Best Dedicated Server Hosting: Compare the Top 6 Providers

Dedicated hosting is what you need when it’s time to level up your site and get a server all to yourself, and our in-depth research points to Bluehost as the best overall dedicated hosting provider. It’s not only the best value for money, but it has fantastic RAM and CPU while also being WordPress’s #1 choice. You really can’t go wrong!

Dedicated hosting features the fastest load times, the best support – and the most expensive price tags. While we recommend Bluehost, there are other great hosting providers to choose from. This article will compare and contrast the top six dedicated hosting providers, and help you choose the one that best suits your website.

Quick Comparison

If you’re short on time, compare our top dedicated hosting provides side-by-side in the table below:

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		Overall rating	Starting from – Dedicated	Uptime guarantee	Server locations	Max Bandwidth	Max RAM	Max CPU Coress
Editor’s Choice
Bluehost	IONOS	HostGator	InMotion	A2 Hosting	DreamHost
4.7	4.7	4.2	4.2	3.9	3.8
$141.19	$41	$141.19	$35	Custom plan	$141.19
99.99%	99.99%	99.99%	99.98%	99.95%	100%
USA, Canada, Germany, France, UK, Spain, India, Brazil, Australia	USA, Germany, France, UK, Spain	Utah, Texas	California, Virginia	Michigan	USA, Netherlands, Singapore
15TB	Unlimited	Unlimited	1Gbps Unmetered	15TB	Unlimited
16GB	64GB	30GB	192GB	128GB	64GB
4	8	8	24	16	12
Visit Bluehost	Visit IONOS	Visit HostGator	Visit InMotion	Visit A2 Hosting	Visit DreamHost
See our Bluehost review	See our IONOS review	See our HostGator review	See our InMotion review	See our A2 Hosting review	See our DreamHost review

#1. Bluehost: Best Overall

Bluehost is our overall dedicated hosting king, and it’s easy to see why. Its dedicated hosting plans are among the cheapest of all nine providers, but this doesn’t mean it has compromised on quality.

In fact, Bluehost offers some of the best help and support of any provider we tested. When it comes to features, it even offers free backups, which is rare.

The downside of Bluehost? Fewer CPU cores than most providers, and a cap of bandwidth at 15TB. If you’re a large website with an international audience, Bluehost might not be for you. Otherwise, it could be just what you’re looking for.

Bluehost: Pros and Cons

Bluehost Dedicated Hosting Prices

Bluehost offers three dedicated server plans: Standard, Enhanced and Premium, and they all come with a money-back guarantee, 24/7 support, and four CPU cores.

The pricier the plan, the more storage, RAM, and bandwidth there is. The Enhanced plan is the best value, as it offers the same storage as the Premium plan. Check out our Bluehost Pricing Review for a detailed breakdown.

If all this is looking a bit much, then perhaps one of Bluehost’s VPS hosting plans would be better. Instead of getting your dedicated server, VPS hosting gives you a private room. Think of it like the penthouse suite in a hotel. And Bluehost’s penthouse is the nicest on the market. We gave it a 4.6 out of 5 in our research, the best we tested

#2. IONOS: Best for Affordability

IONOS is our silver medal stunner with a respectable overall score of 4.5 out of 5 for its dedicated hosting service. It has great scores across all our evaluation metrics for dedicated hosting and has the fastest site speed and server response time of all the hosting providers we looked at. It is also the most affordable provider on this list, with plans starting at $41 per month.

If you need more power, then there are range of different plans for you to choose from, giving you a lot of room to pick the support your site needs. It also doubles up as a website builder, meaning you can build your site with them as well.

However, IONOS isn’t all gold. It has a nasty habit of sticking you with additional fees at checkout and makes you pay more if you use Windows. There’s also poor help and support, with no email or live chat support across all plans.

IONOS: Pros and Cons

IONOS Dedicated Hosting Prices

IONOS offers six server options for its dedicated hosting plans: AMD servers, Intel servers, ARM servers, Server deals, Storage servers, and GPU servers. Starting prices range from $41 to $3,990 per month.

All of these plans come with unlimited bandwidth, daily backups, and free domains. IONOS also has the most server locations, with servers based in London, Frankfurt, Berlin, Spain, Nevada, and New Jersey.

#3. HostGator: Best for Bigger Sites

HostGator’s pleasant mascot charms many, and they are our number one choice for shared hosting providers. In terms of dedicated hosting, they are in third place.

While not excelling in performance, HostGator dominates in the help and support category with a 4.9 out of 5 in our research. With an array of help and support options (including 24/7 phone and live chat), we think it’s the best for bigger sites, giving you the necessary support for when your site may be getting a little too big for just one person to manage.

HostGator’s prices aren’t the cheapest, but you certainly get a lot of help for your buck. The downside? Both servers are located in the US, so this might not be the best option for sites with a large international audience

Hostgator: Pros and Cons

HostGator Dedicated Hosting Prices

With HostGator, you have three dedicated plan options: Value, Power, and Enterprise. All come with unmetered bandwidth, which is a huge plus. The Power Server plan is the middle option and is the one HostGator recommends.

For annual payments, the prices are:

• Value – $141.19/month
• Power – $238.79/month
• Enterprise – $343.79/month

#4. InMotion: Best Range of Features

InMotion’s dedicated hosting plans have a lot to offer across the board, but its standout feature is the number of CPU cores on offer.

What does this mean for you? Well, if you have a tech-heavy website, it’ll help keep site speed down, and stop users from bouncing away from your site. What’s more, it’ll encourage Google to rank your site higher. Not something to be sneezed at!

In our research, we gave it 4.8 out of 5 for features, the highest of any provider we tested. It also scores a shocking 2 out of 5 for value for money – the lowest among the brands we tested. Its plans are an investment, but they reflect the quality InMotion brings to the table.

InMotion: Pros and Cons

InMotion Dedicated Hosting Prices

InMotion offers nine different dedicated hosting plans, split into three categories: Starter, Custom, and Premium. The Aspire plan is the cheapest option, costing $35 per month. The eight other plans range from $99 to $339.98 per month.

#5. A2 Hosting: Best Storage

A2 Hosting scores quite high in disk space, coming second with a 4.3 out of 5 in our research. Top configurations for the provider include between 16GB and 128GB storage.

However, you’ll need to talk directly to the host’s sales team to get a dedicated set up. Aside from that, there’s nothing A2 Hosting really fails at, but there’s also nothing it particularly succeeds in either.

A2 Hosting: Pros and Cons

A2 Hosting Dedicated Hosting Prices

A2 Hosting requests interested users get in touch with its sales team to discuss custom plans and to reserve a dedicated server. There’s no set pricing or subscriptions to sign up to, but this gives you the flexibility to create a plan that best suits your needs.

#6. DreamHost: Free WordPress Plugin

DreamHost is a decent provider – it boasts 100% uptime and a money-back guarantee if it doesn’t hit this mark. There are also nine different plans and the second-highest site speed.

But we’re going to have to yuck your yum on DreamHost a bit. The help and support are lacking, with no phone facilities. This, combined with a relatively low performance across our research for features, disk space, and high costs, doesn’t inspire much positivity, finding DreamHost at the bottom of our list.

DreamHost: Pros and Cons

DreamHost Dedicated Hosting Prices

What’s odd about DreamHost’s plans online is that they separate them by Standard and Enhanced, which you can then customize how much RAM and storage you need. There’s also the free plugin to WordPress, which is super useful for all budding website builders. The lowest price starts at $165/month (billed annually), and the most expensive is $625/month (billed annually).

How Do You Choose a Dedicated Server Hosting Provider?

As you’ve seen from this article, there’s plenty to consider when you’re choosing a hosting provider. This includes:

• Memory – The amount of RAM your hosting server can provide. This will ensure your website can load quickly and handle all processes smoothly.
• Bandwidth – The amount of allocated data you can transfer between server and site. More bandwidth ensures faster load times, which is crucial to reduce the bounce rate for visitors to your site.
• Location of servers – Where your server is physically located. The closer to your audience, the better, or they will suffer latency (or lag) when on your site.
• Number of CPUs – The CPU is the brain of your computer, and the more brains the better! More CPU cores allow more processes and data to be handled, letting you add more to your site.
• Value for money – This is the price of the hosting provider against the features it offers. You want to hit a good balance where the price accurately reflects the product.
• Guaranteed uptime – The amount of time your website will be live in a year. The hosting provider will need to do maintenance, so 100% cannot be guaranteed (although some do), but 99.9% is the average, with a total of eight hours of downtime per year.
• Help and support – The support the provider offers to assist you. Hosting can be tricky, so it’s essential they teach newcomers how the process works.

It’s worth noting here that value for money doesn’t mean the lowest prices – while it may not offer the cheapest plans on the list, the value for money Bluehost offers earns it a solid overall score of 4.7 out of 5 in our research.

Best Dedicated Server Hosting: Summary

This article has taken you on a whistle-stop tour of the best dedicated hosting providers, as determined by our extensive independent research. Now let’s recap.

Best dedicated servers:

1. Bluehost – Best overall dedicated hosting provider
2. IONOS – Best for affordability
3. HostGator – Best for bigger Sites
4. InMotion– Best for range of features
5. A2 Hosting – Best for storage
6. Dreamhost – Free plugin for WordPress

Our independent research found Bluehost to be the best all-around provider, making it a safe choice for anyone looking for a dedicated hosting provider for their website. It offers the best value for money, and its RAM and CPU offerings are great too. It’s WordPress’s #1 choice, and ours too!

At the end of the day, it’s about deciding what’s most important to you and making this your priority. All of these providers offer a money-back guarantee trial, so experiment and find the one that suits the needs of your site.

Until then, Happy Hosting!

Written By

Hannah Whitfield

Hi, I’m Hannah:

I first started as a Content Manager for Website Builder Expert in 2019, but as of 2021, I’ve continued to help business owners succeed since moving to work as Senior Content Marketing Manager at CREOATE – a company that helps small businesses grow. During my time at Website Builder Expert, I oversaw the content production for the entire website and personally tested all of the website builders and ecommerce platforms to bring you, the readers, fair and accurate articles.

You can find me on Linkedin here.Having previously worked as a B2B writer, Hannah joined the Website Builder Expert team as Content Manager in 2019. During this time, she became an expert in the industry, testing and researching all of the top website builders on the market to bring you detailed and up-to-date guides and reviews.

Outside of Website Builder Expert, her writing and research has been featured on several websites, including RankMagic, WP Reset, Business Insider, and SmallBizDaily. And, as of 2021, Hannah now works for CREOATE as a Senior Content Marketing Manager – a company that helps small businesses grow.Linkedin: Hannah Whitfield

Email: hannah@websitebuilderexpert.com

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