We know, cheap dedicated server hosting sounds like an oxymoron. The top floor of the hosting high-rise is typically reserved for high-powered enterprises with large demands for bandwidth, data storage, and computing power.
Just because you need extra oomph in your hardware, however, doesn’t mean you need to break open the piggy bank.
Dedicated servers are exactly what they sound like: The server’s entire resources are devoted to powering your site or application with the utmost performance, processing power, and storage.
The important investment can pay dividends when you find hosting providers that bring the most value to their dedicated server packages.
While the word “cheap” needs to be taken with a grain of salt here, we’ve compiled the 10 best options for cheap dedicated hosting plans depending on your specific needs and budget.
In most cases, spending a few extra dollars unlocks a ton of useful features that will streamline your hosting experience and make a big difference in site performance and visitor experience.
Our top-notch host might not be the cheapest, but Liquid Web excels by offering the utmost functionality, flexibility, and customer support for a price that we’re not sure why it isn’t higher.
Whether you’re looking for Windows or Linux servers, four CPU cores or 24, Liquid Web technicians are on standby with always-there Heroic Support and a 100% network uptime guarantee.
The premier host even includes perks such as built-in backups, enhanced security, DDoS protection, SSD RAID 1 storage, and the CloudFlare CDN.
Monthly Starting Price
$79.00
Managed hosts take care of all things infrastructure so you only have to focus on your business, website, or application.
Liquid Web offers three tiers of managed services, ranging from self-managed to fully managed, where technicians manage a customer’s hardware and web server and supply best-effort support for third-party software.
Core-managed dedicated server plans cover server infrastructure, hardware, and core elements of the LAMP stack, while self-managed plans only cover the hardware and infrastructure.
Managed infrastructure and security updates ease a lot of the pressures around maintaining dedicated servers.
Our favorite host for managed servers, however, is InMotion Hosting.
Coupled with SSDs that produce 20x faster hosting services, InMotion provides scalability, flexibility, and reliability. The company’s managed hosting team handles security patches and updates for the operating system and cPanel, guaranteeing faulty hardware replacement in two hours or less.
Monthly Starting Price
$99.99
Most hosts offer at least some form of managed services, given that the hardware is living in its own facilities or datacenters. Even if the hosting provider insists on hardware and infrastructure management, they’re usually plenty willing to butt out of your web server if you ask nicely.
There will be more pressure and demands on you to keep everything running smoothly and securely, but your host will continue offering technical support if you run into a jam.
HostGator strikes the perfect balance with its unmanaged dedicated servers, giving customers complete control over their hosting environment while not leaving them out in the cold.
HostGator allows for full root access and oversight of all server settings, services, and accounts through cPanel and WHM control panels. In addition to around-the-clock server monitoring, HostGator welcomes customers to call, chat, or email premium support agents any time, any day.
Monthly Starting Price
$76.56
Linux hosting plans can come in several different flavors, including Linux, CentOS, Ubuntu, and Debian.
As you’ll see in the cPanel section a little further down, Linux and cPanel tend to be the default hosting configuration providers make available. Popular providers InMotion Hosting and HostGator, for example, have gone all-in on Linux and don’t even offer a Windows plan.
King in the open-source realm, Bluehost is an easy pick for top Linux hosting services. The well-regarded hosting provider is known particularly for using open-source programs, including Linux and OpenStack, to power its infrastructure, and Bluehost is one of only four hosts to be endorsed by the WordPress Core team.
Monthly Starting Price
$79.99
Windows can run on nearly any processor, while Linux is recommended to run with Intel processors. One thing to keep in mind as you shop for Windows hosting: The operating system chews through a lot of computing resources, so look for plans that don’t cut corners on RAM.
This one isn’t even close. Not only can InterServer wow customers with a $40-per-month server, but they will throw in five IP addresses, managed support, data migration, around-the-clock monitoring, and four-hour provisioning without any setup fees.
The Intel Dual-Core Atom server is understandably small and low-powered when compared with InterServer’s other configurations, but having your choice of operating system and control panel makes the company an easy pick for an affordable dedicated Windows server hosting environment.
Monthly Starting Price
$39.99
We’ve written the ultimate guide to comparing the various options, but the general rule of thumb is to use cPanel for Linux machines and Plesk for Windows accounts.
Control panels automate several processes behind your hosting experience such as software installations.
Given the popularity and affordability of the open-source Linux operating system, you’d be hard-pressed to find a hosting provider that doesn’t include cPanel.
Where hosts can distinguish themselves, however, is by further optimizing the cPanel interface by customizing it to user needs and the host’s features.
That’s exactly why we recommend Bluehost - the highly regarded host took cPanel an extra mile so that customers can easily manage all of their websites, domains, emails, files, and computing resources from one central location. Instant provisioning and an open-source-friendly environment add to Bluehost’s perks, as does the company’s custom-designed database manager.
Monthly Starting Price
$79.99
Plesk is generally cheaper than cPanel licenses, but the expenses of running Windows make the pair slightly harder to find. Both the Plesk and cPanel control panels are easy to operate. With familiar, simplistic layouts, site administrators can generally switch between the two platforms without much hassle.
Plesk uses the HTTPS protocol, offering a high level of security and unbeatable stability. Beyond Windows and Linux compatibility, Plesk supports several languages: English, German, Japanese, Spanish, French, and Russian.
That flexibility in supporting customers is mirrored in Liquid Web’s dedicated server plans.
In addition to eight single- and dual-core processor configurations, the company’s Solutions Architects will work with customers to design a custom environment tailored to their website or application’s needs. Liquid Web offers Plesk in the fully managed Windows dedicated servers.
Monthly Starting Price
$79.00
SSDs, however, have no moving parts and instead house information in flash microchips. SSDs are much faster, but the newer technology means the drives are more expensive and typically come with smaller capacities. That’s why many web hosting providers include SSDs as a paid upgrade or as part of a more expensive plan.
Hard-disk drives (left) have higher capacities but are significantly slower than solid-state drives (right).
SSDs are just one of the perks Liquid Web includes in dedicated server hosting packages. In addition to a 100% uptime guarantee, the top-notch provider tosses in CloudFlare CDN, 24/7 Sonar monitoring, DDoS protection, and ServerSecure security and hardening.
When it comes to anything regarding SSDs, however, InMotion Hosting is always near the top of our list. The hosting provider deploys SSD storage in 500GB increments and trumpets 20-times faster performance using the advanced hardware.
Monthly Starting Price
$99.99
While most hosts offer between 5TB and 15TB of bandwidth, which is plenty sufficient for most customers, HostGator scales its dedicated plan all the way to 25TB of data transferred between your site, visitors, and the internet.
A2 Hosting offers unlimited storage and bandwidth on what the company calls a semi-dedicated server, which is basically a souped-up and more expensive shared plan for those who need more resources but aren’t quite ready to take the leap to dedicated servers.
One of the few hosting providers that build dedicated server plans on unlimited traffic promises, 1&1 touts affordable server configurations that won’t restrict or throttle bandwidth for popular websites. Regardless of the amount of data used by or downloaded from your dedicated server, 1&1 guarantees up to 1Gbit-per-second speed on all traffic.
Monthly Starting Price
$29.99
Although most hosts tailor reseller plans around a virtual private server, or VPS, you can start reselling with a dedicated server if you ask nicely and do some digging.
Reseller hosting enables you to act as your own hosting company and sell services to others.
We appreciate that InMotion Hosting includes SSDs in all its hosting plans, along with an extended 90-day, money-back guarantee.
A2 Hosting also steps on the gas by offering free SSDs and an option for fine-tuned Turbo Servers. Both providers promote that their optimized infrastructures perform 20 times faster than those of competitors.
Despite the solid-state speed boosts, we recommend HostGator for all things reseller hosting. The company makes it plainly obvious on its dedicated hosting plans that reselling is encouraged, unlike other providers.
Each HostGator plan comes with a free ResellerClub account for selling domain names, along with cPanel and WHM control panels for managing server settings, accounts, analytics, and billing. Don’t let the price tag fool you, though - HostGator still gears reseller plans toward VPS.
Be sure to sign up for a dedicated hosting plan to get both the computing power and the reseller perks.
Monthly Starting Price $19.95
Taking the plunge into dedicated server hosting can be an expensive endeavor. With a little bit of research and reading, however, we’re confident you’ll find a hosting provider and plan that matches features and functionality with your budget.
Just because you need extra oomph in your hardware, however, doesn’t mean you need to break open the piggy bank.
Dedicated servers are exactly what they sound like: The server’s entire resources are devoted to powering your site or application with the utmost performance, processing power, and storage.
The important investment can pay dividends when you find hosting providers that bring the most value to their dedicated server packages.
While the word “cheap” needs to be taken with a grain of salt here, we’ve compiled the 10 best options for cheap dedicated hosting plans depending on your specific needs and budget.
1. Best Value Dedicated Server
Right off the bat, we should explain the difference between cheap and value hosting. Although we’ll occasionally cover free hosting services, we usually encourage looking past the price tag and examining the bang for your buck.In most cases, spending a few extra dollars unlocks a ton of useful features that will streamline your hosting experience and make a big difference in site performance and visitor experience.
Our top-notch host might not be the cheapest, but Liquid Web excels by offering the utmost functionality, flexibility, and customer support for a price that we’re not sure why it isn’t higher.
Whether you’re looking for Windows or Linux servers, four CPU cores or 24, Liquid Web technicians are on standby with always-there Heroic Support and a 100% network uptime guarantee.
The premier host even includes perks such as built-in backups, enhanced security, DDoS protection, SSD RAID 1 storage, and the CloudFlare CDN.
Monthly Starting Price
$79.00
- FREE incoming bandwidth and choice of operating system
- Custom configurations with SSDs and instant provisioning
- Auto-migrations, backups, and 24/7 Sonar Monitoring™
- Storm® Block/Object Storage and Load Balancer Add-Ons
- Our visitors pay $96.75/month! (usually $129/month)
2. Cheap Managed Dedicated Server
You’re going for premium hardware, why not go with premium support? Managed hosting goes beyond 24/7 technical support by configuring software, installing patches and updates, and maintaining all aspects of the environment.Managed hosts take care of all things infrastructure so you only have to focus on your business, website, or application.
Liquid Web offers three tiers of managed services, ranging from self-managed to fully managed, where technicians manage a customer’s hardware and web server and supply best-effort support for third-party software.
Core-managed dedicated server plans cover server infrastructure, hardware, and core elements of the LAMP stack, while self-managed plans only cover the hardware and infrastructure.
Managed infrastructure and security updates ease a lot of the pressures around maintaining dedicated servers.
Our favorite host for managed servers, however, is InMotion Hosting.
Coupled with SSDs that produce 20x faster hosting services, InMotion provides scalability, flexibility, and reliability. The company’s managed hosting team handles security patches and updates for the operating system and cPanel, guaranteeing faulty hardware replacement in two hours or less.
Monthly Starting Price
$99.99
- Rebootless kernel updates
- 1-click installs and FREE SSDs
- cPanel/WHM licences with FREE SSL
- Tier 1 network with redundancy
- 99.999% net uptime via Smart Routing™ technology
3. Cheap Unmanaged Dedicated Server
For experienced developers and site administrators, managed hosting services might be an unnecessary added expense. Unmanaged servers take time and technical expertise to maintain, leading many to argue that managed server hosting comes out ahead when your time is factored into the costs.Most hosts offer at least some form of managed services, given that the hardware is living in its own facilities or datacenters. Even if the hosting provider insists on hardware and infrastructure management, they’re usually plenty willing to butt out of your web server if you ask nicely.
There will be more pressure and demands on you to keep everything running smoothly and securely, but your host will continue offering technical support if you run into a jam.
HostGator strikes the perfect balance with its unmanaged dedicated servers, giving customers complete control over their hosting environment while not leaving them out in the cold.
HostGator allows for full root access and oversight of all server settings, services, and accounts through cPanel and WHM control panels. In addition to around-the-clock server monitoring, HostGator welcomes customers to call, chat, or email premium support agents any time, any day.
Monthly Starting Price
$76.56
- Linux or Windows servers available
- Top-of-the-line fully redundant network and datacenter
- Unlimited MySQL databases
- SSH access and support for multiple languages
- Use code HA30OFF for 30% off first month
4. Cheapest Dedicated Server for Linux
Choosing between the Linux or Windows operating system for your server typically boils down to what you’re hosting and what languages or technology you need to support. As an open-source platform, Linux has a much broader range of support and flexibility - in fact, Linux is the L in the all-too-popular LAMP stack, followed by Apache, MySQL, and PHP, Perl, or Python.Linux hosting plans can come in several different flavors, including Linux, CentOS, Ubuntu, and Debian.
As you’ll see in the cPanel section a little further down, Linux and cPanel tend to be the default hosting configuration providers make available. Popular providers InMotion Hosting and HostGator, for example, have gone all-in on Linux and don’t even offer a Windows plan.
King in the open-source realm, Bluehost is an easy pick for top Linux hosting services. The well-regarded hosting provider is known particularly for using open-source programs, including Linux and OpenStack, to power its infrastructure, and Bluehost is one of only four hosts to be endorsed by the WordPress Core team.
Monthly Starting Price
$79.99
- RAID 1 mirrored storage
- Minimum 3 IP addresses per plan
- Modern hardware, spec'd and maintained in house
- 24/7 expedited support from the dedicated team
- Sign up today for 50% off first month
5. Cheapest Dedicated Server for Windows
Servers with the Windows operating system installed typically support only Windows or Microsoft-based technologies, including ASP.NET, MSSQL, MS Access, and Visual Basic. Windows is particularly useful for the gaming industry, in addition to other software and hardware compatibility.Windows can run on nearly any processor, while Linux is recommended to run with Intel processors. One thing to keep in mind as you shop for Windows hosting: The operating system chews through a lot of computing resources, so look for plans that don’t cut corners on RAM.
This one isn’t even close. Not only can InterServer wow customers with a $40-per-month server, but they will throw in five IP addresses, managed support, data migration, around-the-clock monitoring, and four-hour provisioning without any setup fees.
The Intel Dual-Core Atom server is understandably small and low-powered when compared with InterServer’s other configurations, but having your choice of operating system and control panel makes the company an easy pick for an affordable dedicated Windows server hosting environment.
Monthly Starting Price
$39.99
- 24/7 uptime monitoring and privately owned datacenter
- Up to 100TB of bandwidth and 5+ unique IP addresses
- Chose among 10 operating systems and 3 control panels
- Custom configurations built and maintained in-house
- Price-lock guarantee without contracts
6. Cheap cPanel Dedicated Server
Once you have the hardware, your next big decision will be how to configure and manage the server. Although many dedicated plans give customers root access to fine-tune the details, most users opt for a hosting control panel, or a graphical interface that enables administrators to perform complex tasks with just a few clicks of the mouse.We’ve written the ultimate guide to comparing the various options, but the general rule of thumb is to use cPanel for Linux machines and Plesk for Windows accounts.
Control panels automate several processes behind your hosting experience such as software installations.
Given the popularity and affordability of the open-source Linux operating system, you’d be hard-pressed to find a hosting provider that doesn’t include cPanel.
Where hosts can distinguish themselves, however, is by further optimizing the cPanel interface by customizing it to user needs and the host’s features.
That’s exactly why we recommend Bluehost - the highly regarded host took cPanel an extra mile so that customers can easily manage all of their websites, domains, emails, files, and computing resources from one central location. Instant provisioning and an open-source-friendly environment add to Bluehost’s perks, as does the company’s custom-designed database manager.
Monthly Starting Price
$79.99
- RAID 1 mirrored storage
- Minimum 3 IP addresses per plan
- Modern hardware, spec'd and maintained in house
- 24/7 expedited support from the dedicated team
- Sign up today for 50% off first month
7. Cheap Plesk Dedicated Server
Even though Plesk is compatible with multiple operating systems, it’s most frequently paired with Windows hosting accounts.Plesk is generally cheaper than cPanel licenses, but the expenses of running Windows make the pair slightly harder to find. Both the Plesk and cPanel control panels are easy to operate. With familiar, simplistic layouts, site administrators can generally switch between the two platforms without much hassle.
Plesk uses the HTTPS protocol, offering a high level of security and unbeatable stability. Beyond Windows and Linux compatibility, Plesk supports several languages: English, German, Japanese, Spanish, French, and Russian.
That flexibility in supporting customers is mirrored in Liquid Web’s dedicated server plans.
In addition to eight single- and dual-core processor configurations, the company’s Solutions Architects will work with customers to design a custom environment tailored to their website or application’s needs. Liquid Web offers Plesk in the fully managed Windows dedicated servers.
Monthly Starting Price
$79.00
- FREE incoming bandwidth and choice of operating system
- Custom configurations with SSDs and instant provisioning
- Auto-migrations, backups, and 24/7 Sonar Monitoring™
- Storm® Block/Object Storage and Load Balancer Add-Ons
- Our visitors pay $96.75/month! (usually $129/month)
8. Affordable Dedicated Server with Free SSDs
Solid-state drives, or SSDs, are the cherry on top of a powerful hosting sundae. SSDs refer to the type of disk in the server that stores your data. Hard-disk drives, or HDDs, are the traditional option that have been around for 60-some years and feature a spinning platter and a read/write arm that uses magnetism to store the data.SSDs, however, have no moving parts and instead house information in flash microchips. SSDs are much faster, but the newer technology means the drives are more expensive and typically come with smaller capacities. That’s why many web hosting providers include SSDs as a paid upgrade or as part of a more expensive plan.
Hard-disk drives (left) have higher capacities but are significantly slower than solid-state drives (right).
SSDs are just one of the perks Liquid Web includes in dedicated server hosting packages. In addition to a 100% uptime guarantee, the top-notch provider tosses in CloudFlare CDN, 24/7 Sonar monitoring, DDoS protection, and ServerSecure security and hardening.
When it comes to anything regarding SSDs, however, InMotion Hosting is always near the top of our list. The hosting provider deploys SSD storage in 500GB increments and trumpets 20-times faster performance using the advanced hardware.
Monthly Starting Price
$99.99
- Rebootless kernel updates
- 1-click installs and FREE SSDs
- cPanel/WHM licences with FREE SSL
- Tier 1 network with redundancy
- 99.999% net uptime via Smart Routing™ technology
9. Cheapest Dedicated Server with Unlimited Bandwidth
Even though many of our favorite shared hosting providers tout unlimited bandwidth or data transfers for free, the feature is surprisingly hard to find at the dedicated server level. Unlimited anything in the hosting world is a bit of an illusion, given that hardware can only process and store so much data.While most hosts offer between 5TB and 15TB of bandwidth, which is plenty sufficient for most customers, HostGator scales its dedicated plan all the way to 25TB of data transferred between your site, visitors, and the internet.
A2 Hosting offers unlimited storage and bandwidth on what the company calls a semi-dedicated server, which is basically a souped-up and more expensive shared plan for those who need more resources but aren’t quite ready to take the leap to dedicated servers.
One of the few hosting providers that build dedicated server plans on unlimited traffic promises, 1&1 touts affordable server configurations that won’t restrict or throttle bandwidth for popular websites. Regardless of the amount of data used by or downloaded from your dedicated server, 1&1 guarantees up to 1Gbit-per-second speed on all traffic.
Monthly Starting Price
$29.99
- Full root access and Parallels® Plesk 12 management software included
- Server services monitoring within the browser or from your mobile device
- Recovery tool and server access available even during network downtime
- 1&1 SEO Spotlight and marketing tools available for gaining exposure
- Code with PHP 5, Perl, or Python, with MySQL 5 database suppport
10. Affordable Reseller Dedicated Hosting
Selling off some of your server resources is a quick, simple way to defray some of the higher costs of your new dedicated hosting plan. Resellers effectively sublease server space to others and control the prices and partitioned computing resources.Although most hosts tailor reseller plans around a virtual private server, or VPS, you can start reselling with a dedicated server if you ask nicely and do some digging.
Reseller hosting enables you to act as your own hosting company and sell services to others.
We appreciate that InMotion Hosting includes SSDs in all its hosting plans, along with an extended 90-day, money-back guarantee.
A2 Hosting also steps on the gas by offering free SSDs and an option for fine-tuned Turbo Servers. Both providers promote that their optimized infrastructures perform 20 times faster than those of competitors.
Despite the solid-state speed boosts, we recommend HostGator for all things reseller hosting. The company makes it plainly obvious on its dedicated hosting plans that reselling is encouraged, unlike other providers.
Each HostGator plan comes with a free ResellerClub account for selling domain names, along with cPanel and WHM control panels for managing server settings, accounts, analytics, and billing. Don’t let the price tag fool you, though - HostGator still gears reseller plans toward VPS.
Be sure to sign up for a dedicated hosting plan to get both the computing power and the reseller perks.
Monthly Starting Price $19.95
- Start your own company with cPanel reseller hosting
- Unlimited domains, emails, and MySQL databases
- 99.9% uptime guarantee and 400+ tutorials for your clients
- All web hosting reseller plans include WHMCS
- $200 in Yahoo!, Bing, and Google Adwords credits
Taking the plunge into dedicated server hosting can be an expensive endeavor. With a little bit of research and reading, however, we’re confident you’ll find a hosting provider and plan that matches features and functionality with your budget.
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