Originally Posted by ceekeigh

I am presently hosted on a shared one, and only planning to move in the hear future. But I need to do my homework of observing and researching on good dedicated server providers.

ceekeigh,

I would definitely do your homework. You SHOULD ask the potential providers many questions and feel comfortable with the responses. You should find out where the company's data center is located, what carriers the company uses and make sure their support is truly 24/7/365. You will also need to determine if you need a managed server or an unmanaged server, some companies will offer both. The hardware shouldn't be as much of a concern at this point as the budget is. You can always upgrade the RAM, HD and bandwidth when needed.

Hope this information helps,

I'm with serverpoint.com. Their services are fairly priced and top notch.

make sure their support is truly 24/7/365

How do you seee that? Siting and waiting for all that time. I think that it ias impossible for customers which are not good at web hosting at all. That is very difficult suggestion to check.
HomeBoy thatnk you for your choice.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

ThePlanet aren't too concerned with who or what they host, so their servers are often hosts to content scrapers, spambots, mail spammers etc along with the good sites.

AMEN! Awhile back I signed up with a reseller for some CHEAP hosting I found on Ebay. It was a nightmare. The guy was never home and didnt respond to support requests, suspended some of our websites just because (no reason whatsoever) and was totally rude.

I love Tech Evolution because they have NEVER had downtime while I have been with them. They have a complete datacenter and fast customer support.

I've been loving liquidweb.com. I've used a number of dedicated services, and Liquid Web is by far my favorite.

HostV.com who are a division of Cirtex.com offer dedicated deals, not cheap actually, but fully managed, they offer 10% discount for the first month of services.

Originally Posted by Homeboy72

I'm with serverpoint.com. Their services are fairly priced and top notch.

Which dedi do you use from ServerPoint.com?
This company provides them a lot and I wonder how have you chosen it?
Have heard many positive feedbacks about them.

If you intend to get a cheap dedicated server, it will be low-end by default, like you could have 512MB of RAM, 80GB of mirrored storage space and 150GB of data transfer from GlobalTap.com, there are actually very cheap AMD deals from Serverpronto.com that you look into starting from $30.00, but you really should make research into these deals.

Originally Posted by ~Sago David~

You will also need to determine if you need a managed server or an unmanaged server, some companies will offer both.

I think this, along with the location (US, Europe, Asia-Pacific etc.) are the two fundamental points you must consider before you can start to decide which provider is best for your needs.

If you want a fully managed service, there are providers specialising in that which I would say are likely to provide you with a better service than those who focus on unmanaged (with a "managed" option). However, if you're looking for managed services it gets a lot more complicated... you won't find 2 companies offering the same level of management so the comparisons are hard. Check exactly what the management includes, and more importantly what it doesn't! If they're just going to provide OS updates then it might not be what you're looking for, compared to pro-active monitoring with appropriate troubleshooting + recompiliing stuff for you etc.

Server location will obviously limit your choices straight away, but for a lot of sites/services there is a clear choice for the most appropriate location - i.e. closest to the majority of your target audience! Worth keeping your options open on this one to a point though, as some areas are more expensive than others (e.g. UK is generally more expensive than US).

Here is my suggestions:

managed server; liquidweb
self managed: theplanet/softlayer

Originally Posted by alemcherry

Here is my suggestions:
managed server; liquidweb

That's an interesting one - we have clients using liquidweb's "managed" servers who pay us to manage their server, so I suppose that means liquidweb aren't providing everything they would like?

With managed servers I really can't stress enough that managed has a completely different meaning for every provider you host with, and therefore there's way more to it than just the price tag; if you're comparing managed services you need a good understanding of everything that's included and everything that isn't!

Originally Posted by alemcherry

self managed: theplanet/softlayer

Regarding TP, take a look at chrishirst's post earlier in this thread... I completely agree that they're not particularly known for their quality. As for SoftLayer, they undercut themselves very aggressively, and therefore they must be cutting corners somewhere?

I'd add to this list SolidHost.com dedicated servers. They provide high-end dedicated servers, which can be use for just about any purpose. All configurations can be setup with Linux, FreeBSD or Windows. They are managed and start at € 149/Month.