What is a Dedicated Server
A dedicated server is a type of hosting plan that guarantees increased resources and better control over your server configuration.
The most basic hosting package, beside free hosting, is shared hosting. In shared hosting, a large group of clients are assigned to a single hosting computer (server). This server is responsible for hosting all their sites, each in its own "corner" of the hard disk, and for serving site pages to users of all sites. The server's resources are distributed between the sites, so the more clients per server, or the more demanding each client, the lower the overall performance.
Dedicated hosting buys you the rights to a single server that will not be shared with anyone else. You get 100% of your server's resources, space, and bandwidth. Dedicated servers are more stable, more secure, and more powerful (due to not sharing resources). Additionally, on a dedicated server you can usually change some configuration options that you can't touch on a shared server.
Do you need a dedicated server?
Most sites do fine with shared hosting until they become sufficiently established, a process which might take years.
If your site gets a lot of traffic or extremely heavy traffic (e.g. downloading heavy files), you will eventually outgrow shared hosting and will require a dedicated server. Keep an eye on your site's response time and "peak hour" statistics. Before they interfere with good user experience, upgrade your hosting package.
New sites with low traffic might still require a dedicated server if you must have a certain server configuration that is not supported by shared hosting. Keep in mind that you will need much more technical expertise (or technical support) in order to configure your server by yourself.
Decided to go for a dedicated server?
Click here for a list of dedicated server providers.