Dedicated web hosting is a type of web hosting whereby the user has his own server and has control over it. To understand Dedicated web hosting, we first need to define web hosting. Web hosting is a service that is provided by companies that allows businesses to publish their websites on the World Wide Web. The hosting company provides other businesses space on the server to store data as well as internet connectivity.

There are different types of hosting services that are offered to companies depending on the business’s needs. Dedicated hosting is for websites that are generating a very large amount of traffic, for instance 35 million hits a day and for this reason will require a huge space on the server and an advanced level of technical support. For this reason, dedicated hosting is usually more expensive compared to other types of hosting such as free hosting and shared web hosting.

Think of a provider as the landlord to an office park and the dedicated web hosting will be the equivalent of a company renting out the entire office park for its business processes. The other alternative for the landlord would be to lease out individual offices, this would be referred to as shared we hosting.

When a dedicated server is rented by a user, it has a specific technical management needs that need to be met. These management aspects are the application of updates, antivirus, backup, security audits, and disaster recovery systems among many more. There is managed dedicated hosting and unmanaged dedicated web hosting.

  • With managed dedicated web hosting, the provider is contracted by the business to manage the management of the server while
  • In unmanaged dedicated web hosting, the management of the server is done by the business owners themselves

Either method works.

Bandwidth and connectivity are two important aspects of dedicated web hosting. Providers usually use three methods of billing for bandwidth; they use the 95th percentile method, the total transfer method and the bandwidth pooling method. The type of billing will range from one provider to another and will depend on the number of visitors of a particular website

The flexibility of dedicated web hosting is subject to two limitations, these are copyright violations and adult content. Many providers prohibit copyright violations and adult content because it is unlawful in many countries and they would be penalized if found to be hosting sites with these types of content.

Simply put, dedicated web hosting is the ‘Rolls Royce’ of web hosting.

Related topics: shared hosting, best hosting providers