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6/26/25 9:41 AM | Bare Metal

How Much Do Servers Cost? Comparing Dedicated, Shared Hosting & BYOS

If you're building a tech startup or simply need better infrastructure for your tech project, one of the questions is: how much does a server cost?

Whether you're looking to rent a dedicated server, explore cloud hosting, go for a VPS, or even bring your own server (BYOS) into a colocation facility, understanding the different hosting options is key to making the right investment. We’ll break down each of these hosting types such as dedicated server solutions and colocation. If you would some more advices on building your infrastructure, don’t hesitate to start a chat with our specialists.

Dedicated Server Solutions

Among all hosting options, dedicated server solutions are often the best choice for businesses looking for full control without owning hardware. Unlike shared or virtual environments, a dedicated server gives you 100% of the resources—CPU, RAM, storage, and bandwidth—all to yourself.

This setup is ideal for media streaming platforms with high traffic, resource-heavy applications, gaming servers, ad serving platforms, or anything requiring consistent high performance. The best part? You don’t have to worry about buying hardware, maintaining it, or troubleshooting it on-site. Providers like NovoServe offer dedicated servers with instant deployment, flexible specs, and 24/7 support.

Typical pricing for dedicated servers:

  • Entry-level servers (web hosting, VPN, iGaming, proxies): starting at €50/month
  • Mid-range servers (SaaS, streaming, MarTech): €90–200/month
  • High-performance servers (AI, big data, HPC): €300+/month

🟢 Check our US dedicated server deals: portal.us.novoserve.com/store/promo
🟢 Check our EU dedicated server deals: portal.novoserve.com/store/promo

Dedicated server solutions give you the scalability of the cloud, without its unpredictable costs. You can upgrade RAM, storage, or network capacity as your needs grow—and you stay in control of your infrastructure without owning a single piece of hardware.

What are the disadvantage of dedicated server solutions? The starting price to build your dedicated server can be higer than VPS and public cloud. However, once your traffic and bandwidth needs increase, dedicated hosting becomes the more affordable option.

Deals of unmetered dedicated servers

VPS Hosting: Affordable and Lightweight 

If your project doesn’t need full-blown hardware performance, Virtual Private Servers (VPS) offer an affordable, semi-isolated environment. With a VPS, you share a physical machine with other users, but your resources—like CPU and RAM—are allocated to you alone within a virtual space.

This makes VPS hosting great for smaller websites, development environments, blogs, and testing. You get more flexibility than shared hosting, but it’s still not suitable for resource-heavy tasks like real-time video processing or high-traffic platforms.

VPS pricing generally looks like this:

  • Small VPS (1–2 CPU cores, 1–4GB RAM): €5–15/month
  • Medium VPS (4–8GB RAM, more storage): €20–40/month
  • Larger VPS for dev teams or apps: up to €60/month

While VPS is a great stepping stone, larger applications eventually grow into needing a dedicated server for better control, security, and raw performance.

Cloud Hosting: Flexibility with a Price Tag

Cloud hosting is often praised for its scalability—you can spin up new instances on demand, scale resources up or down, and pay only for what you use. It’s a solid choice for startups, global apps, and microservice architectures.

However, cloud hosting costs can become unpredictable quickly, especially when you’re billed hourly or per transaction. Services like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud often start out cheap, but added bandwidth, storage, backups, and premium support can drive the total cost way beyond what you’d expect.

Estimated cloud hosting costs:

  • Light workloads (blogs, dev environments): ~€20/month
  • Web apps, databases, backend services: €80–150/month
  • Compute-heavy or AI workloads: €300+/month

In many cases, teams move from cloud to dedicated server solutions to gain more control and predictable costs—without sacrificing performance. It’s all about what kind of workload you’re running and how much autonomy you want over your stack.

Bring Your Own Server (BYOS)

Some companies prefer to bring their own server, especially when they have strict compliance requirements or need to run on very specific hardware configurations. This is where colocation comes in. You buy your own server, then place it in a data center. You get access to professional-grade infrastructure—redundant power, cooling, high-speed network—while retaining ownership of the machine.

It’s a good fit for enterprises, managed service providers, and IT teams who want the control of owning hardware without hosting it in their office.

Typical colocation/BYOS costs:

  • Rack space (1U–2U): from €59/month
  • Power consumption: based on usage (~€15–30/month/server)
  • Bandwidth: €10–50/month depending on volume
  • Total monthly cost: €100–200+, excluding the hardware

The upside? You own your machine, can configure it exactly the way you want, and run it long-term. The downside? You’ll be responsible for hardware failures, upgrades, and replacement—so you need a plan for remote hands or local tech support.

As an alternative to colocation, dedicated server solutions give you the performance you need and flexibility, and doesn’t require you handle the hardware on your own in the data centers.

Rent a Dedicated Server for Best Value

If you're trying to balance performance, cost, and convenience, dedicated server solutions are often the smart choice. You get the power and control of physical infrastructure—without the burden of owning or maintaining hardware.

At NovoServe, we provide enterprise-grade dedicated servers in the US and Europe with ultra-low latency, scalable bandwidth, and global support. Whether you're running a gaming server, streaming service, ad platform, or launching your next AI application, we have dedicated server solutions for you.

Browse our latest dedicated server promo here: EU server deals | US server deals

Configure your ideal dedicated server today