A business will often outgrow shared web hosting and it will need its own managed dedicated hosting server. Unmanaged Dedicated hosting, is a type of hosting in which you rent your own server from a dedicated hosting company. This company will maintain a stock of servers and operate its own data center and network. The server is for your exclusive use only, meaning it does not share resources with other users or websites.

Unless you have some technical experience with web servers you may struggle to perform your own server management and administrative tasks. If you don't have the in house technical experience, you could consider hiring a technical person to handle these tasks if you feel the self managed server is what your business needs. There are many freelancing site where you could advertise for additional help and many business allow you to outsource your server administration work.

With Managed dedicated hosting however a hosting provider gives technical support and basic system helps. They should have technicians on site on a 24 hour basis in order to carry out reboots if neccessary. In some cases you still have complete technical control over your server, and the server is dedicated entirely to your own usage but additionally you will also have access to optional managed services such as technical upgrades, security patching, firewalls, and backup services

Dedicated hosting providers usually offer a choice of operating systems which are usually Windows 2003 and Linux (Centos, Ubuntu, Fedora etc). This will be installed by the web host when the server is first commissioned. To assist in the management of the server the managed hosting provider will often install a control panel. The most popular control panels are Cpanel (Web Host Manager) Plesk, Helm and H-Sphere. This makes managing your server and carrying out routine tasks much easier and is a time saver. If this is a Linux server this will often require command line expertise. A server without a control panel or graphical interface is sometimes known as a "root server."

When deciding on an unmanaged dedicated server or a managed server, explore all options before making a decision. Online review sites and forums make it easier to research the various hosting companies and find out what is on offer. Quite often its better to go for quality of service rather than price, as the old adage that you get what you pay for applies to dedicated server hosting, as with anything else.