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Dedicated servers
A whole machine, and no neighbours.
A managed dedicated server from Hostingport is one machine, specified for one workload, with the operating system, patching, backups and monitoring handled for you.
It's the right move when traffic, compliance or a demanding application means sharing is no longer viable — and we'll tell you honestly when you're not there yet.
When it's warranted
Four reasons to stop sharing.
Most hosts will sell you a dedicated server the moment you ask. It's the highest-margin thing on the price list, and the upgrade conversation is easier than diagnosing why a site is slow. That's backwards. A dedicated machine fixes a specific set of problems and no others.
Capacity
Traffic consistently uses everything a shared account can allocate. Not a launch spike — a sustained level, where the ceiling is the actual constraint.
Configuration
The application needs system-level settings, services or resource limits that can't be applied on a machine other tenants depend on.
Isolation you can evidence
A contract, insurer, enterprise customer or regulator wants to know your data isn't sitting alongside strangers'. "It's a shared server but the accounts are isolated" is technically true and rarely survives a security questionnaire.
Load that affects others
Heavy background processing, large imports, video handling, or anything that would degrade the machine for everyone else on it.
None of those describe you? Then managed shared hosting is the honest answer and the dedicated conversation can wait.
How it's run
Managed, or co-managed.
- specification
- Sized to the workload after looking at it, not chosen from three tiers on a pricing page
- fully managed
- Operating system, patching, services, certificates, backups and monitoring are ours
- co-managed
- You keep root and own the application; we own the machine beneath it, with an agreed line between the two
- isolation
- No other tenants, no shared resource pool, nothing to point at in a security review
- backups
- Held off the server, restored for you, tested rather than assumed
- migration
- Staged and cut over at low traffic, with databases and mail moved alongside
- data residency
- Canadian infrastructure for clients with PIPEDA obligations
Common questions
Dedicated hosting, answered.
What is a managed dedicated server?
A physical machine running your workload and nobody else's, with the operating system, updates, security, backups and monitoring handled for you. Unmanaged providers hand you a bare machine and an IP address; managed means the maintenance is somebody's job, and here that somebody is named.
Do I need a dedicated server?
Usually not, and we will say so. A dedicated server is warranted when traffic consistently exceeds what a shared account can serve, when an application needs system-level configuration that cannot be applied on a shared machine, when background processing is heavy, or when a contract or regulator requires demonstrable isolation. Outside those cases the money is better spent elsewhere.
What is the difference between dedicated and cloud hosting?
A dedicated server is a fixed machine with fixed capacity and predictable cost. Cloud infrastructure trades that predictability for elasticity: it grows under load and shrinks afterwards, and you pay for what you use. Steady, heavy workloads are usually cheaper dedicated. Spiky or growing workloads are usually better on cloud.
Can I keep root access?
Yes, under a co-managed arrangement where you handle the application and we handle the machine. It needs an explicit agreement about who changes what, because unrecorded changes are how managed servers quietly stop being managed.
What happens if the hardware fails?
Backups are held off the server, so a failed machine means restoring to replacement hardware rather than losing data. If continuity matters more than cost, that is an argument for a cloud architecture with redundancy rather than for a second dedicated machine sitting idle.
Tell us what you're running.
You'll get a straight answer about whether we're the right fit — including when we're not.