7 Tips to Help You Choose a Dedicated Server

When your website grows too large for a shared or VPS hosting account, you will need to consider dedicated hosting. Many companies offer dedicated hosting, so how do you know which one is the best for your website and business?

Here are some tips to help you decide which company to use when using a dedicated server.

Value

Your budget will largely dictate which web hosting company you use. But the price should not be the only consideration. A cheap hosting company may not have the latest technology, so your website will have high rates of down time. That can negatively affect your search results, and you will lost traffic. An inexpensive host is also unlikely to have quality tech support, so your questions and problems may not be resolved in a timely manner. Choose a web host that fits within your budget, but be wary of extremely cheap hosts.

Reputation

Find out what other customers are saying about the web host. Are reviews mostly positive? Are there are any potential problems that you should be aware of before signing up? Some web hosting companies have community forums for members to talk to each other. Browse the forums to see what people are saying. If you see the same problem over and over again, you may want to reconsider using that company as your host. You can also ask for feedback in the forums. Current members will tell you if they are happy with the service or not.

Uptime

You lose valuable traffic when your site isn’t online. Less traffic means less sales and ad revenue, so you want a web hosting company with a high rate of uptime. Cheaper hosts usually have service interruptions, and this means your website will be offline until the problem is fixed. If your website is down, Google will penalize you in search results, so this problem could affect your website for weeks or months.

Tech Support

Having a dedicated server is complicated, even for professionals. Problems happen, so you want to have 24 hour tech support if you need it. Look for a company that responds to your questions quickly and fixes the problem promptly. Ideally, the hosting company should offer email, phone and live chat support.

Service Level Agreements

The web host should offer a Service Level Agreement. This agreement will outline their tech support response time, website uptime, and how server upgrades are handled. They should give you advance notice of downtime and server upgrades.

Growth

Your website will grow and change over time, so you need a dedicated server that will change with you. It should be easy for you to upgrade or downgrade your hosting package as needed, so look for a flexible web host. This is especially important for young websites because they could reach high traffic levels in a short time. Moving your website from one server to another takes a lot of time and stress, so it’s important to find a host that allows you to grow.

Hardware

Make sure the web hosting company is using servers and not desktop computers. Desktop computers are only made to run about 40 hours a week, but servers are built to run 24 hours a day. You do not want to risk the server failing or shutting down, because that means your website will be down until the problem is fixed.