Are Managed Hosting and Dedicated Hosting the Same?

Both a managed hosting service and dedicatedinterchanged and terms like dedicated hosting and
service mean running a server that is not shared withmanaged hosting are often implied to mean the same
anyone else. Beyond that, the services you get willthing.
depend largely on the provider since there is noAlways read the fine print when choosing a server.
industry standards set for servers. What this meansTerminology often is misused and you may not end
is that fully managed to one provider may mean theup getting the services you are expecting. Until there
same as self-managed to another provider. It is theare industry standards the confusion will continue.
term 'managed' that causes the confusion.Simply put, dedicated hosting means that you do not
Many things can be involved in managed hostinghave to share a server. To have a hosting service
includingthat's managed, means whatever the provider
- Application monitoringdecides it means. Therefore, even though they are
- System updatesused together very often, they do not actually mean
- Intrusion detectionthe same thing. Colocation services and dedicated
- Server monitoringservices are more closely related than dedicated
- Backupsservers and managed servers.
- Database administrationIn summary, there are different types of dedicated
These are only a few of the many items which canservers but they all mean not having to share a
fall under the term of managed hosting. Becauseserver. Managed servers can mean a variety of
there are no industry standards, it is best to checkdifferent services in addition to having a dedicated
the details before you decide on a dedicated hostingserver. When referring to web hosting; dedicated
site. This type of hosting is always dedicated butservers are basically a rented service which includes
dedicated hosting has different managementthe server, the internet connection and the software
definitions depending on the provider.whereas managed hosting refers to the
Dedicated hosting can further be broken down intoadministration of the website. This type of hosting
different typesgoes above and beyond what dedicated servers
- Basic: This is normally is chosen if low RAM, Hardprovide.
Disc and Operating System on the serverManaged hosting is an additional service with varying
- High End: Usually involves Quad Core Configurationdegrees of options available depending on the
- Bandwidth Dedicatedprovider. While they are often used in the same
- Database Dedicatedcontext, they mean very different things. Again,
- Server Mirroring Dedicatedmanaged hosting is always on a dedicated server but
You will notice that 'managed' is not mentioned in anya dedicated server does not necessarily mean you
of the categories. Management is above and beyondwill get managed hosting. Different providers offer
what dedicated servers provide. For those stilldifferent management hosting on top of the
learning their way around computer terminology, itdedicated server they provide. Managed hosting and
can get confusing because the words are oftendedicated servers do not have the same meaning.