If you own your business and need a smoothly run website there are two options:

(1) You administer the website on your own. This means you have a lot of time to deal with the security updates, service monitoring and maintenance, lack of administrative tools and support.

(2) You hire a managed dedicated hosting company and leave all the extensive administrative resourcing and expertise to professionals. Managed server hosting is superior to any unmanaged server hosting solution.

Hiring a managed dedicated hosting company will provide your businesses website with the latest updates for online security. Keeping track of developmental software and latest versions of servers can be tedious. It is the managed dedicated hosting company’s job to make sure the daunting task of hunting down such programs as Apache, PHP, MySQL, Perl, and etcetera.

Traditional unmanaged dedicated servers can consume an individual’s time with all the installation, management of the server, and websites. Managed dedicated server companies eliminate the need for expertise in administrating a server, and provide strong knowledgeable tools for administrating setup and maintenance for websites, e-mail, and domains. Some companies will provide “root-like” access that will allow the company to install many applications themselves.

 
Sometimes for a business the most important difference between unmanaged versus managed servers is the support included with hosting management. Some managed dedicated hosting companies will provide on demand server technicians and administrators (sometimes at no additional, it depends on the company). The support of the technicians and administrators provides friendly constructive criticism in an effort to help your business. Remember it is businesses whom hire managed dedicated companies that keep them in business. Therefore, your company’s interests are their interests.

With managed server hosting your company’s website will be completely taken care of. The management server business is responsible for reliability of the hardware, and for immediate replacements. There usually is a 24/7 monitor and maintenance on the server.

Those arguing against managed dedicated hosting companies will say the disadvantages are the expense. Remember, hosting companies are businesses too and will need to be paid for their services. The expense comes from the fact that dedicated server hosting is not shared with other companies. Shared hosting is when multiple accounts are paying for a shared server company, however the “dedicated” is then lost. The cost is also a result of continual maintenance and 24/7 monitoring.

This means the hosting company is paying someone to work on managing the server; therefore, your business has to be paying the server hosting company for that labor. Besides the obvious expense, dedicated server companies provide freedom to use server resources as you please. While, unmanaged server does not allow that freedom.

When you managed your on server you still have to acquire all the software. Once the software is purchased and downloaded those companies limit what you can do. While having a dedicated hosting company provides the freedoms (of course at extra expense).