When shopping for or using a dedicated web hosting server or plan there are a few questions you should be asking yourself.  Your needs are the most important factor to a successful setup.  Are all your needs covered?

Do I Really Need It?

This is the question I tackle most often, does your project or web site really require a dedicated hosting setup.  Now dedicated web hosting is good for a number of different things.  For example, if you want to have a number of different web sites all on the same machine.  That is a good reason.  If you a running a server that has unusually high server loads.  That also may be another good reason to go dedicated.

What Do I Really Need?

What is it that you really need from a dedicated hosting provider?  The most important would be support.  A good dedicated support team is hard to find, and is one of those things you won’t know that you have till a few months down the road or when the first big issue comes up that you can not tackle on your own.  Server resources would be another key factor to weigh in as well as disk space and bandwidth.

Are My Needs Being Met?

Are you getting everything that was promised to you?  Once a year it might be a good idea to review your web hosting setup to make sure you are getting everything that you have paid for and perhaps see if you might need to upgrade or downgrade your current dedicated hosting setup.  There is often a lot of customization you can do with the dedicated hosting field so see what your dedicated hosting provider delivers to you.

Know of anymore important needs that need to be tackled when it comes to dedicated web hosting?

Virtual Private Servers have become a great resource for semi-dedicated web hosting and for webmasters who have simply outgrown the shared web hosting market but for whatever reason cannot afford or are not ready to upgrade to dedicated server hosting.

So what is a Virtual Private Server (VPS)?

VPS web hosting is simply a dedicated server that is split into smaller shared web hosting sections. It differs from a shared server in that in shared hosting, you could be sharing the server with upwards of 500 different webmasters, which means that you get 1/500th of the server’s CPU. This is normally divided into less than 1% of the CPU and if you go over, your account is likely suspended from the web host until you fix the cause of the usage or upgrade to a plan that can support that kind of environment.

For virtual private server hosting, you are normally guaranteed a set portion of the server’s RAM and in some cases, you can go over this amount if the others sharing your server space don’t use their portion. The best VPS hosting providers will only put 25 people or less on your VPS web hosting plan with you – this gives you added freedoms to install applications and run more resource-intensive scripts which could have been potentially dangerous in a completely-shared environment.

VPS web hosting plans are normally much cheaper than dedicated web hosting plans. You can plan to pay anywhere between $40-80/month for a basic virtual private server web hosting plan.

**UPDATE: Lunarpages Web Hosting is offering a HUGE discount on their Windows VPS Web Hosting Plan. Normally priced at $69.95/month, they have lowered the price to $39.95/month, a complete bargain in this industry. This is a limited time promotion and no coupon code is necessary.**

VPS or Virtual Private Server hosting is often known as training wheels for dedicated hosting and a dedicated server setup. 

A VPS hosting plan is like a mixture of the shared resources of a shared hosting plan and a little more of the freedom of a dedicated hosting plan due to the fact that you are put on a server with a less amount of people on it.

Many will often use a VPS plan as a testing ground to see if it is enough for them to keep their site stable (after moving up from shared hosting) and later on find it much easier to move into the dedicated hosting environment.

If you need more server resources, but you want to learn more about managing a dedicated server before jumping in with both feet a VPS hosting setup might be right for you.

Can you resell services to make back a little ‘bit of your money on your dedicated hosting server costs?  Well the terms and conditions may vary from web host to web host, but most will not have a problem with this.  Often, once reseller account clients outgrow their current setups or want to give their own customers more bang for their buck - this is the route they will take.

As long as it is not hurting them and it is not illegal, many web hosts are fine with whatever you need to do on your dedicated server so dividing it up might not be that bad of an idea.  Before doing so, I would make sure that you can get things backed up on your current end before canceling your old web hosting.  You might even wait till after you have everything moved in before flipping the light off with the old web host too.

One concern that might come into play is who is paying the bill?  Make sure only one person is listed as the contact as far as the web host goes, and they are a reliable person who will be paying on time.  Having a confusing paper trail to follow to find out who is actually hosting the account will make many web hosts just a little nervous. 

So is reselling services on a dedicated server ok?  Sure is, you are the one paying for it right?

You can think of your hosting needs as a meal, a lunch a brunch even.  As meals comes in different shapes and sizes, so do your hosting wants and needs.  Knowing the right meal to pick when your hungry is the difference between if you will need a doggy bag or if you paid too much for something you might not need. 

Shared Hosting

You can think of this as the fast food of the hosting world.  It is smaller, quicker to setup but if your looking for a deluxe fancy lunch with all the trimmings you had better look elsewhere.  Sure, it might feed your hunger - but I am a big guy with big needs.  I might want a baked potato on the side, smothered with butter.  That would be your real world equivalent to more RAM or CPU usage.

VPS Hosting

Virtual Private Server hosting is the in-between.  This would be your TV dinner that is made to look like it came from one of those fancy "high-class" eating establishments.  Once you pop it in the microwave it is almost like eating at your favorite expensive restaurant - but it still doesn’t delight your pallet as much as a real meal would.  VPS has everything your dedicated hosting would have but it is trimmed down some as far as your limits go.

Dedicated Hosting

Now dedicated hosting would be putting on your suit and tie and going to that all you can eat buffet.  You get your server resources, your bandwidth, your disk space and you can do whatever you need to do with your hosting (as long as you stay within the rules of the web host).  This type of hosting both fill you up and won’t leave you hungry for more.

Are you interested in becoming a Web Hosting Reseller? Reselling web hosting to customers is actually easier than you might think, and sometimes, the only thing you’ll need to take care of is the billing for your clients! As you resell the web hosting space issued by another provider, you can make quite a bit of money this way.

But should you choose Reseller Web Hosting, VPS Web Hosting, or Dedicated Server Hosting?

* Reseller Web Hosting

This option is best if you would like your customers to each have a set amount of storage space, bandwidth, emails, etc. Their accounts will be the same and are most likely quite small, but they work out best if your clients just need a simple webpage or two for a small personal website. Reseller hosting can be very cheap, and you can mark up the prices as high as you’d like to make as much money as you’d like.

* VPS (Virtual Private Server) Web Hosting

Despite what you might think, it’s not a good idea to resell web hosting space on a VPS hosting plan. As you are still sharing the server resources with others, reseller hosting on a virtual private server can be draining on the server and can bog it down for everyone else. We wouldn’t recommend you use VPS as a reseller hosting option.

* Dedicated Server Hosting

This is the best option for webmasters who need various web hosting options for their clients. If one client needs 1GB storage and another needs 10GB, you can divide the total storage space amount as you see fit. The more clients you have, the bigger the dedicated server you’ll need. This is the most expensive option, but it is the most beneficial for managing multiple websites and clients – the best part is, you’ll get your own domain nameservers, so you’ll be as legitimate a company as anybody else!

Whereas a web server’s primary function is to run a website, a database server’s primary function is to run a database. So if you have a large website with a mass of inventory, products, contacts, or other information that must be stored and easily accessed by an application or web server, a database server is your number one priority.

You can purchase a dedicated server hosting package specifically to run a database server or you can purchase multiple servers – one for the web server and one for the database server. This second option is more common, as the kinds of websites that require dedicated server hosting normally need both a website and a place to store the information accessed on that site, like customer payment information, mailing lists, usernames, profiles, etc. Think of these multiple clustered servers as kinds of Myspace-like websites – the general web server produces all the profiles and shows you the pictures, videos, and music so you can access it, but every time you click on Myspace.com, you are accessing the database server that stores all that information to remember your usernames, profile information, images, videos, etc.

Going from a shared web hosting account to a dedicated server is a big leap. Yes, it can help you in the long run with your little web empire but what questions should you ask yourself before you make that leap from one hosting account type to the next? Before you upgrade, ask yourself these questions.

1.  How much is moving to a dedicated server going to cost me?

2.  Is my web host bugging me to do the upgrade?

3.  Would the scripts and services I am running be better on dedicated machine?

4.  Are the services I am running “resource hungry”?

5.  Could I save some cash if I tried a Virtual Private Server first?

As you can see there are more than just a few questions and things you should consider before you make that big leap from one type of hosting to the next. A dedicated hosting account is a big responsibility and you had most of all better be sure you find a good hosting provider to keep you taken care of too.

When searching for website hosting, you need to know what kind of hosting plan to purchase.  There are shared hosting plans, windows hosting plans, VPS hosting plans, and Dedicated Hosting Plans.  While it’s easy to tell the difference between Shared vs Dedicated Hosting, it might not be as simple to see what the differences are between Virtual Private Server (VPS) and Dedicated Hosting.

A Virtual Private Server hosting plan is aimed at users who require SSH or root access to the server and users who need a guaranteed amount of RAM and processor speed.  You are still sharing the server space with a VPS plan; however, you are only sharing the server with 20-25 other people.  Be cautious in choosing the right cheap VPS hosting provider, as many unknown hosts will attempt to pack too many customers on one VPS server.  Our recommended Dedicated hosting provider offers VPS hosting plan for under $40/month and offers guaranteed 512MB RAM.

A Dedicated Server Hosting Plan is aimed at customers who not only require SSH access and guaranteed RAM but who do not want to share the server space and processor with any other users.  Dedicated server hosting is best for bandwidth intense, high storage, and extreme resource websites.  Game servers, websites that make the front page of Digg or other popular social networking sites, resellers, web designers, and even web hosts.

A word of advice:  look for cheap Dedicated Server Hosting!  There are many providers who will charge a fortune for the same services as an experienced, affordable host, so go with a recommended choice.

Overall, check out the kinds of resources you’re going to be demanding of your server and that should provide you with further insight into your needs and help you understand if you need a VPS or Dedicated server.