Managed versus unmanaged dedicated Web Hosting is an important decision you will need to make when hosting your website on a dedicated web server.

While most people who start a website start with shared or virtual hosting, there comes a point in time for many where shared hosting is severely limiting the growth of the website. When that time comes, one may want to consider a dedicated hosting account.

When you have shared or virtual hosting, you are essentially sharing disk space with numerous other websites on one server. Naturally, all of the files and traffic for each of those sites weighs the server down. This also means that each website is allocated less disk space and bandwidth.

A dedicated server, on the other hand, can be rented (just like shared hosting), or bought, and all of the resources on the entire server are ‘dedicated’ to your site. Naturally, dedicated Web Hosting costs more than shared hosting. However, the advantages are usually worth the added cost. You will also be presented with various dedicated hosting packages, in most cases. Some packages offer bigger hard drives and faster processes, as well as added service, and naturally will cost more.

One of the added services that may be offered is managed dedicated hosting. Keeping a server maintained and running in the best possible condition does take time, and knowledge. When you opt for managed hosting, you will essentially have that knowledge and time at your disposal, along with routine backups and upgrades. The cost of such a service is often much preferable to hiring a staff.

While you may be enticed by the idea of managed dedicated hosting, do not assume that unmanaged hosting won’t serve your needs just as well – depending on what those needs are. The majority of hosting companies out there do offer some level of customer and technical support, with all of their hosting packages. You can expect software and hardware upgrades regardless of whether or not your hosting is managed or not. However, for configuration services, there may be an additional service fee that needs to be paid.

When you are trying to decide between managed and unmanaged support, look to see what is provided by the hosting company for each service, and find out what will be left to you to handle. Then, find out how much someone with the technical expertise to handle the job will charge by the hour. You can hire such professionals on an ‘as needed,’ hourly basis.

For highly technical sites, it may very well pay off to have managed hosting, as opposed to unmanaged hosting. In the end, you are the only one who can make that decision. Again, ask question and find out what level of service is offered for each option, find out how much time it will take to do that which your Web Hosting provider does not do with an unmanaged account, how often such tasks will need to be done, and finally, how much it will cost you, per hour, to hire someone to do it.

When trying to decide whether to go with managed versus unmanaged dedicated Web Hosting, take your time and fully research your options and go with whatever will best meet your needs.

HostGator offers some great dedicated hosting packages at a reasonable price.