Dedicated Hosting Checklist

How to select your dedicated hosting provider? What are the advantages? Which alternatives to consider? Here is your checklist.

About Dedicated Website Hosting

Dedicated website website hosting is when you rent a server which is exclusively dedicated for your business.

Dedicated hosting is much cheaper then having to maintain a server on your own facilities. You get a larger bandwidth, a faster internet connection and better maintenance for a much cheaper price and better security (since the dedicated server is separate then your in-house business network)
Performance. Hosting your site on a dedicated server allows for far better performance then virtual private servers or shared hosting.
Unlike a virtual private server, a server of your own allows you to install your own hardware.
Like a virtual private server, you have complete privacy, guaranteed CPU resources, network bandwidth a large disk storage space, and ability to install your own web applications.
Servers are becoming cheaper each day. Several months ago, I've found a dedicated linux server for 50$/month.

Scalability issues (When your web traffic becomes high, you will have to find another solution. Switching cost may be high).
Sites with lots of traffic may need more then one server (or a load balancing solution).
The maintenance of a shared hosting solution is simpler. Also, It's more standard, hence there is a higher number of applications optimized for shared hosting. Virtual private server hosting solutions tend to be vendor-specific.

Consider dedicated hosting if you need high perfomance of special application needs.
Determine the service level before you buy.
Plan to migrate later, when traffic grows even more.