Before we get on with the benefits of the dedicated server let us understand what exactly is meant by the term “Dedicated”. Simply stated dedicated means that the resources such as hard disk space and bandwidth are exclusive to you and are not shared with others. When you host your website on a shared server you are basically sharing resources with others which might not be a bad thing if you are starting a website on an experimental basis but if you are running a professional high traffic web application on a shared server you risk losing your clients credibility. You require a dedicated server if your web application is drawing too much traffic for the shared server to handle, if your application is growing in terms of disk space, if you want to take complete control of your application and if you want to increase security. Dedicated server gives you greater reliability and better performance and rids you of the problems you face in a typical shared server such as downtime, traffic bursts etc.

Dedicated Servers are more beneficial in the sense that they provide you full control over the system. You can change the underlying software applications and programs as per your requirements. They are an ideal solution for mission critical sites requiring custom server applications such as streaming media, chat servers, online gaming, enterprise email, database, e-commerce etc. Nowadays hosting companies offer fully managed solutions so that you are not bothered about software updates, security patches and installing and configuring software applications required for your website.

Security is one crucial aspect of all websites and enterprise applications. With shared server hosting the security of your application is limited to the security levels setup by your hosting service provider. In other words you can’t do anything to make your server more secure but such is not the case with a dedicated server. Using dedicated servers you can customize the security levels of the system for e.g. You can install your choice of anti-virus, firewall, Intrusion detection & prevention software and can tweak them according to your requirements. If the budget allows you can hire a professional company dealing with server security for the job or do it yourself.