consider before choosing a web hosting company for such an arrangement. There’s a greater time investment in setting up a dedicated server, so you don’t want to have to change just after you have set up the deal. Finding the right provider will save you time and money in the future.

You can get recommendations from your friends for a hosting company, but always rely on your research. Unless you have friends who are webmasters with the same level of business as you do, their recommendations can be worthless. You’re better off doing some research online, perhaps at one of the forums, and by looking at feedback from current and previous clients. Be aware though that most companies will have a bad review. Disgruntled customers tend to be louder than the happy ones. If it is a serious issue raised in the review, it is worth noting the incident and seeing if the hosting company has addressed the issue.

You will need to decide if you want a managed or unmanaged server. Obviously there is a price difference, but if you don’t have the skills to manage the updates, and set up your own server, or you don’t have someone working for you that can, then a managed server, or virtual vps is a better choice. Unmanaged servers are cheaper because web hosts do not offer support with them.

The following tips will help you choose a quality provider:

• Cost – You may notice some variation in the costings for similar server hardware. Essentially, where the hardware is equal, the cost differences relate to differences in the quality of the bandwidth, and support. And whilst more expensive is not always better, very cheap solutions usually impact on other areas. Sometimes something cheap will cost you more in the long run, with time and money lost.
• Customer Support – Customer support is usually quite high on the list of priorities for those with a business looking for better quality web hosts. Of course, many who pay rock bottom prices also expect the same thing, and then complain in forums when they don’t get it. Understanding that providing good quality support does indeed cost a company money, and that going for a particularly cheap deal on a server may mean there is a trade of with some loss of response time or the capacity of a host to fix your problem quickly.
• Reliability – How reliable is the hosting company, and their product offerings? Is the bandwidth up to speed? Do they answer their support tickets in a timely manner? How long have they been in business? The number of years a hosting company has been in business can be a factor. Most startup dedicated hosting companies are also stable ones but usually companies that have stood the test of time are in a better position to offer you better services. The edge that these companies would have over startup companies is that these companies have experienced a variety of issues through their life cycle. This means they can probably offer solutions more rapidly because of their ability to diagnose problems quickly on the basis of past experiences.
• Security – If you choose an unmanaged dedicated server, you will need to perform all security updates yourself, or employ someone to do it. If you are looking for a managed dedicated server, look for reviews on particular companies to gauge feedback on how effective they were at setting up and maintaining system security and the protection of data.

It is not very easy to judge the reliability of a dedicated hosting service by just glancing at their website. You need to do a lot of research on the past reviews about the hosting company from past or present clients. Such testimonials can be easily found with the help of a good search engine. You can also review their blogs to judge the reliability by seeing the promptness with which the company responds to complaints and issues. Their customer feedback mechanism can also give you an insight into this.

Rebecca has written more articles on web hosting resellers here. You can read about the reseller hosting service here.