Best dedicated server hosting of 2024

The best dedicated hosting provides your own resources, extra security, and more speed and reliability than shared or VPS hosting. As resources are yours and yours alone, there is more flexibility allowing you to do what you want when you want. Dedicated servers are often used for gaming, critical tasks, and separating infrastructure. 

With so many use cases you'll only know what's best for you but we've narrowed down the list to these categories to help you find the fastest, most reliable, configurable, or most secure dedicated hosts for whatever you want to do with them.

You need a bit more tech savvy with a dedicated host and if you're looking for something for gaming our best Minecraft hosting guide might be a better suit. You may also want to consider whether you really need a dedicated host and whether one of the best VPS servers could also cover your needs.

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The best dedicated hosting providers of 2024 in full

Best dedicated host

InMotion Hosting was founded in 2001, and now with over two decades of experience, it boasts 170,000+ customers, 24/7/365 customer support, and a world-class range of hosting products, including shared, WordPress, VPS, reseller, and dedicated. 

The highlight is its comprehensive set of security features, including free SSL certificates with 2048-bit encryption, automatic updates, custom firewall, and DDoS protection so that your internet-facing applications and system resources are protected from attacks and malware infection. 

A backup manager comes standard with all dedicated InMotion hosting plans as well. It is an off-server backup and recovery service that protects your data from mishaps. InMotion’s infrastructure is connected to four Tier 1 ISPs, so you can rest assured that your website will always be live even if a natural disaster were to occur. 

According to InMotion, all of its data centers are secured by armed guards, locked vaults, and hand scanners—if you are big on security, what’s not to like? It is also an environment-focused hosting company, and its Green Data Center in Los Angeles is proof of that. 

Besides free website transfer and server setup, as well as free backup storage of 10GB-1TB depending on the plan you choose, InMotion Hosting also offers one of the best uptimes in the industry. Its 99.999% uptime guarantee is only bettered (and that too, slightly) by Liquid Web and DreamHost. The service isn’t short on power, either, as higher-end plans can offer 12/24/32-core CPUs and up to 512GB DDR4 RAM.

InMotion’s dedicated hosting plans start at a reasonable $35/month, which is more or less on par with the cheapest dedicated hosting plan i.e. IONOS’s. What's interesting is that InMotion doesn't offer HDD storage, no matter the plan you choose—your range of storage choices starts from 1TB SSD and goes up to 2 x 3.2TB NVMe SSD with the most expensive plan ($749.99/month).

It's also worth noting that while InMotion hosting does offer phone support, that's only available from the Advanced plan onwards—so, both Aspire and Essentials plans only come with live chat and ticket support. If you are looking for class-leading support, we recommend checking out HostGator. Furthermore, all InMotion hosting plans, whether that's dedicated hosting or cloud hosting, are Linux-only. Unfortunately, there's no support for Windows OS.

Best cloud (dedicated alternative)

ScalaHosting has over 15 years of experience and is one of the most prominent names in the cloud hosting space. It is the best cloud hosting service in our tests and while it is absolutely a wildcard in this list of otherwise only traditional dedicated hosting services, it is one to watch out for. 

This is because it is setting forth a much more reliable and cost-effective way of hosting that not only gives customers everything they want from a dedicated server (despite not getting a dedicated physical machine in the traditional sense) but also better redundancy, failover, and scalability. 

You will save a sizable chunk of your budget with ScalaHosting’s cloud VPS as opposed to a dedicated hosting plan wherein you pay for the entirety of the dedicated server, so no matter how much of its total capacity you actually use, you are going to have to pay the full price. 

However, ScalaHosting comes with auto-scaling, meaning you can add/remove RAM and CPU on the fly with just a single click. This way, you will only pay for what you actually utilize—and you will get free credits for any unused resources. Additionally, auto-scaling will help you meet unexpected spikes in website visitors and prevent slowdowns and crashes.

Speaking of pricing, ScalaHosting's managed cloud VPS hosting starts at $29.95/month and this plan comes with 2 CPU cores, 4GB RAM, 50GB turbo-fast NVMe SSD, and unmetered bandwidth. Strictly in terms of hardware, this is still on par with dedicated hosting plans of, say, DreamHost that costs around 4.5x more and whose only real advantage is increased storage capacity. 

The next most important ScalaHosting benefit is geo-redundancy, which is the ultimate hallmark of reliability. As part of its geo-redundant infrastructure, ScalaHosting distributes your website’s resources and backups across multiple data centers worldwide. So, regardless of whether a server is facing downtime or is under maintenance, your website will always be up and running. 

Also, while a dedicated hosting service doesn't offer any money-back guarantee or even a free trial, ScalaHosting comes with a whopping anytime unconditional money-back guarantee. So, you can cancel anytime and rest assured that you will get a refund of the payment pertaining to your plan's remaining duration.

In addition to cloud hosting benefits, ScalaHosting comes with a myriad of other benefits (at a much more affordable price point, by the way) that give traditional dedicated hosting services a run for their money. For instance, you get 24/7 real-time protection of all your websites and web applications from web attacks and breaches. 

Additionally, it offers free SSL certificates, automated backups, brute-force protection, two-factor authentication, and free site migrations—as well as a custom control panel known as sPanel that is more secure, lightweight, and feature-packed than cPanel. 

Best cheap dedicated hosting

IONOS started operations in 1988, and through its comprehensive product range that includes web, cloud, VPS, and dedicated server hosting solutions as well as website and online store-building, serves both SMBs and large-scale businesses on various fronts.

We like how neatly all dedicated server plans are organized—AMD and Intel servers are in separate tiers and everything from the chip’s core-thread count to its base clock and boost clock speeds are clearly mentioned. 

A standout IONOS offering is the pay-per-hour pricing model (and you can cancel anytime) so that you only pay for what you use and nothing extra. The most basic AMD server costs $0.0972/hour ($70/month) and its Intel counterpart is priced at $0.1389/hour or $100/month. 

However, the real deal is IONOS’s cheap server deals that start at a mere $32/month where you get 12GB RAM, 1TB HDD storage, and a 4-core Intel CPU with a respectable 3.4 GHz turbo boost. What's more, the base SSD plan at $50/month allows you to use a 240GB SSD for powering your server and a 1TB HDD for storage purposes—a great way to bring prices down while still ensuring excellent performance. It’s worth noting that the ‘cheap server deals’ do not come with pay-per-hour pricing—and you will have to pay an additional flat charge of $50 as setup fees upfront.

There's lots to like about IONOS’s comprehensive security, too. You get a wildcard SSL certificate, anti-spam, anti-fishing, firewall management, administrative logs (info on all actions performed in the IONOS cloud panel), and VPN SSL that allows you to create a secure VPN connection between a local computer and your cloud server network. 

IONOS is also one of the very few providers we've tested that offer dedicated storage servers—a fantastic offering for large businesses with lots of websites and heaps of data (including large files) to store. 

Unlike in a Network Attached Storage (NAS), in a storage server, the data transfer rate is not limited to the network connectivity rate. Sure, the storage capacity of a NAS can be expanded, but it will be characterized by limited computing power, operations, and transactions—all of these restrictions are eliminated in a storage server.

Coming to the downsides, the uptime guarantee, like InterServer, is 99.9%, which is nothing to sniff at, especially for the price but it’s not extraordinary. Next, although the plans read that they are configurable, there's not much to play around with once you click the “Configure” button—just RAM, storage, and OS. 

Also, at the time of writing, almost every extra storage configuration is out of stock. If you are looking for highly (or even moderately) customizable dedicated hosting, you will be better off with Liquid Web or InterServer. 

Best dedicated for beginners

HostGator, the best shared web hosting provider, also offers a straightforward yet powerful dedicated hosting tier. The company is based out of Texas and has been helping customers establish a successful web presence since 2002. 

In addition to 24/7/365 phone service (toll-free, and you can also request a call back), live chat, and email, as well as server monitoring and remediation, one of the main reasons HostGator is among the best for customer support is that it has separate sections for help articles and a general blog with informational guides on various related topics. 

The help section has different categories, topic-wise, such as website transfers, WordPress, DNS modification, FTP, MySQL, and Softaculous—and each of them contains answers to queries users may have regarding that particular topic. Then there's also a resource-rich HostGator YouTube channel with step-by-step tutorials, HostGator webinars, and a thriving Facebook community. 

This is simply fantastic and unlike what we've seen with other providers, namely InterServer and DreamHost. The only dedicated hosting services that come close to HostGator in terms of support are Liquid Web and InMotion. 

Where HostGator falls behind is customizability. There’s little to no customizability in terms of the actual resources of the plan, but it does offer a lot of options as far as the plan's duration is concerned—from a single month to as long as three years, including quarterly and six-month payment cycles. This is unique to HostGator (and InMotion) and might be an actual perk for users who want dedicated hosting for shorter periods—perhaps for trial purposes or for a temporary project. 

Coming to the crux of its dedicated hosting i.e. the hardware, right off the bat, you can see that HostGator likes to keep everything simple—and that there's not enough firepower if you need tons of computational power or even storage. However, it will pull through nicely for small and mid-sized businesses. 

There are three plans to choose from, ranging from 8-30GB RAM, 1-2TB HDD (or 512GB-1TB SSD), and $91.98-141.99/month. The base plan comes with a 4-core/8-thread CPU whereas the following two plans are double that. All in all, these are just about the only differences between the plans. 

Everything else, from free content transfers and cPanel to advanced DDoS protection and manual backups are available on every single plan—HostGator’s no-nonsense approach and simplicity are admirable.

Most configurable

Founded in 1997, Liquid Web is a popular hosting service provider that has more than 500,000 sites under management, 10 global data centers, and a myriad of both managed and unmanaged dedicated hosting solutions. It's also one of the very few to offer dedicated cloud hosting. To know more about Liquid Web's cloud offerings (which include true auto-scaling and a pay-per-hour pricing model), check out our best cloud hosting page.

A standout of Liquid Web is the customizability of its plans—it's even more customizable than InterServer as it gives you a few more options to tinker around with. These include a choice of control panel and backups—you can choose between Liquid Web's off-server backup (data is sorted in the Liquid Web Cloud) and Acronis cyber backups where data is stored both off-server and off-site in the Acronis Backup Cloud. And, of course, everything from RAM to storage to bandwidth is easily customizable.

It's also right up there with DreamHost as one of the most reliable providers on the market. It guarantees a network uptime of 100% through a clear-cut Service Level Agreement (SLA) that promises to give you free credits if it doesn’t deliver on its promises. 

We also like Liquid Web's security offerings. In addition to DDoS protection that comes standard with all dedicated hosting plans, you can also opt for an antivirus for malware cleanup and remediation, vulnerability assessment and scanning, and/or an advanced intrusion detection system. However, all these are paid add-ons, starting from $10/month to $49/month for the whole package that's called Server Secure Plus. 

Another thing to admire about Liquid Web is its overall simplicity. The entire process of customizing your plan is the simplest we've seen—plus, its website design is more pleasing to the eye than, say, InterServer’s very blue and very bold customization page. 

All that you have to do is select your desired location (US Central/US West/EU Netherlands) and your operating system (Windows/Linux). It’s worth noting that you can change the OS later while configuring your plan. You will then be presented with three pre-designed plans—and a fourth customizable plan for large enterprises that entails getting in touch with Liquid Web’s agents. All in all, you don't have to sift through tons of plan options, as is the case with InterServer or IONOS.

Also, there are only 3-5 chips in total in Liquid Web’s kitty, whereas other providers like InterServer, IONOS, or InMotion offer a lot more. This makes it a great choice for non-tech-savvy customers who want a plug-and-play solution without getting into the nitty-gritty. 

However, it can be a tough pill to swallow for those who know what they are doing and would like more chip options—or even more pre-designed plans for that matter. The pricing (plans start from $199/month) is rather steep as well, so beginners will be better off with budget solutions from IONOS or InMotion hosting.

Most reliable dedicated hosting

DreamHost started from a dorm room back in 1997 and has since then served over 400,000 customers spanning more than 100 countries. It currently hosts more than 1.5 million websites and is widely known for its cheap web hosting and WordPress hosting. Today, though, we shift our focus towards its dedicated server hosting services. 

Where dedicated hosting services are happy offering 99.9% to 99.999% uptime guarantees, DreamHost knocks it out of the park with a whopping 100% network uptime guarantee. This is made possible by DreamHost’s multiple data centers spread worldwide, emergency generators, redundant cooling, and constant monitoring. 

However, you are certainly paying a premium for class-leading reliability—DreamHost’s entry-level plan is priced at $149/month on yearly billing. In this plan, you get a 4-core/8-thread CPU, 1TB HDD, and 4GB RAM. Compare that with InterServer’s base plan ($62/month), for example, and you will see that a slight compromise on uptime gives you 14x RAM and 4x storage, and that too, NVMe SSD. 

All in all, if you are after maximum reliability, meaning you just can't afford to have your site down for even the smallest portions of time—and you value simplicity and ease of use—then DreamHost is a solid choice all day long. 

It comes with an easy-to-use custom-built control panel that allows you to seamlessly manage your websites, email, databases, and billing. A few more likable DreamHost features include unlimited bandwidth, DDoS protection, and OPcache for faster load times. 

Additionally, you get 24/7/365 expert support on every dedicated hosting plan so that you can get your queries sorted without missing a beat. Plus, there's an in-depth knowledge hub with multiple guides and tutorials on various topics as well as a glossary for beginners for first-hand troubleshooting. 

However, for all its reliability and beginner-friendly offerings, DreamHost comes with a handful of limitations that are worth discussing. First, it has only two CPU core options, a 4-core one and the other a 12-core CPU. Second, and the more concerning shortfall, is that you can only have SSD storage if you pick the 12-core CPU. 

So, as long as you are getting the Xeon 4-core CPU, the maximum storage you can opt for is a 2TB HDD drive—only on the 12-core CPU plans can you get 240GB SSD. Plus, that's about the maximum storage you are going to get with DreamHost, as there is also no option to pair an SSD drive with a secondary high-storage HDD drive, which is something you get with Liquid Web as well as other providers on the list. 

Most powerful dedicated hosting

InterServer was founded in 1999 by two tech-savvy high-school students and is now one of the most experienced providers in the industry, serving customers with varying needs worldwide, including individual freelancers as well as Fortune 500 companies. It offers the entire spectrum of hosting services, from shared and cloud hosting to dedicated and reseller hosting.   

InterServer is hands down the best dedicated hosting for users who need high-performance computing capabilities i.e. those who work with machine learning applications, complex simulations, or data-heavy workloads. This is because it is the only provider that offers GPU-dedicated servers that are capable of handling the aforementioned tasks all of which need massive processing power which is far beyond the capabilities of even a good high-end CPU.

While every other dedicated hosting service only offers CPU-based servers—notably the Intel Xeon lineup of chips—InterServer knocks it out of the park with AMD Radeon 7900, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080, and RTX 2080 Ti. Note that these are among the best graphics cards on the market right now. 

Sure, GPU-dedicated servers are more expensive than CPU servers, but given the sheer amount of power under their hood (they also come with 64-128GB memory and 2 x 1TB NVMe storage) and the fact that they are tailor-made for a small section of the hosting audience i.e. customers who need truck loads of power, they are well worth the splurge, especially when InterServer is the only hosting provider offering such a service in the first place. 

However, that’s not to say that anyone with standard dedicated hosting needs won’t find value in InterServer. There are tons of CPU-based server options, too, and you can choose from three pre-designed plans with 64-256GB memory, 2-8TB SSD storage, and 1Gbps unmetered bandwidth or get hands-on with its customizable servers. 

With InterServer’s customizable servers, you get a lot of options to choose from—AMD Ryzen, Intel Xeon, as well as chips from the AMD Epyc series. Not only that, but you can also go as high as a 52-core CPU and pair it up with another CPU with the same specifications to craft a highly powerful server. All of the plans are highly customizable, and you get tons of options whether that’s for RAM, hard drives, the operating system, bandwidth, or IP.

So, even on the CPU side of things, there’s a lot of power on offer, plus the advantage with these plans is that they are very competitively priced, with the most basic plan set at a reasonable $76/month and coming with a 6-core CPU, 64GB RAM, 2TB SSD (you can ditch SATA SSD and opt for NVMe SSD at no extra cost), and DDoS protection.

DDoS protection is undoubtedly a nice security offering, but what we found slightly disappointing is that despite all of the muscle, InterServer doesn’t hit the sweet spot in terms of security—there’s DDoS protection and that’s it. 

However, that shouldn’t be a deal breaker for most users, especially when there are quite a handful of other nifty features, such as 24/7 uptime monitoring, remote reboots, zero setup fees, and a Service Level Agreement (SLA) guaranteeing 99.9% uptime guarantee. It’s worth noting that the latter should be taken with a pinch of salt because providers like Liquid Web and DreamHost are out there offering a 100% uptime guarantee. 

Best dedicated server hosting FAQs