hello
can anyone tell me their reason for getting a dedicated server. I am not sure why someone would need one.

To just use it to host your own website seems a bit expensive, even if your website is doing 50 gb bandwidth.
You can get a 40 gb bandwidth account from tera-byte.

If used for hosting services provided to others.... how do you make a profit.

most dedicated servers come with 50 gb for $250 dollars. You would need 50 customers per $5 dollars to break even not counting additional cost ( credit card account, time you put into it).

waiting for your replies

jointhis

Well, not all 50gb sites need a dedicated server.

But remmeber, a Lot do. Bandwidth is not the large problem when hosting large sites on a shared server. If a popular 50gb a month site stays on a shared server and runs a popular bbs or has a lot of cgi it will bog the shared server down a lot.

So the main reason for getting a dedicated is not necessarily bandwidth, although it does play a major part, is the fact of CPU usage. Its a fact that sites are becomming more and more CPU intensive than 4 years ago when I started in this industry.

Hope that helped answer your question a bit.

There are several reasons people get a dedicated server. One is not being at the mercy of the incompetent apathetic dolts at so many companies, both in technical support and other areas, like billing and customer service.

Another is being able to offer more services to customers.

Still another is a greater availability of resources.

Greater reliability and control (including limiting spam) are additonal reasons.

The 40 gb account you referenced is a rarity and many sites would hit a cpu resource limit on a shared server long before reaching that much bandwidth.

The $5 per account you quote is a low figure. I believe $20 would be closer to the median. At that rate, it would only take 13 accounts to break even using your figures.

There are probably other reasons, but these are the main ones that were my motivation.

Originally posted by Duster
One is not being at the mercy of the incompetent apathetic dolts at so many companies, both in technical support and other areas, like billing and customer service.

That's my favorite one :)

Having the power to make the decisions for yourself and not leave that to someone else is the real key for me.

Duster hit it right on, I don't know how many times I had to depend on incompetent people to serve my clients. Now, I get to provide the level of support I would expect.