When will we need a dedicated server?

[st_hart]

Please correct me if I am wrong. I heard than one of the main reasons someone uses a dedicated server for his website is security. So it's important for payment processor websites like PayPal, banks' official websites which offering online transaction or other websites selling products or services which need credit card details to get hosted on dedicated servers.

[jimbo]

I don't really agree. As long as you have a SSL certificate then you can also have an ecommerce site on shared hosting. Most people get a dedicated server because they have high traffic sites.

[drexel]

Yeah that's not true. Paypal, for example, has all the security taken care of. So as soon as you go to the payment page you are taken to a secure (https) page, so whether your site is on a dedicated or shared server doesn't matter. If you have an SSL cert for whatever part of your site needs to be secure, the same is true. The only time you really need a dedicated server is if you need more space than what is on a shared server...like a giant website with video or music, or if you have many sites that you'd like to put all on one server.

[billmcintosh]

The one thing I can add here is that IF you are storing customer credit card data in your database in your server (and not using paypal or a similar service):

Then having a dedicated server might be a good choice. It does offer more security than a shared or "virtual" host.

Virtual Private Servers or "VPS" is the next best thing, but ultimately if you are storing a lot of very sensitive customer data you want to be in full control of the security of your entire server.

Also, if you are processing a decent volume of transactions your credit card processing company may require you to become "PCI compliant" (this stands for "Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard") and I don't think it's possible to pass these standards with a shared hosting account.

[jimbo]

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard is only required for companies in certain countries. I was running a large online travel sites will millions of dollars in transactions and no one ever cared about this certification.

[billmcintosh]

What I can tell you is that three of my companies were required to become PCI compliant over the previous 4 months.

All are located in the USA.

One is running as a Paypal Pro virtual terminal/API account. My Paypal rep told me that these requirements were sent down to them from Visa & they were required to enforce it on many of their larger business accounts.

Not everyone will need to become compliant, only if your merchant account provider decides to spring this on you.

[betsyparsons]

Usully the need to move to servers are dictated by company size and security constraints. I have a client who has one other employee plus herself and they have a server. They just liked everthing in one place. I also have another client and there are 10 users and they have no servers. They rely on peer-to-peer networking and a seperate pc designated as the file holder.

There are no clear answers but I bet you can go a long time before you actually need one. When you do... let me know. I paid $250.00 for mine and it works great. Dell has some really killer deals at the end of every year when they are trying to get rid of old stock.

Cheers,

[simonhay]

I recommend gigabitdc.com for server rental and affable support.