Moving to your own server is a significant step for a website owner. The costs and the day to day maintenance requirements both increase, but for the right site there are good reasons to do it. Which option suits you depends entirely on your specific website and circumstances, and if you are considering this route we are happy to guide you through it.
A VPS is a virtual machine with guaranteed CPU, memory and disk, running alongside other virtual machines on shared physical hardware. You get root access and full control of the operating system, at a fraction of the cost of a physical machine. For most sites outgrowing shared hosting, this is the right next step.
A dedicated server is a physical machine used only by you. It is the right answer when you need the full resources of the hardware, when disk performance matters more than anything else, or when a virtual environment is ruled out for compliance reasons.
The honest answer for most people asking about a dedicated server is that a VPS would serve them better and cost considerably less. We will tell you when that is the case.
This is the decision that matters most, and it is the one people most often get wrong.
Unmanaged means the server is yours entirely. You handle the operating system, security updates, firewall, backups, monitoring and any software you install. This is the right choice if you have someone who genuinely knows Linux system administration and has time to do it.
Managed means we look after the operating system, patching, security hardening, monitoring and backups, and you get on with running your site. Most businesses moving up from shared hosting want this, because the reason they are moving is capacity rather than a desire to administer servers.
An unmanaged server that nobody patches is considerably less secure than the shared hosting it replaced. That is worth being clear about before the decision is made rather than after.
It is worth checking whether a server is actually the answer. A slow site is often slow because of the application rather than the hardware, and we have seen plenty of sites move to a dedicated server and remain exactly as slow as before.
Unoptimised database queries, an over-plugined WordPress install, images served at full camera resolution and a missing cache will all follow you onto new hardware. If you tell us what the problem is, we will look at it honestly and tell you whether more resources will fix it.
Have a look at our dedicated server range, or tell us what you are running and what is not working, and we will recommend the appropriate option. If that turns out to be staying on shared hosting with some tuning, we will say so.