It’s not a secret: I do like Dedicated Hosting – and so we do rent a server – and not just server space. We have a so called Managed Server on which we run all our and our clients’ websites And we are very happy with it. because to me first of all renting a server means paying for stresslessness. Is that an actual word? Well – I hope you know, what I mean anyways.

Of course that server is not right here next to me in Berlin – instead it’s taken care of by the fine people of All-Inkl in Friedersdorf, Sachsen, Germany. We have been with All-Inkl for quite a few years now and we are still very pleased to be. First of all, this means less stress – or actually no stress for us, regarding the hosting details. Second we get good value for our money – and last but not least: everything is no fuss. It just works.

Why Dedicated Hosting? Because Web Design is bit like cooking

I’m not really a talented cook – or at least I’m not a very experienced cook. But I would still like to compare designing websites to preparing food. The quality and the taste of a good meal depends on different aspects: the ingredients are of course crutial, but so is the team,  the environment where you are cooking – and the tools you have at your disposal.

When you’re preparing a meal, the kitchen and its appliances is usually your environment – the infrastructure of cooking. When designing and/or running a website, your infrastructure probably consists of at least a desk, a computer, some programs – and a  Web Server.

Of course every cook can basically work in any kitchen – and every web designer could could basically work on any web server – as long as vertain conditions are met. But of course both cook and web designer feel most comfortable in their own environment, where they know how things work and where everything is. There’s no place like home.

Why should I rent a Web Server? Advantages of Dedicated Server Hosting

For our clients we are basically offering ‘everything’ you need to run a website. First of all we are of course designing and building websites – including a Content Management System that fits the clients needs. But ovr the years it has proven to be a good idea that we also can take care of much more: from researching and registering domain names to hosting – to support concerning email accounts, web statistic etc. – basically everything you need to actually run a website. Our clients can take care of their pressures content – we can take care of the technical details.

So basically – and technically we are Hosting Providers ourselves, while our core business remains designing and buildings websites. As designers we see ourselves as ‘problem solvers’ – service providers that take care of our clients needs.

For us Dedicated Hosting has quite a number of advantages. To sum it up very briefly: we know our Web Server – and our Web Server knows us.

Running a website on Shared Hosting or actually a Shared Server you would instead share one server with X neighbors – that means mostly websites you probably don’t know. One of your neighbors could run a script that would eat up the server’s processing power – another neighbor could run a website that would eat a lot of bandwidth – you just don’t know. Slow server response time? Try to find out, who is to blame, Sherlock!

I suppose such worst cases won’t actually matter, even if we had a shared server at All-Inkl since already the cheapest shared server account would only allow a maximum of 100 clients per server. but that’s still 99 neighbors. Anyways – I recently read that most of the hosting providers tend to stack their shared servers to the limit. Try a reverse IP-look-up and you’ll see, what I mean.

With Dedicated Hosting / a Managed Server you usually also gain a lot of freedom to configure things the way you want to – in ways that would never be possible on a Shared Server. You want to allocate more memory to a certain directory? No problem. Need a special PHP version? Got it.

Do you really need a Managed Server?

Of course not everybody needs a Managed Server – for most people / most websites that be probably a little over the top – and renting a Managed Server can also be a bit costly. The costs can easily add up and at the end of the year you’re facing a four digit invoice or the like.

But for us it was never the question if we could afford renting a Managed Server – the advantages  clearly outweigh the odds / the costs. But it is a good feeling to have everything up and running – it is actually running very smoothly. As I said in the beginning: no fuss. Our server has more than enough space and processing power than currently needed – we are happy and content – and our clients (hopefully/probably) too.

So maybe Dedicated Hosting on a Managed Server is not something for everybody, unless you are running a resource-hungry monster of a website. But if you happen to be a web designer / web developer that love’s to take care of things, wants to be in control and prefers to cook in his/her own kitchen, then you should probably consider renting a web server for you and your clients. I personally can only recommend it.