The cost of dedicated servers from mid-range web hosts is comparable with that of high-performance cloud servers from Linode, Digital Ocean etc. When the need for RAM becomes more than 4GB, then cloud servers are not a good choice. The reason dedicated servers with 16GB RAM sell with a $70 to $100 per month price tag is that they have no modern usage in the corporate sector. Additionally, probably they have been used for 8 to 10 years. There is no direct way to know how old a dedicated server’s machine is old except by guessing from the CPU’s last availability in the market.
That being said, these kinds of dedicated servers are usually good for hosting a WordPress site with medium traffic (1000 to 5000 hits per day) and steady earing if you carefully select the thing.
There is no direct answer to the question “How Much Dedicated Server Cost to Host WordPress” because these days, when server load increases people opt for dynamic whole site caching service instead of relying on their hardware. There are not many ways to know what is the upper limit of expenditure per month. We can tell you the parameters which should be sufficient to operate a WordPress website with 1000 to 5000 hits per day and more than 5000 published articles.
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What Server Spec to Look For
The Brand of Web Hosting Provider
Each web hosting provider sets their price tag. Although the plans and features are similar across web hosting companies, the brand we choose will influence the experience of uptime, network speed, botnet attacks, reputed IPs, ease of use, customer support, cost of extra services etc.
We tend to suggest well-known mid-range brands such as Interserver, Ionos (1&1), Inmotion, Hostwinds, Liquid Web, A2 Hosting, Bluehost etc. All of them have pros and cons. None of them is perfect yet their server hardware is of good quality. These brands are unlikely to get shut down with short notice, not going to deceive the customers etc. The basic moral of these brands is good.
But each of them is waiting to rip off you with extra services if you fall into trouble. Ionos can charge you $75 to Increase Logical Volume on a GNU/Linux Server. You need not use their managed layer since there are enough good third parties across the globe who manages WordPress sites for monthly fees of $30 to $50 regardless of OS and web hosting control panel.
You should keep the server load average to an acceptable level and protect the server from being compromised. These are mandatory when you are using a cheaper service in any type of hosting. So, be more careful than you were on a cloud server. If they target you to kick out, it can be difficult to get the backup.
A big difference between an unmanaged dedicated with that of an unmanaged cloud server is the ability to reboot from the web hosting control panel. Usually, the web hosts provide a software-based serial console, but that does not always work. So, if a dedicated server somehow faces an OOM or you are unable to SSH, you may need to phone them and pay a hefty fee to get the control back.
CPU
Any CPU with 8 or more cores and a frequency higher than 3GHz should be sufficient for hosting WordPress. With a budget of $70 to $100 per month, you’ll get older processors such as Intel® Xeon® E3-1270 V3. They are not bad for our purpose.
RAM
With a budget of $70 to $100 per month, you’ll get 16GB to 32GB of RAM, usually DDR3, sometimes DDR4. Again, it is not inferior to our workload.
Hard Disk
Usually with the above-mentioned budget, you’ll get 250GB SSD and 1TB spinning hard disk. 250GB SSD will be sufficient for your purpose. You can use the 1TB spinning hard disk for slower operations such as for local backup, downloads etc.
Network
You must ensure that the network speed is at least 1GBPs. This is the parameter usually the web hosts try to cheat. Great server spec with 400MBps speed is like having a big palace beside a narrow lane. Many web hosts try to push such products which are even inferior to shared hosting services.
Location
Most of us prefer server locations in some well-known cites in North America. Usually, we target English-speaking countries and except for India, Australia, and NZ rest are closer to North America.
