Dedicated Hosting is an exclusive server devoted solely to your web site. You do not share a server with other customers, as with shared hosting. This allows for more control over your server enviorment and dedicated bandwidth for your website.

While simple, websites are better suited for a shared server, complex websites operate much better on a dedicated server because the dedicated hosting environment provides higher reliability, increased performance, better security and exclusive use of system and network resources. Therefore, those sites that have high traffic, secure information, a high number of visitors or complex applications (i.e. e-commerce, dynamic content, database applications and multimedia applications) are better suited for a dedicated server.

The company that is hosting your dedicated server is soley responsible for the hardware. You are responsible for the software enviorment and configuration. If you are not comfortable configuring your dedicated server you should hire a administrator or look toward a Managed Server solution.