Dedicated game server hosting is becoming increasingly popular these days.
And why not; who doesn’t want superb speed and incredible server performance without lags?
Dedicated servers give flexibility and power to host the desired games. It boosts gameplay experience multi-folds and provides better security to your servers with abundant resources as you don’t have to share it with anyone else.
Now, you may think, why not go for another server type such as shared hosting. Although it may come with unique features at a cheaper price, gaming experience and reliability get compromised. You will have to share resources with others (many of them), affecting performance, more lags and downtime, and security risks.
This probably explains why modern-day gamers and streamers love dedicated game server hosting. Having a dedicated server to power your videos or games means getting an entire game server to yourself with incredible response times. You get more control over your server with the desired configuration, changing settings, optimizing the server based on your needs, etc.
So, let’s talk about dedicated game server hosting and how you get all these benefits to experience next-level gameplay.
What is dedicated game hosting?
Think of web hosting as renting a plot virtually in the world of the internet. You may use that space for building your website, streaming, playing games, etc. There are different tiers of renting this space, such as shared hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting, cloud hosting, etc.
Now, suppose you have chosen a shared hosting service. It’s like renting a room inside an apartment shared by others. It may be affordable, fun, and may give a temporary comfort to you, especially if you are alone staying in that room. But you will have to manage sharing some amenities with others. This limited space and resources would not be sufficient for you. Soon, you would wish to buy a house of your own.
Similarly, dedicated hosting is the solution for gamers who are tired of all those limitations. It will help if your team scales up or you want to invite your friends from across the globe into your game.
Dedicated hosting comprises a cluster of powerful servers that lets you host robust, high-end games that require massive performance. You get your own space with all the resources meant just for you, and you can invite as many players to come to play with you and customize it. Sounds fun, right? It is. But it comes at a higher cost, but the results are worth it.
How is dedicated hosting beneficial?
You already know WHAT the benefits of dedicated hosting are; now, let’s find HOW?
Exceptional performance and speed
Dedicated hosting means the server is ‘dedicated’ only to you with all the resources such as CPU, RAM, storage, etc. It uses the latest processors, software, and hardware to provide an optimal experience to you.
As a result, it increases your gaming speed, which directly improves your gameplay. It can also accommodate more traffic or the people joining the game from worldwide locations, and you can host powerful video games like Minecraft, Valheim, etc.
Negligible downtime and lags
Due to high performance and speed, you are likely to experience negligible downtime or lag. Also, sharing resources with no one further adds to this cause. Therefore, you don’t have to struggle with slow game loading or frequent crashes that previously spoiled your mood, and now, you can experience smoother gameplay.
Better customer support
Dedicated hosting services include better customer support. You can quickly reach out to them at any time you want, and they will help you solve your query fast with different means of communication like email, chat, or call.
More control
Dedicated hosting offers more flexibility as you don’t compete for uptime or bandwidth. You can even configure or install things by yourself, integrate with other software to include forums, display player rankings, etc. Additionally, they offer a robust control panel to manage everything easily, or you can leave most of the things to them and spend more time playing than managing it.
So, let’s review the best 6 dedicated game servers to avail of these benefits and enjoy your game mindfully.
OVHcloud
Experience the best performance for online gaming with OVHcloud – a dedicated game server for all gamers. Every server they provide has an IPv4 and IPv6 address range. You can use the option of renting additional IPv4 addresses (up to 256/machine) for the dedicated server.
OVHcloud has the latest AMD Ryzen processors based on ZEN 2 architecture that offers high performance. You will get water cooling technology with powerful processors to get stable performance. It has 1 Gbit/s bandwidth to provide the ultimate experience for online gaming without any service availability issues.
You can rent your server closest to the data centers located across the world for the lowest latency. OVHcloud game server is a perfect solution for publishers and professional resellers with excellent performance at a minimal rate. It also helps secure your server from DDoS attacks to avoid unwanted breakdowns.
All the servers have a 99.90% service level agreement (SLA) to ensure the best availability of the servers for your games. In addition, OVHcloud provides each server with 500 GB of storage and dedicated backups. The space is separate from your server, which allows you to store configuration files and data. In addition, the capacity can also be increased in the future if needed.
OVHcloud dedicated server pricing starts around $95 per month.
Liquid Web
Liquid Web gives you high-level security and performance with the managed dedicated gaming servers. It specializes in custom solutions by partnering with your experts to design a better game tailored to your needs.
You will find high availability, high-performance, and hybrid hosting, apart from server clusters, private cloud hosting, public cloud hosting, disaster preparedness, compliance solutions, and built-to-order solutions in the custom hosting service.
Liquid Web’s server hosting is available for Windows and Linux OS and comes with ServerSecure Hardening and Proactive Sonar Monitoring. You will find both single and dual processors for game servers. Choose between fully managed, core managed, or self-managed dedicated server hosting according to your business demand.
Moreover, it shields your server and website from DDoS attacks and offers access to monitor the issues. They provide Cloudflare CDN that helps your website gain speed through the nearest server from worldwide centers. In addition, you will get a secondary drive to back up your essential data.
Liquid Web provides Interworx, cPanel, and Plesk so that you can choose between control panels to start with your gaming. With IPMI access, you can manage and monitor your dedicated windows or Linux server remotely without losing security and access.
Liquid Web allows you to take complete control of your server with the help of root-level access. A dedicated IP address will also help you enhance the accessibility and security of your server. With enterprise-grade SSD storage, you can kick up the speed of server performance to handle data storage. Additionally, they offer a 100% network uptime guarantee.
You can choose from different Intel processors at a starting price of $169/month, where you can find 4 cores each 3.9 GHz, 16 GB RAM, 5 TB bandwidth, 250 GB Acronis Cyber Backups, 1 TB SATA backup disk, 2 x 240 GB SSD primary disk, etc.
Google Cloud
Deliver multiplayer gaming experiences seamlessly with multi-cluster management via Google Cloud. Their game servers manage your global server infrastructure so that you can only focus on developing great games without complexities or compromising on performance.
Their Game Servers also manage Agones, which is an open-source server management project running on Kubernetes. Google Cloud automates fleets of servers across many Agones clusters, monitors the health of the fleets using Terraform, and schedules the scaling events.
Your game servers will run at a speed of 3.8 GHz, and a high-quality private network connects Google Cloud’sCloud’s distributed regions. It will also support multi-cloud and hybrid deployments sooner.
They offer customized autoscaling, single control plane, simplified deployments, Google Cloud support, and many more. Furthermore, you can access Agones and Kubernetes API to enable your game server to deliver a unique gameplay experience.
Google Cloud manages the first cluster for free, and each additional one will cost $0.50/hour/cluster.
Amazon GameLift
Give your users a multiplayer experience with the dedicated game servers through Amazon GameLift. It uses the power of the AWS to deliver minimum latency of 45ms, lesser wait times for players, and maximum savings.
GameLift offers a global, scalable, and most elastic service for computing. It auto-scales with FlexMatch to connect a maximum of 200 players in a single session and meet the players’ demand. Use the existing tech stack, which is all module compatible, to provide flexibility.
It is designed to secure your gaming server from DDoS attacks. In addition, you have the option to configure the service to enhance server capacity and autoscale it to absorb all DDoS attacks, letting your players play without going offline.
You can choose from 40 instance types and sizes. The hosting also includes a dashboard to monitor the gaming performance, and you can see the true data on server health, player demand, server capacity, CPU, and memory utilization. Furthermore, you can also opt for operational alerts using Amazon CloudWatch.
GameLift supports Unreal Engine, Amazon Lumberyard, Unity, and custom C and C# game engines. It includes fast data transfer, SSD storage, and high-performance virtual machines. It is available in 21 regions and 60 instance types, letting you avail of the best performance for your server.
IONOS
Get complete admin freedom for a dedicated game server with IONOS. It lets you set up your game server and configure it according to your demand via full root access. A dedicated gaming server is an ideal choice for those who want to rent their game server with complete server hardware and performance available to them.
AMD and Intel Xeon processors power IONOS for exceptional performance. You can choose from options like reliable SSD, high-capacity HDD storage, or high-speed NVME. Now, you can also supply high-level performance with the latest processor and storage technology.
The dedicated gaming server has exclusive features you avail of, such as load balancing, complete API control, 8-minute deployment, and more. All the servers come with RAID technology to secure your critical data and allow you to access it whenever needed.
Your server is fast with 1 Gbit/s bandwidth and allows unlimited traffic for free, applied in outgoing and incoming data. All the traffic will filter through the IP firewall and ensure safety from DDoS attacks. Additionally, you can configure data in the control panel.
Your servers are protected by the IDS/IPS and SIEM technologies to perform backups at any time to secure your data. The data centers are located in the US and globally with the highest security and safety standards.
The price is starting from $33/month.
A2 Hosting
A2 Hosting has recently launched a Bare Metal Dedicated Server hosting service that gives you a chance to choose from Intel or AMD processors and offers NVMe storage for the highest level of speed and performance.
Choose from managed or unmanaged server options. You will find command line management in an unmanaged server, easy control for network and hardware, OS choice, full root access, and Webuzo one-click installer. You will get an easy cPanel control panel in a managed server, root access, managed server security, etc. A2 Hosting also guarantees 99.9% uptime.
They allow you to design your server with your IT team. With convenient and ultra-fast server deployment, you can easily access the server in less than 30 minutes. You can also avail of more storage and RAM according to your needs.
Furthermore, there are many other benefits of choosing A2 Hosting, such as:
- Free dedicated IP address with the ability to use Anonymous FTP
- Scalable servers with easy upgrades
- Smart Server Notifier to alert your team automatically during a software or hardware issue
Their dedicated gaming hosting service starts from $99.99/month.
Bonus: how to choose a dedicated game server?
- Check whether or not the dedicated server you have chosen matches the required technical specifications of the video game you want to host.
- Inspect the hardware. Look for the latest hardware, processors, and possibly SSDs.
- Try finding out about their uptime guarantee to understand the server reliability.
- Check out their security offerings. DDoS protection is a must.
- Discuss with them about modules, maps, the software you can install, the control panel they offer, and how much control they allow on your server.
- Find out if they offer a trial period to test the server performance. Check their hosting costs to choose the one falling under your budget with powerful features.
Conclusion
If you are a gamer or streaming enthusiast, now’s the time to up your game with dedicated server hosting. It will offer the performance, speed, and reliability you always wished to have apart from the security in this risky cyberspace.
Thus, choose a dedicated game server hosting as mentioned above and enjoy playing your game stress-free.
