- you have total control over everything related to hosting
- your website performance won't be affected by others
- you won't be penalized by what others do
- you can pay a bit extra to have your server 'managed'
- you can manage your server yourself using Plesk (Plesk 8.x for Windows / Plesk 8.x for Linux / PLESK Demonstration / Download FREE Copy of Plesk)
- you have more options & flexibility for each site
- you can have a dedicated server from around $100 per month.
On the negative side though:
- it's expensive if your total hosting charges aren't approaching $100
- you have to log on to the server and feel comfortable with this
- you have manage & setup your website(s), mailbox(es), etc
- you have to understand a bit more about domains and DNS
- You can choose between Linux & Windows operating system
Our dedicated server case study:
We are outside the USA. We use ASP scripting on our websites, but only because we found it easier to start with as we didn't need to install PHP on our PCs all those years ago.
Anyway about 6 years ago, we found two hosting companies (one big & famous and the other was small) that provided standard Microsoft hosting. We hosted our important sites with the small one and our other sites with the bigger company....
Apart from the dedicated server advantages above, the 'real world things' that make you go for a dedicated server might be:
- reboot (or restart web services with out reboot) when you need
- install server components
- custom error messages (easier for multiple websites)
- other important files (eg global.asa)
- datebase connactions (eg ODBC)
- file location freedom
- bad support
- slow support
- expensive support
.... over time, we were constantly frustrated by these 'real world things'. We tried a VPS (Virtual Private Server - this is where a PC has multiple virtual servers running on it - each virtual server shares the PC's resourses but can be used separately, for example be rebooted without affecting other VPSs) with yet another hosting company. However, this had limitations that we weren't told about when we signed up, like we were only allowed up to 3 IP addresses (we needed more as we use SSL on our sites).
In the end we got a dedicated server of our own. We went with Lunar Pages. We first rang their FREE Support Number - we got to talk to someone straight away! We asked the support guy and then a sales guy various questions and signed up about a year ago. We have now moved all our important sites to the dedicated server and are now saving money compared to before.
We have been with Lunar Pages for over 9 months now. In that time, we have logged over 20 support calls. At first, we called them via the FREE Support Telephone number. But as we got confident in their support, we simply logged the calls online and waited a few hours for an available engineer to answer (they have support engineers in different parts of the world, so you get answers to questions well out of the usual 9-5 business hours). Oh, the big hosting company we used before had farmed out their support to the Philipines and was only of some use because of slow & weak responses. The smaller hosting company was becoming expensive with good but sketchy support - and that was the final straw! Support is the most important thing about a owning a server. Our most recent support issues that Lunar Pages has dealt with extremely well have been titled:
- Event log erros related to server name?
- PHP function zip_open
- changing 'primary domain
- Problems Setting Up New Site
- Blog Software
- URGENT: I can't connect remotely nor ftp
- Name Server(s) & Email Server
- Can not create FTP accounts
- Plesk Backup via FTP
So, to repeat "What has dedicated servers to do with website optimization?". Well, if you need to optimize your non-standard / non-dynamic websites, then you waste a lot of time trying to do things. You find out about thosee things and develop it on your local machine. When you need to go live, you find out you can't. But you don't find out in a few moments. Oh no, you find out after much wasted time and effort, after telephone calls on hold for long periods of time, after browing support FAQs and knowledgebases, after slow responses, after replies by people that don't know their stuff, after people that are just trying to answer you call with something/anything that makes their stats look ok, like aaaaarrrrgggghhh!
Our Tips for a dedicated server?
- Find out if the company you want to go with has negative comments on the web
- Find out what you do/don't get
- Ring up their support number - more than once if you need to - just tell them that you are testing their support before going to them - don't be put off by the fact that you don't have a customer ID!
- make sure you calculate your costs
- be comfortable with server management
- find out about - and make sure you do - backups
A year on, we continue to be with Lunar Pages.
Good Luck with your search for a dedicated server!
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