If your website generates large volumes of traffic, a dedicated server is likely the best choice. Many web sites start by using a shared hosting plan but as they grow they need to scale their site to meet the added requirements. A dedicated server is the most effective way to do that.

Dedicated servers are used strictly for your website. There are no other sites sharing the resources on the machine. This lets you have ultimate control over the way the server is configured.

If you need more storage or more RAM, the hosting company can add that for you (at an added cost naturally). If you need to install a particular program or operating system, you can do that.

When looking for dedicated hosting services, there are a few things to keep in mind.

First, ensure that you have a technical support and administration plan in place. This could be someone in your own company or the hosting company may provide these services for you.

Be sure the hosting company has planned for redundancy in case of system failures. If your server crashes, there needs to be a backup in place that can take on the load with minimal downtime for your website.

If your hosting company is managing the server for you, make sure they have a maintenance schedule in place for things such as security upgrades and operating system patches.

These kind of security updates are released on a regular basis, and you need to be sure that your web server is updated so it isn't vulnerable to attack.

Web hosting companies are not all created equal. When choosing your hosting provider, you need to be sure that they are going to be able to keep your site up and running consistently.

If your website is large enough to justify a dedicated server, you can't afford to have any downtime.