2014-05-23

For websites needing enterprise level hosting to ensure near perfect uptime and very fast load time dedicated hosting is often the way to go. As its name implies, these dedicated hosting providers give their clients exclusive use of bare metal servers. You don’t actually own the server – it’s technically the ownership of the web hosting company – you just rent it on an exclusive basis and get all the added data center services, software and technical support offered. All will provide top-of-the-line enterprise grade servers with a wide array of premium programs and services, and strong customer support. If you are still deciding if a dedicated host is for you, here a four features that make them stand out over other hosting types:

Exclusive & Dedicated Use

Because the dedicated server is yours to use – and yours alone –  you can pretty much do anything with it. You have the option to upgrade your servers and customise it how you wish with your preferred operating system, software and extra kit (i.e. RAM, Storage etc). You will have root access in most cases and a tech support team to install any new kits and software you need as long as it is compatible.

Flexibility and Scalability

Unlike shared hosting plans which have multiple client sites sharing  the disk space and bandwidth of each server, having your own server means you will not run the risk of other sites resource hungry requirements slow your site down. You can scale up and have a flexible plan that is totally unaffected by the other clients of the hosting company. This results in faster calls, better connectivity, and a much safer network environment.

Higher Speed & Performance

Assuming the web host does not have issues with its data centers and guarantees a high network uptime (of at least 99.99%), renting a dedicated server ensures that your websites will load faster and very little if any downtime.  In contrast, shared hosting plans involve server resources sharing, particularly bandwidth. You will have little to no bandwidth transfer limitations when you get a dedicated hosting plan.

Ultra-Secure Hosting Environment

One of the best advantages of dedicated servers is security. Because you have sole access to your server risks of  hacking, spamming, phishing, and DDoS attacks are reduced.

The type of dedicated server you require will depend on many factors such as traffic levels expected, resource heavy scripts required to run, software needed, preference on control panel and operating system, need to scale quickly if required etc. You will also need to consider if you want a managed service, where the web host facilitates all of the customizations and adjustments, or an unmanaged dedicated hosting service designed for those who can manage the server on their own and want total control of the machine.

 

Our Dedicated Host Recommendations

After reviewing the companies ourselves, and analysing hundreds of reviews of 5  independent web hosting sites (i.e. reviews not influenced by referral fees) we have come up with our top 7 dedicated hosts. In truth, the choice should come down to the specs you require and the price as all of the ones listed below offer excellent hardware, support and reliability. Below this table is two other expandable tables which gives you an idea of the specifications of their cheapest and most powerful servers.

 

Liquid Web

Future Hosting

SingleHop

InMotion

Siteground

100TB

MediaTemple

Price From

$179

$80

$159

$119

$229

$210

$2000

Rating







Homepage

LiquidWeb.com

FutureHosting

SingleHop.com

inMotionHosting.com

Siteground.com

100TB.com

MediaTemple.com

Special Offer

10% Off

25% Off

25% Off

Uptime Guarantee

100%

100%

100%

100%

99.99%

100.%

100%

Live Chat

Phone Support

Ticket System

Money Back

30 Days

IP(s)

1

1

5

5 to 15

2

OS

Linux, Windows

Multiple

Linux, Windows

Linux

CentOS

Windows

Linux

Control Panel

cPanel,Plesk

cPanel,Plesk

cPanel,Plesk

Cpanel

cPanel

Tera

Plesk

Managed

Optional

Optional

Cheapest Plan

 

LiquidWeb

Future Hosting

SingleHop

InMotion

Siteground

100TB

MediaTemple

CPU

Intel Xeon E3-1220 V2

Q9550

Intel i5-760

Intel E2220/E5400

Intel i3-2100

Intel E3-1230v2

HP Proliant (HT) Intel Xeon

Cores

4

4

4

2

2

2

4 to 16

Bandwidth

5 TB

10 TB

10 TB

4 TB

5 TB

100TB

3 TB

RAM

8 GB DDR3

2 GB

16 GB

2 GB

4 GB DDR3

8GB

64 GB DDR3

HDD

2 x 1TB

500 GB

2x500 GB

320 GB

500GB SATA II

2 x 1TB

8x300 GB

Price / month

$179

$79.95

$159

$119

$229

$210.15

$2000

Most Powerful Plan

 

LiquidWeb

Future Hosting

SingleHop

InMotion

Siteground

100TB

MediaTemple

CPU

AMD Quad Opteron 6272æ

Xeon E5420

Intel Xeon E5-2620v2

Intel Dual Xeon

Intel Xeon E5-2620

Intel Dual E5-2660

HP Proliant (HT) Intel Xeon

Cores

64

8

12

12

6

8

4 to 16

Bandwidth

5 TB

30 TB

10 TB

10 TB

5 TB

100TB

3 TB

RAM

8 GB

16 GB

16 GB

32GB

16GB DDR3

32GB

64 GB DDR3

HDD

2 x 1TB

4 x 500GB with Raid

500 GB

1.8TB

4x500GB SATA II / RAID 10

2 x 1TB

8x300 GB

Price / month

$799

$200

$369

$570

$429

$210

$2500

Top 7 Dedicated Hosts – Overviews, Reviews & Coupons

Below are overviews of the 7 recommended dedicated hosting providers together with their current price plans and technical specs for their hardware and software. Their price plans for their other hosting plans (i.e. shared, VPS, cloud, reseller, wordpress) will be shown on their site. We have also listed the live coupon codes available for each host which will get you a discount.

 

Overview

Prices & Specs

%

Support

%

Value

%

Reliability

%

Overall

 

 

Homepage:  www.LiquidWeb.com

Prices From: $179

Hosting Types: Dedicated, VPS, Shared

Founded in 1997, LiquidWeb are very experienced and well respected hosting company with 3 of their own private data centers in Michigan and over 20,000 customers in 120+ countries. They offer Tier 1 premium bandwidth, electronic security systems, dedicated power transformers and various forms of UPS backup, plus diesel generators. Their Storm servers are also worth checking out for a high performance cloud alternative.

They have won several high profile awards and consistent praise on impartial forums and review sites mainly down to their dedicated and VPS services. Whilst they do provide shared hosting their main area of expertise is providing hosting for enterprise hosting.

They have over 300 support staff with specialists in general technical Support, server Setup, security and more. Dedicated servers come with a range of options – you can choose the processors, OS, number of core severs as well as several optional extras like backups, storage and firewalls.

They have a 100% network uptime guarantee, a 30 minute hardware replacement guarantee and a 30 minute initial response time guarantee. If they do not meet these targets you get 10 times the downtime back as credit. Base Features :

8GB RAM (DRR3)

RAID1 Primary Drive

2 x 1 TB 7200 RPM SATA RAID 1 Redundant (Primary)

1 TB 7200 RPM SATA (Backup)

120GB Kingston SSD Bonus Drive

5 TB Outbound & FREE Incoming Bandwidth

Prices start from $179 per month. See price and specs tab to compare prices.

CPU

Bandwidth

Base RAM

Base HDD

Price per month

 

Intel Xeon E3-1220 V2 3.1GHZ, Quad Core

5 TB

8 GB (DDR3)

2 x 1TB

$179.00 / month

Info

Intel Xeon E3-1270 V2 3.5GHZ, Quad Core

5 TB

8 GB (DDR3)

2 x 1TB

$209.00 / month

Info

Intel Xeon E5-1650 V2 3.5GHZ, Hexa Core

5 TB

8 GB (DDR3)

2 x 1TB

$289.00 / month

Info

Intel Dual Xeon E5-2603 V2 1.8 GHZ, Quad Core

5 TB

8 GB (DDR3)

2 x 1TB

$279.00 / month

Info

AMD Dual x8 Opteron 6128

5 TB

8 GB (DDR3)

2 x 1TB

$299.00 / month

Info

AMD Dual x8 Opteron 6320

5 TB

8 GB (DDR3)

2 x 1TB

$319.00 / month

Info

Intel Dual Xeon E5-2620 2.0Ghz, Hexa Core

5 TB

8 GB (DDR3)

2 x 1TB

$329.00 / month

Info

Intel Dual Xeon X5650 2.66Ghz, Hexa Core

5 TB

8 GB (DDR3)

2 x 1TB

$479.00 / month

Info

Intel Dual Xeon E5-2650 2.0Ghz, Octo Core

5 TB

8 GB (DDR3)

2 x 1TB

$499.00 / month

Info

Intel Dual Xeon E5-2690 V2 3.0 GHZ, 10 Cores

5 TB

8 GB (DDR3)

2 x 1TB

$899.00 / month

Info

Intel Dual E5-2697 V2 2.7 GHZ, 12 Cores

5 TB

8 GB (DDR3)

2 x 1TB

$1199.00 / month

Info

AMD Quad x 8 CORES 2.0Ghz Opteron 6128

5 TB

8 GB (DDR3)

2 x 1TB

$499.00 / month

Info

AMD Quad x 16 CORES 2.1Ghz Opteron 6272

5 TB

8 GB (DDR3)

2 x 1TB

$799.00 / month

Info

 

 

Overview

Prices & Specs

%

Support

%

Value

%

Reliability

%

Overall

 

 

Homepage:  www.FutureHosting.com

Prices From: $79.95

Hosting: Dedicated, VPS

Discount: 10% Off All Hosting Plans:

Click To Reveal Coupon Code

Future Hosting is a company that does not have the same profile as some of the others on this list but I have had good experiences with them and they are very well regarded by many as can be seen if you do some research on the hosting forums (which is why I originally signed up with them). I currently use their VPS service for one of my other websites and have generally been impressed with their tech support and the speed and reliability of their servers.

They have a global network infrastructure with 5 data centers in 3 continents including Miami, Chicago, Santa Clara/San Francisco, Brisbane, or London and offer managed and unmanaged servers ($20-$30 extra per month for managed depending on if you want their standard or pro managed service). The main features of their dedicated server packages are as follows:

Standard setups with Quad Core & Hex Core up to 16GB RAM & 2TB HDD with RAID and SSD drives – that is powerful

Option to add SATA II hard drives up to 1TB, SA-SCSI (SAS) Hard Drives up to 600GB, RAID Cards and Upgrade RAM by 1GB increments

Free Migrations with their managed server option (cPanlel -> cPanel or Plesk -> Plesk)

Choice of geographic location – Miami, Chicago, Santa Clara/San Francisco, Australia, or London

Various options for automatic backups and pro-active server management (added fees).

24/7 365 Customer support – ticket only but from experience they do respond very fast 24/7

FREE website migration or transfers

CentOS 6 with control panel choice between cPanel, Plesk or Interworx

Choice of multiple geographical data center locations

Full root access

Additional IP’s at $2 per month

Ability to link to their global CDN network

Prices start at $89.95 per month with their current discounts.

The following are the prices Future Hosting’s nine available dedicated hosting plans and a summary of their CPU, bandwidth, base RAM and base disk space. To see a full table of features for their dedicated hosting plans click here.

CPU

Bandwidth

Base RAM

Base HDD

Price per month

 

Q9550 4 x 2.83GHz

10 TB

8GB

1TB

$89.95

Info

X3430 4 x 2.40GHz

10 TB

2GB

500GB

$79.95

Info

X3440 4 x 2.40GHz

10 TB

16GB

2 x 300GB Raid 1

$99.95

Info

X3450 4 x 2.66Ghz+HT

10 TB

8GB

2 x 500GB

$109.95

Info

E3-1230 4 x 3.20GHz+HT

10 TB

8GB

500GB

$129.95

Info

E3-1230v2 4 x 3.30GHz+HT

10 TB

16GB

500GB

$134.95

Info

Xeon 5520 8 x 2.00GHz+HT

10 TB

16GB

4 x 500GB

$199.95

Info

Xeon E5-2620 8x2.26GHz+HT

10 TB

12GB

2 x 500GB

$249.95

Info

Xeon E5420 8 x 2.50Ghz

10 TB

16GB

4 x 500GB with Raid

$199.95

Info

Overview

Prices & Specs

%

Support

%

Value

%

Reliability

%

Overall

 

 

Homepage:  www.SingleHop.com

Prices From: $159

Hosting: Dedicated, Cloud

Singlehop are consistently rated highly in reliability tests and amongst impartial reviewers, They are focused exclusively on business and enterprise clients who need premium reliable hosting (i.e. just dedicated and cloud hosting and no shared). Flexibility and customizability is one of the standout features of SingleHop’s dedicated servers. If you like to be in control of your server specs, then you might want to consider this particular provider. Their servers are located in three military greade data center in Amsterdam, Chicago or Phoenix). All their dedicated bare metal servers include:

Wide range of Windows and Linux OS options

All fitted with Intel processors with Kingston RAM memory

SATAII, SCSI and Intel SSD hard drive options

Hybrid capability

100GBs national network

Unlimited inbound bandwidth for all server options

24/7 free telephone support

Single Processor, Quad-Core Series:

Server

CPU Cores x Speed

Memory

Default Drive(s)

Bandwidth

Monthly

 

Intel Core i5-760

4x2.8GHz

16 GB DDR3

2x500 GB SATA

10TB

$159

Info

Intel Xeon Lynnfield X3430

1x2.4GHz

16 GB DDR3

2x500 GB SATA

10TB

$169

Info

Intel Xeon E3-1230v1

4x3.2GHz

16 GB DDR3

1x500 GB SATA

10TB

$179

Info

Intel Xeon E3-1230v2

4x3.2GHz

8 GB DDR3

1x500 GB SATA

10TB

$189

Info

Intel Xeon E3-1230v3

4x3.2GHz

8 GB DDR3

1x500 GB SATA

10TB

$199

Info

Intel Xeon E3-1270v1

4x3.5GHz

8 GB DDR3

1x500 GB SATA

10TB

$209

Info

Intel Xeon E3-1270v2

4x3.5GHz

8 GB DDR3

1x500 GB SATA

10TB

$219

Info

Intel Xeon E3-1270v3

4x3.5GHz

8 GB DDR3

1x500 GB SATA

10TB

$229

Info

Single Processor, Dual Capable, Quad & Hexa-Core Series:

Server

CPU Cores x Speed

Memory

Default Drive(s)

Bandwidth

Monthly

 

Intel Xeon 5520

4x2.26GHz

32 GB DDR3

4x500 GB SATA

10TB

$259

Info

Intel Xeon 5620

4x2.4GHz

32 GB DDR3

2x500 GB SATA

10TB

$269

Info

Intel Xeon E5-2620v1

6x2.0GHz

16 GB DDR3

1x500 GB SATA

10TB

$279

Info

Intel Xeon E5-2620v2

6x2.0GHz

16 GB DDR3

1x500 GB SATA

10TB

$289

Info

Dual Processor, Quad & Hexa-Core Series

Server

CPU Cores x Speed

Memory

Default Drive(s)

Bandwidth

Monthly

 

Intel Dual Xeon 5520

8x2.26GHz

64 GB DDR3

4x500 GB SATA

10TB

$339

Info

Intel Dual Xeon 5620

8x2.4GHz

32 GB DDR3

2x500 GB SATA

10TB

$349

Info

Intel Dual Xeon E5-2620v1

12x2.0GHz

16 GB DDR3

1x500 GB SATA

10TB

$359

Info

Intel Dual Xeon E5-2620v2

12x2.0GHz

16 GB DDR3

1x500 GB SATA

10TB

$369

Info

 

Overview

Prices & Specs

%

Support

%

Value

%

Reliability

%

Overall

 

 

Homepage:  www.inMotionHosting.com

Prices From: $119

Hosting Types: Dedicated, VPS, Shared, Reseller

 

InMotion Hosting has been in the web hosting business since 2001 and is consistently ranked amongst top web hosts by impartial reviewers – I have checked loads! They offer business, VPS, reseller and dedicated hosting and tend to get great customer feedback on all hosting types. They are on this recommended list due to the quality of their servers, their independently verified uptime, the extra features they add and finally their wide spread and consistent customer positive feedback regarding their reliability, customer support and value for money.

A summary of the features included in all their dedicated hosting packages include:

99.999% net uptime – 2 x Tier1 bandwidth providers are used to keep websites online

Managed Hosting to offer best fit solution and platform optimization

All factory built dell servers with CentOS

2 x Tier1 bandwidth providers to keep websites online

Proactive monitoring of all servers to maintain performance and uptime

Rebootless server upgrade using Ksplice

30 day money back guarantee

Free cPanel and WHM on each server ($425 value)

Free Launch assist service provided by the webhost’s Managed Hosting Team – $300 value

Redundant bandwidth Tier-1 providers

Expertise in using CentOS as server operating system

Their prices start from $199 per month with no set up fee.

Packages

CPU

Bandwidth

Base RAM

Base HDD

Price per month

 

Essential

Intel Core E2220/E5400

4 TB

2 GB

2 x 160 GB

$119.99

Info

Advanced

Intel Xeon E3-1220 3.1GHz

6 TB

4 GB

500 GB

$159.99

Info

Elite

X3440 4 x 2.40GHz

8 TB

8 GB

1.2 TB

$219.99

Info

Comm #1

X3450 4 x 2.66Ghz+HT

10 TB

16 GB

1.2 TB

$469.99

Info

Comm #2

E3-1230 4 x 3.20GHz+HT

10 TB

32 GB

1.8 TB

$569.99

Info

 

Overview

Prices & Specs

%

Support

%

Value

%

Reliability

%

Overall

 

 

Homepage:  www.SiteGround.com

Prices From: $229

Hosting: Dedicated, VPS, Shared

SiteGround was founded in 2004 by a small group of self-confessed geeks who decided to set up their own hositng company and they got fed up of the hosting options available at that time. It currently has data centers in the US (Chicago), Europe (Amsterdam) and Asia (Singapore) and now hosts over 320,000 websites. I have read dozens of reviews on from dedicated server clients several impartial hosting reviews sites and forums and they are nearly all universal. The scores from 308 independent reviews across all their server types averages 4.4/5 which is very high in this industry given the tendency for more unhappy clients to leave reviews than happy ones. Each dedicated server plan includes the following:

30 Day Uptime of 99.999%, 365 Day Uptime: 99.996%

Average Support time of under 15 minutes

Unique ‘Geeky’ Features, composed of WordPress / Joomla staging and autoupdaters, Cloudflare CDN setup, and an option for

Performance Boosters for WordPress, Joomla and Magento to increase load speeds

Free Cloudflare CDN

FREE domain name

FREE two dedicated IP addresses

24/7 priority support by phone, live chat and email

Regular software updates and active server monitoring

Prices start at $229 per month for their dedicated servers.

The three dedicated hosting packages at SiteGround are as follows:

Names

CPU

Bandwidth

Base RAM

Base HDD

Price per month

 

Entry

Intel i3-2100

5 TB

4 GB DDR3

0.5 TB SATA II

$299

Info

Power

Intel Xeon E3-1230

6 TB

12 GB DDR3

1 TB SATA II

$329

Info

Enterprise

X3440 4 x 2.40GHz

8 TB

16 GB DDR3

2TB RAIDI 10

$429

Info

Overview

Prices & Specs

%

Support

%

Value

%

Reliability

%

Overall

 

 

Homepage:  www.100TB.com

Prices From: $210

Hosting: Dedicated, Cloud, Reseller

Discount: 25% Off All Hosting Plans:

Click To Reveal Coupon Code

As their name suggests, 100TB are set up to appeal to clients requiring  high performance, lots of data storage and  a very high bandwidth,. They just offer dedicated, reseller and reseller server services with CDN options and focus on offering faster speeds and more reliability than their competitors through their fully owned multinational data centers and network running Cisco equipment.

Their standard 100TB bandwidth is significantly higher than any other host but of course this is only one factor determining the speed and quality of a dedicated host. Their freebies (up to $75 Google Adwords Credit & free domain for life) are nice but are more suited to shared hosts given the prices are $210+ pe

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