What Is Dedicated Web Hosting? A Beginner's Guide

Dedicated hosting is when you rent the whole server exclusively for yourself, not sharing its resources with other users. Let's go over what you get, how it compares to shared hosting, managed versus unmanaged hosting, and who really needs dedicated hosting.

What is dedicated web hosting, exactly?

It's when you rent the whole physical server exclusively for yourself. The difference from shared hosting is that instead of having just a portion of a single server, you lease an entire physical server for yourself.

Our own Bare Metal servers work exactly this way: one customer, one physical machine, with no hypervisor and no other tenants.

That description is pretty close to the official one. As Wikipedia describes dedicated hosting, it is "a type of Internet hosting in which a client leases the exclusive use of an entire physical server, rather than sharing its resources with other customers."

Note that the scale of your website doesn't make a difference here, but the exclusivity is crucial.

How is dedicated hosting different from shared hosting?

In shared hosting, the resources of a physical server are divided between multiple users. In dedicated hosting, you have the whole server under your control.

The same source lays out the tradeoff clearly: dedicated hosting "provides greater flexibility because the customer has full control over the server, including the choice of operating system, hardware configuration, and software," and generally offers "higher performance, greater security, increased reliability, and greater administrative control than shared hosting."

What's the difference between managed and unmanaged dedicated hosting?

Unmanaged hosting leaves everything, including patches and updates, to you. Managed or fully managed hosting allows you to delegate maintenance, reboots, and other tasks to the hosting provider.

This tiered structure is exactly how the same source breaks down the options, from fully managed at one end to unmanaged at the other.

Do all hosting providers define "managed" the same way?

No. Since there are no official industry standards of what is managed and what is fully managed hosting, the level of support can vary greatly between hosting providers.

That's explicitly noted in the Wikipedia article: "no industry standards have been set to clearly define the management role" — which means the table above is a general pattern, not a guarantee of what any specific provider's plan actually includes. Reading the terms of service for what's included matters more than the label on the plan.

Who actually needs dedicated hosting instead of something cheaper?

Anyone whose application or website requires constant performance, full control over the environment, or resource-intensive operation. Not all websites need dedicated hosting – smaller websites, for example, usually don't.

Again, performance and control are only needed once you start hitting the limits of shared or virtual hosting.

Our Bare Metal servers and VPS plans cater to both ends of that spectrum, allowing you to upgrade to a dedicated server exactly when you need that.