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Check this list of key factors before you buy dedicated server<\/strong> hosting.\u00a0 Base your decision on price, performance, security, uptime, support and existing customer satisfaction – but sacrificing any one of those is likely to lead to bitter disappointment.\u00a0 Remember the immortal words of Benjamin Franklin, “The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten<\/em>“.\u00a0 Check out our quick guide on how you can buy dedicated servers<\/a><\/strong> that meet your needs.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n There is likely a laundry list on the Internet of 1,001 things to check before you buy a dedicated server – but what’s the point?\u00a0 At least 995 of those things are either part of a bigger picture item, or they’re not nearly as important as the absolute essentials.\u00a0 Check on the following FACTORS that MATTER before making a decision<\/strong>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n We could take the moral high ground and tell you that other things are more important, but in reality, if the price isn’t right – there’s no point in looking at anything else<\/strong>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Everyone has seen unmanaged dedicated servers for $59 and up.\u00a0If you don’t care about performance, security, uptime, support and ratings\/reviews, or you’re one of those people who goes to Las Vegas and bets on snake-eyes being rolled each throw of the dice… then feel free to take your chances<\/strong> with one of those cheap hosting vendors.\u00a0 We won’t recommend it – but hey, your company, your website, your decision.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In the real world, most people demand a certain level of those other factors, because if their website is down, slow, or has issues – it costs companies money – sometimes tons of money.\u00a0 When your website pays the bills, you MUST have it performing well, secured from hackers, online 99.9%+ of the time and supported 24×7.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Buying dedicated server hosting means paying a reasonable price for a high quality service<\/strong>.\u00a0That typically means something in the range of $150 to $350 per month, depending on the hardware\/network specifications.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Performance means much more than pure hardware specifications<\/strong>.\u00a0 More CPU, more RAM, more network transfer, and faster port speeds are part of the equation.\u00a0 However, performance isn’t just having X amount of drive space.\u00a0 It’s what type of drive and how it’s configured as well (SSD vs HDD, RAID vs non-RAID, NAS\/SAN vs local SSD RAID, etc).\u00a0 Hardware RAID vs software RAID can make massive performance differences.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Performance choices are pretty straightforward.\u00a0 BUT… some hosts use cheap or old hardware, which may initially sound like great specifications – but end up being slower and more likely to have failures<\/strong> that introduce downtime.\u00a0 The same is true of networking.\u00a0 Premium backbone networking, alongside multiple redundant routes, is one mammoth differentiator among hosting providers.\u00a0 You’re unlikely to be getting premium anything for $59 a month.\u00a0 At $159 a month, you can get premium, redundant, networking with premium, dependable high-performance hardware.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Remember, sometimes low priced offers don’t include hardware upgrades, free control panel choices, backup systems, optimizations or configurations, which undoubtedly can take the price up<\/strong> from the starting offer price.\u00a0 Certainly, budget hosting companies won’t give you a chance to choose premium hardware OR networking.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Having personally been a victim of cross-site scripting vulnerabilities (having my site hacked because a different site was first hacked on a server, and it then enabled my site to be attacked easily), I am very familiar with what it feels like to buy cheap hosting that’s poorly secured<\/strong>.\u00a0 Note:\u00a0 this was several years prior and was NOT a KnownHost server.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Knowing how to install server software is one thing – just about anyone can do it with a few clicks and selecting options like timezone.\u00a0 Knowing how to configure server the underlying operating system and then how to configure all the instances of sites running on a server SECURELY, is quite a different matter entirely.\u00a0 With many budget hosting companies, it’s one or two guys working out of their basement office, using hardware from other companies, house in datacenters they’ve never visited.\u00a0 A quality, dependable provider has teams of software engineers<\/strong> who spend their entire day installing, testing and assessing various configuration options to get the best performance possible, securely.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When you’re looking to buy dedicated server<\/a><\/strong>, or servers – be sure to keep security in mind.\u00a0 Backups are great, but preventing attacks<\/strong> is much more important.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n It really doesn’t matter how affordable a site is, or what wonderful hardware it has, if it’s going to be offline – because no one can find it!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n For business-class hosting, you really need better than 99.9% uptime, which can be verified at sites like hyperspin.com<\/a>.\u00a0 Clicking on that hyperspin.com link will take you to a page of results.\u00a0 Scroll down the list and you’ll find people with 1 or 2 servers – such as tiny virtual hosting companies that sell shared or VPS<\/a><\/strong> space.\u00a0 You’ll also see some with 14 results (RocketVPS a division of KnownHost) and even one with 360+ servers (KnownHost).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Current KnownHost stats range from 99.993% to 99.996%.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Find out more about uptime<\/a> and why it matters via other articles on the KnownHost blog.\u00a0 Suffice it to say, hours of downtime are an eternity to an online business, and maximum uptime should be one of your biggest criteria<\/strong> for deciding where to buy a dedicated server.\u00a0 Don’t be fooled by companies who offer and hope<\/strong>, which is where they offer you 100% uptime, but never achieve it, hoping you will get lucky and when your site does go offline, that you won’t bother to ask for a refund.\u00a0 It’s shady.\u00a0 It happens (with some companies).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sometimes things don’t go perfect – there can be issues that need resolved, which is life.\u00a0 On those occasions, you shouldn’t settle for anything less than 24x7x365 technical support<\/strong>.\u00a0 You shouldn’t settle for anything longer than a 10 minute<\/strong> initial response time.\u00a0 You shouldn’t have to deal with half a dozen people because one department or one person isn’t skilled enough to handle your issue.\u00a0 \u00a0You shouldn’t get charged because something went wrong.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Technical support is critical.\u00a0 Quality technical support is what separates cheap companies from good ones<\/strong>.\u00a0 When you buy dedicated server hardware (rent it monthly actually), you shouldn’t have to be a super-geek yourself.\u00a0 As a business owner, or website manager, or marketing\/design agency, you need to focus your time on acquiring new customers, servicing existing ones and delivering great service to those who need it.\u00a0 You shouldn’t be trying to figure out linux error codes, php resource errors, or defragging a database in hopes of curing some technical issue.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Enter Fully Managed Services!\u00a0 Unmanaged hosting leaves you to become the supergeek<\/strong>.\u00a0 Fully managed hosting, such as at KnownHost<\/a><\/strong>, means that there’s a team of top notch technical wizards who pre-configure things properly so as to avoid errors<\/strong> much of the time.\u00a0 They also install components that can automatically renew and apply SSL cert renewals, apply updates to software without needing a reboot, or expand your available RAM\/drive space without needing to migrate you to another machine or change your IP address.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Fully managed hosting gives you the freedom to manage your business while professionals manage your website hosting.\u00a0 Don’t settle for less – you deserve it!<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Before you buy a dedicated server from anyone, you must take a moment as part of your due diligence to search for their company name + reviews.\u00a0 Try putting this in your Google search bar<\/a>:<\/p>\n KnownHost reviews<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n You get about 45,000 results and at the top it’ll include things like:<\/p>\n facebook.com<\/strong> – rating 4.7 out of 5 (131 reviews)<\/p>\n whoishostingthis.com<\/strong>\u00a0 – rating 4.5 out of 5 (16 reviews)<\/p>\n webhostinghero.com<\/strong> – rating 10 out of 10 (118 reviews)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n No company that’s been in business will truthfully have 100% perfect reviews on all sites forever.\u00a0 It’s just not possible.\u00a0 There are ruthless competitors who will post false reviews, just as there are a few people in the world who won’t be satisfied with anything even if it’s free – that’s just the nature of people.\u00a0 But, check them, read them, and compare to what’s being said about competitors you’re considering and see how many reviews they’ve got.\u00a0 This is a sanity check<\/strong> to make before deciding, based on the other factors outlined above.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n When it’s time to buy dedicated servers, rent them, lease them, or just add more to your existing stock, make sure you balance your need to save money with what you’ll save by choosing quality managed dedicated server hosting<\/strong>.\u00a0 Key criteria include:<\/p>\nBefore You Buy Dedicated Server Hosting<\/h2>\n
Factor 1:\u00a0 Price<\/h3>\n
Factor 2:\u00a0Performance<\/h3>\n
Factor 3:\u00a0 Security<\/h3>\n
Factor 4:\u00a0 Uptime<\/h3>\n
Factor 5:\u00a0 Support & Fully Managed Administration<\/h3>\n
Factor 6:\u00a0 Reviews<\/h3>\n
Conclusions<\/h2>\n